I just don't feel at all convinced that we properly know the state of the evidence given that the supplementary investigation into the claims was only given a week and didn't involve interviewing either Kavanaugh or Dr. Ford, let alone other potential leads and sources of evidence. Media "scrutiny", and indeed public hearings, don't and can't make up for a proper investigation by people who actually know what they're doing. The Republicans, if they'd wanted to actually ensure this was cleared up, could have set up a four to six week investigation window and then run the confirmation in late November or December (at which point it's still the same senators voting, so it doesn't even undermine their majority for the nomination - the new Senate takes office in January). I really feel like the GOP had the chance to clear their nominee, if indeed they believed that no further evidence would come to light, and it troubles me that they just decided to stick two fingers up and fail to do so.
I also don't think it's true that Dems were primarily making their case on the basis of this - most Democrats had already given their statements and reasons for voting against Kavanaugh well before the hearings, and most people who gave their reasons during or after the hearings did not primarily do so on the basis of the allegations - looking at the key Democrats, Senator McCaskill explicitly stated that the allegations weren't her voting reason, Sen. Heitkamp made her case on the grounds of his temperament & behaviour in the hearings, Sen. Donnelly said he felt a more full investigation was needed, and Joe Manchin voted for Kavanaugh anyway. Parts of the left-leaning media ramped up this aspect of it, but it's not factually true to say that "the Dems weren't arguing that" - actually, key Democrats were. Outside those swing-vote Democrats the majority of Democrat senators, if you look at their statements, clearly gave their reasoning regarding his ideological positions on presidential power, his partisanship & past record as a Republican operative, and his past decisions as a lower court justice. Media reporters on either side of the aisle may not have bothered to read most of those voting statements, but I don't think one can fault the actual senators for that.
I certainly think that process was badly handled all round, and that it's a process that's in desperate need of improvement, as we've already seen (both bearing in mind the problems around Kavanaugh's appointment, and that the last Democratic SC nominee was blocked basically on the grounds of the GOP going "we have a majority so we're not even going to give your nominee a hearing, portugal you guys"); really I suspect it needs a constitutional amendment to require supermajorities for these appointments, and/or put in retirement rules to ensure turnover of judges and give every president 1 or 2 SC picks guaranteed rather than it being random, so then you end up with a permanently more moderate/less partisan Supreme Court where everyone's had decent bipartisan support.