Ah. Truly the trial of the decade, as I recall, and to this day there are still people I know of (almost none of whom are US citizens, making me wonder what they claim to know or why they should care, much less why their views should matter) who try and claim that Kavanaugh should have been jailed, and when I ask "on what charge," they invariably look at me like I fell from Mars and ask "are you saying it's okay that he raped a woman?" The fact that this allegation of rape has almost no credible evidence never seems to enter their minds.
Frankly, I am in agreement that the attempt to steamroll Brett Kavanaugh (on the basis of allegations that were so glaringly obviously prepared by political opponents of the man who appointed Kavanaugh) was a sickening politicization of the US Justice System, which -at the risk of sounding trite- for all its flaws is still the excelsior among global judiciary systems. However, in a truly impartial justice system (as ours claims to be), even the devil has an advocate, if you'll forgive a small bon mot. Ergo, advocatus diabolii would like to cross examine the witness here.

Brett Kavanaugh had two major issues working against him.
The first, which you mentioned, is the nature of the accusations against him. While TV's Law and Order franchise isn't known for its accuracy, one of the few things they actually got right was a line in the title sequence of SVU: "in the criminal justice system, sexually based offenses are considered especially heinous." There is a school of thought (a highly flawed one if you want my view) that because these crimes are considered sicker than others, that even unproven suspicions of them should bear a consequence.
While I would consider that to be one of the most counterintuitive things I've ever heard (if anything, the severity of the accusations should heighten the burden of proof, given that the social stigma of being labelled a sex offender goes well beyond the courtroom or the jail; and further, if one's future can be destroyed by an unproven allegation then, well...), it is nonetheless a commonly held view in America, and this, unavoidably, put him under greater fire during the time the allegations were being made, even though the case against him eventually collapsed.
The second is a bit pricklier.
The law is built on the principle, as you rightly stated, that no one can be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law (with "due process" of course including a burden of proof beyond reasonable doubt which falls upon the accuser, rather than the accused). However, is an office one has not yet been sworn into, their property?
This is a question that has not been rightly settled, and there is precedent to ask it. Let's change the situation slightly. Let's say Kavanaugh was being appointed to a national security sensitive office, and the allegations made against him were of a nature that would have endangered national security. Even if he had been cleared, the very suspicion of the allegations would have cast enough doubt upon his credibility that it would have been deemed dangerous to appoint him to the office.
Put more simply, even if there is not enough proof for a criminal conviction, is it still prudent to withhold appointment to office based upon suspicion?
The most worrisome thing is that this question has yet to be clearly answered.

Now then, as I said, this is merely "Devil's Advocate." I am quite convinced that Ford's allegations were absolute nonsense, drummed up out of pure petulant spite and supported by the Democrat Party for purely political reasons in a glaringly obvious hijacking of the court system for political obstructionism, and the fact that a US legislator had the audacity (and showed the ignorance of our legal precepts) to claim Kavanaugh had to "prove his innocence" shows how dangerous it is for the ones sworn to uphold the Constitution to be so unaware of what is in it. The clearing of Kavanaugh's name after this absolute farce of a case against him was blown away, is the true fulfillment of justice. Christine Blasey Ford saw that someone she didn't like was appointed to a high office by a president she didn't vote for, so she made a pathetic attempt to defame him, and an equally petty political faction saw in this attempt an opportunity to advance themselves, and God-be-Thanked, it fell apart.
However, some perspective is also in order, in case a similar situation ever comes up where the evidence is not as cut-and-dry: not appointing someone to an office to which they have not yet been approved by the Senate, is not the same as finding someone guilty, and we need a clearer definition of what does and does not constitute deprivation of life, liberty or property.