Ramesh, you may be right that conservatives shouldn’t be getting cocky about the Supreme Court, but you have to admit that the news regarding the vote tomorrow on John Roberts’s nomination couldn’t be better. John Kerry has now added his name to the list of prominent Democrats who will vote against Roberts, the most prominent being Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid. As Hugh Hewitt and others have noted, Democrats are being really quite spectacularly dumb here. By opposing a candidate who is so clearly qualified, they will lose their credibility and their ability to rally the center if and when they choose to vote against or even try to filibuster the soon-to-be-announced next nominee. They could use a vote for Roberts as a weapon in the coming battle by, in effect, saying, “Hey, I’m capable of making distinctions here, I voted for Roberts but this nominee is too extreme.” Instead, they are simply going to oppose any and every nominee proposed by the president who won 62 million votes in November 2004. Under such circumstances, Bush could nominate just about anybody he wanted to as long as there’s no personal scandal in that nominee’s back yard. Thanks, John Kerry! You’re the gift that keeps on giving!