I agree with Ramesh that this question-of-questions strategy makes the nominee and his supporters look to be on the defensive, as Byron lays out well in his piece today. But I don’t think it makes much of a difference with the public at large.

This e-mail sounds about right:

Being an attorney, I get what is going on in the hearings today. Pretty
high-brow legal arguments.
But I am also a political advisor… – and my assessment of
the first half of the day is that the issues and discussions applied
this morning are going way over the public’s head.
The public doesn’t know nor do they care about strict or heightened
scrutiny.
This is all political hackery. A chance for those running for office in
2006 to solidify their base and a chance for folks like Biden to
solidify their intent to run for president.
Chief Justice Roberts is doing an excellent job standing up to the
hackery. I hope he has eaten his wheaties, he’ll need ‘em.
As the great Robert Downey, Jr. said in Natural Born Killers:
“I could be wrong, I don’t think so, but I could be.”

ME: Joe Biden is running for the MoveOn.org primary today. Playing to his peeps. He probably hopes to gain a few add-ons who see parts of the hearings and like his baseball regular-guy stuff. But, as I said, anyone who watches the whole thing gets another impression. And I think that impression is that everyone’s playing a little politics, but that even Republicans are giving Roberts a hard time–so he’s not getting a free pass–and, in the end, Roberts seems like a reasonable guy.

The bases remain where they are and think they’re guys did or did not do for SCOTUS what the people who sent them there wanted them too.