"Our Supreme Court confirmation process has been in steady decline for more than thirty years. One can only hope that the Kavanaugh nomination is where the process has finally hit rock bottom."

Ann Althouse  "I read [Susan Collins' words] and thought, no, this is not rock bottom. There's more ahead, lower places to sink. Why wouldn't there be? Maybe the 2018 elections will punish the Democratic Party for what it did with the Kavanaugh nomination, and everyone will realize they'd better never do anything like that again. But to say that is to say, there is a lower depth, and they've got to get there before they'll see they've got to enter recovery.

"Notice the connection between "rock bottom" and "hope": "One can only hope... the process has finally hit rock bottom." "Rock bottom" means more than just: at least we can't sink any lower. It means a confrontation with reality that shocks you into changing your ways.
. . . 
"American politics is shot through with us/them rhetoric and emotion right now. I don't know the way out, other than to resist it myself, as I continue my daily scribblings here. I like hope as much as the next person, but I don't think hitting rock bottom is the beginning of a path of recovery, and if I did, I'd need to believe that the Senate can't go any lower, and I don't think the musings of Susan Collins are going to turn anyone back.

"It was a great speech, but why did we hear this from her so late in the process she purports to decry? Why is she only willing or capable of saying these things when she's looking back on the wreckage?"

The Lecture We Deserved.   But did anyone hear it?

Amid palpable national tension and with the fate of Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination yoked on her shoulders, Collins chose not to release the pressure by launching into the allegations against him and how they would affect her vote. Not right away, at least. Instead, she provided a stern lecture to a nation that had earned every word.  . . .  Noah Rothman

The left escalates its vilification of Susan Collins

. . . Her Kavanaugh vote today says no. For all her appearances of leftishness, she seems to have a thing against being pushed around and her independent backbone is not just confined to Republicans. That comes as a shock to the left because she was up until now, always "theirs," and pushing her around was their whole plan.They used the foulest tactics, far worse than the media reported, according to Sen. Marco Rubio. And it all backfired, so they're seething, yet incredibly, not stopping. With the witch hunt over, they are coming for the heretics.  . . .