3) No matter what happens going forward, everyone has already lost. It doesn’t matter who you believe or who you want on the court. If Kavanaugh’s nomination implodes now, we have lowered the evidentiary standard for wrecking a nomination to the point where bad actors will be incentivized to make things up.

If Kavanaugh is confirmed, he will carry a cloud over him for the entirety of his tenure. Any decisions in which he’s the swing vote will be even more contentious. And you can bet the milk money that the next time Democrats have unified control of government, they’re going to want to expand the Supreme Court to 11 seats.

To paraphrase Tony Stark, there’s no throne here. There’s no scenario in which anyone rides off into the sunset, happy.

Everyone is walking away worse off than they were a month ago.