The reputation of a good man is at stake.

Regardless of how you feel about Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination, there has been very little evidence thus far that shows him to be a bad person. Up until last week, the worst the Democrats had on him was his habit of eating spaghetti with ketchup – which, considering our president is a man who eats steaks well done and with ketchup, is no longer disqualifying.

I say “up until last week” because Dianne Feinstein forwarded an allegation to the FBI that Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted someone over thirty years ago. She then let it leak to the media so that she could confirm the story. Since then, the accusation and the accuser have been made public, and the world is still trying to process some things.

The biggest issue with all these revelations is Feinstein’s behavior. She’d had the accusation since July and sat on it, apparently feeling it wasn’t that big a deal. All of her Democratic colleagues were unaware and, in fact, Democratic staffers admitted to being blindsided by the reveal and completely baffled as to why she held it.

As a result, a last-second Hail Mary to the headlines appears set to have virtually no effect on Kavanaugh’s confirmation. She sat on the letter accusing Kavanaugh of something serious and, for some reason that probably has nothing to do with her being challenged from the Left or anything, she decided it wasn’t worth releasing.

What most people aren’t talking about is the fact that she wasn’t just given the letter in person. It was given to her office. Staffers knew of it. To what degree they knew is debatable, but someone on her staff knew this existed. For it to not have been revealed to her own colleagues makes this extremely curious, because that means she (or someone high up in her office) forbade staffers from telling anyone about it. Whether it was over concerns for privacy or because she didn’t think it was that big an issue doesn’t matter. The order had to have been given.

So, she screws over the Democrats, who otherwise could have made a sizable chunk of the hearings about this accusation, and drawn some bigger headlines from it, complete with soundbites that would have fared far better than the out-of-context bits released by Kamala Harris or the completely made up things posted by ThinkProgress.

The Democrats aren’t the only ones with problems, however.

Jeff Flake, who continues to seek the spotlight on his way out a door he would likely not have been walking back through had he run for re-election anyway, has now come out and said the Senate should delay the vote until the accuser has a chance to come forward and speak her piece.

Flake has made a name for himself in the last year as a Jennifer Rubin Republican – he does not care what the issue is. If Trump is for it, he is more likely than not against it. His statement does nothing more than confirm that he is in this for himself and his own reputation. Making sure the Supreme Court stays solidly conservative is nothing compared to making sure that everyone knows he is the Right And Proper Jeff Flake.

As much as Dianne Feinstein hurt the Democrats, Flake is doing just as much to ensure he can hurt the Republicans just as bad – or even worse.

Meanwhile, amid all this turmoil, Kavanaugh is being supported by 65 women he went to school with, not to mention countless other classmates from college, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg herself has decried this process, and the only thing we can be sure of now is that Democrats are getting away with tarnishing a man’s name for partisan reasons.

I’m sorry. There is one unproven allegation. It is serious, but the timing is suspect. One alleged drunken indiscretion in high school does not make a sexual predator, and it is certainly not indicative of any serial behavior. Likewise, other than this woman’s word, there is nothing to verify some or all truth to it.

In the case of Roy Moore, there were multiple accusers and several witnesses to testify to his gross behavior. In Kavanaugh’s case, we do not have that, and that matters. Our justice system dictates that a person is innocent until proven guilty. That has not happened yet.

Here’s what’s happening, however. This is a sham of a process, and the Feinsteins and the Flakes of the world are making it into an even bigger joke than it had already become. And, for all their posturing and “Hey, look at me doing the right thing!” nonsense, they are letting a good and decent man get destroyed over it.