The Democrats’ Campaign against the Supreme Court Pauses with a Whimper

The Democrats’ campaign against the Supreme Court isn’t going well. Sure, they have had an impact. They’ve generated an astroturfed press campaign with the help of sympathetic journalists. They’ve succeeded in negatively polarizing their voting base against the Court. They mainstreamed Court-packing among the party’s elected officials. They inspired an armed assassin to show up at Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s house. And undoubtedly, the people involved have raised a lot of money from their donors.

But as a campaign strategy, it was a flop. There was no great popular groundswell against the Court. While voters in 2022 and 2024 mostly (with some notable exceptions) moved to protect legal abortion under state laws, they also handed control of the White House back to the man who appointed half of the Dobbs majority. They gave the Senate back to the Republican caucus that confirmed those justices, and whose leader (John Thune, like House Speaker Mike Johnson) has an A+ rating from Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. A lot of factors went into the elections, but this is not how the public would act if it considered a conservative Supreme Court to be some sort of public emergency.

About the Author

Dan McLaughlin

Dan McLaughlin is a senior writer at National Review Online and a fellow at National Review Institute.

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The Democrats’ campaign against the Supreme Court isn’t going well. Sure, they have had an impact. They’ve generated an astroturfed press campaign with the help of sympathetic journalists. They’ve succeeded in negatively polarizing their voting base against the Court. They mainstreamed Court-packing among the party’s elected officials. They inspired an armed assassin to show up at Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s house. And undoubtedly, the people involved have raised a lot of money from their donors.

But as a campaign strategy, it was a flop. There was no great popular groundswell against the Court. While voters in 2022 and 2024 mostly (with some notable exceptions) moved to protect legal abortion under state laws, they also handed control of the White House back to the man who appointed half of the Dobbs majority. They gave the Senate back to the Republican caucus that confirmed those justices, and whose leader (John Thune, like House Speaker Mike Johnson) has an A+ rating from Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. A lot of factors went into the elections, but this is not how the public would act if it considered a conservative Supreme Court to be some sort of public emergency.