Yes, Kavanaugh's confirmation looks likely to succeed, although it ain't over till it's over. But he's heavily damaged, partially by his own doing, and he will damage the SC too. Trump, the Senate Republicans and conservative voters will probably get the reliable conservative SC vote they wanted, but at a higher price than they'd have liked. And it remains to be seen if they will get an electoral dividend as a silver lining, or if it's the Dems who will profit electorally instead.

Meanwhile, already scary levels of polarization have been dialed up further, and the trend of having not merely different opinions but even basing them on different sets of 'facts' continues. If those tendencies aren't slowed down and reversed, at some point you have to start to wonder if 'the Left' and 'the Right' shouldn't part ways and split up America before they come to open civil war.