Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court has several prominent news media figures predicting or even calling for deeper political divisions in the country heading into the November midterm elections.

The Senate confirmed Kavanaugh on Saturday by a near party-line vote at 50-48. The intense confirmation process, beset by allegations of sexual assault and binge drinking, inflamed the passions of many observers, both Democratic and Republican.

“The Supreme Court’s legitimacy is in tatters,” liberal Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne wrote Sunday. “Conservative forces in the country, led by the Republican Party, have completed a judicial coup, decades in the making. … After all these outrages, there will be calls for a renewal of civility, as if the problem is that people said nasty things about one other. But the answer to this power grab cannot be passive acceptance in the name of being polite.”

Ruth Marcus, an editor at the Post, said Kavanaugh’s nomination was “a dangerous, even scary, moment for the court” and questioned whether he will “go out of his way to prove himself the collegial justice he promised to be.”

“If you’re not angry yet, you should be,” wrote liberal New York Times columnist David Leonhardt. Faulting Republicans for “exercising power in radical ways,” he continued, “This is not how democracy is supposed to work. … Again, if you’re not angry, you should be, and I realize that many of you already are.”

[Top Dem: Trump, GOP must ‘pay a price for Kavanaugh’]

The sharp scrutiny and questions Kavanaugh faced over the course of his nomination process led Republicans to accuse Democrats and the news media of unfairly and knowingly smearing his reputation.

On Saturday evening, Ariel Dumas, a writer for CBS’s “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” tweeted that, “Whatever happens, I’m just glad we ruined Brett Kavanaugh’s life.” She later apologized for what she called a “tone-deaf attempt at sarcasm.”

Filling the vacant seat, previously held by Justice Anthony Kennedy, long seen as a swing vote on important cases, was destined to be a hyper-partisan battle. By occupying it with what many anticipate will be a reliable conservative in Kavanaugh, the court may render decisions for decades that please Republican voters and President Trump’s supporters.

Liberal New York Times columnist Charles Blow said Kavanaugh’s confirmation should lead Democrats to start viewing politics like an all-out brawl.

“Liberals,” he wrote Sunday, “have to look beyond emotions, beyond reactionary electoral enthusiasm, beyond needing to fall in love with candidates in order to vote for them, beyond the coming election and toward the coming showdown. … Folks, Kavanaugh is only one soldier, albeit an important one, in a larger battle. Stop thinking you’re in a skirmish, when you’re at war.”