A few days ago I suggested that Republicans were already so energized by Supreme Court choices that a new vacancy could hardly energize them even more. Democrats, on the other hand, had never given the court as much attention, which meant the new vacancy could potentially energize them a lot. A new Washington Post poll confirms this:
There are a couple of caveats here. First, don’t take this to mean that Republicans aren’t energized. They are. They just aren’t a lot more energized than they’ve always been. Second, the same poll asks which issues are most important. The Supreme Court landed in sixth place, with only 11 percent choosing it. So it might be that the fight over the Supreme Court turns out not to be pivotal after all.
But I suspect otherwise. The fighting has barely begun, and a few weeks from now a whole lot more people will have been bombarded with jeremiads about how the future of civilization depends on what happens to the Supreme Court. This will heat up soon enough.
