Both men had things in their past that should have disqualified them even before the sexual harassment/assault allegations arose: Thomas had problems with conflicts of interest -- including hearing a case where his political mentor's family stood to gain or lose about $10 million, and he found in their favor -- and Kavanaugh had the lies under oath about his actions as part of the Bush administration and during the investigations of Bill Clinton.
In both cases, the Republicans disregarded these faults because they could count on the men to be reliable conservative operatives on the court and they were young enough to be sot for decades.
In both cases, the discussion was squeezed down to just one woman appearing publicly. Other claims had been made, but those were smothered with one or another criticism. Neither Angela Wright nor Deborah Ramirez appeared on camera, and so, thanks to the realities of political coverage, the committee was free to act as if they didn't exist. The whole narrative was reduced to "he said/she said", which gave wavering committee members the cover to throw up their hands and go along with the nomination.
Important difference: In 1991 the Democratic committee members did not want the fight. They had to be dragged into it by a leak of Hill's claims.
For background, at the time of Thomas' nomination, conservatives were still in a full lather about Bork (not that they've ever stopped being in full lather, but in 1991 it still seemed fresh) and were also still angry about the fight over Souter's nomination (this is before Souter showed himself to be a jurist first and foremost, not a conservative operative as they'd hoped). Since this was replacing Thurgood Marshall, Bush picked a black jurist. There were other black conservatives he might have picked, but either they were old, had areas where they dissented from conservative pet policies, or both. The black community didn't really know Thomas, but was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, and wouldn't have taken kindly to a strong challenge that might prevent the seat being filled by a black jurist.
So initially, the Democratic senators faced yet another ragefest from the right, potential backlash from a portion of their base, and a nominee whose record was rather lackluster and who obfuscated when they tried to probe further. They knew about what Hill had to say, but that wasn't public. So initially they took the path of least resistance.
Two things changed that: One, of course, is Hill's allegations becoming public. The other is Thurgood Marshall's comment that "a black snake is still a snake". Almost simultaneously, the benefit of the doubt Thomas had been given among blacks nosedived while the senators faced pissing off another Democratic constituency, women fighting workplace sexual harassment. That caused the reopening of the hearings, but see above for the he-said/she-said framing and the cover it gave for wafflers to roll over.
This time: While there were still a few areas of acquiescence (specifically, IMO, letting his lies under oath fall off the radar), there were women on the committee (on the Democratic side, at least), and who had experience as prosecutors on sexual assault cases.
They were still able to ram him through on a sheer power-grab, but there wasn't the "we didn't want a fight in the first place" aspect that colored the 1991 process.
And sure as hell it contributed to Bill Clinton winning in 1992.
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