Michael Barone’s column on the politics of a Supreme Court confirmation is full of good sense, but as is my usual custom I am going to mention only the part of it with which I disagree.

Barone suggests that there is no upside for either party in a political fight over the Court, which in practice means a political fight over abortion. Abortion is “an issue that is largely moot” and one of “yesterday’s issues.” Why is abortion a largely moot issue? Because abortion rates are declining, one more anti-Roe justice won’t cause it to be overturned, and very few states would ban abortion even if Roe fell.

But as Michael New and others have shown, abortion rates are sensitive to abortion-restricting policies that fall short of a ban. An additional anti-Roe vote would make more such restrictions possible, even likely. So the outcome of the confirmation fight may have a real impact.

Politically, it seems strange to conclude that neither party can make gains from this fight in the red-state/blue-state era. First of all, abortion isn’t just abortion. Liberals are going to say that a conservative nominee is hostile to individual privacy, and conservatives that the liberals are intolerant of religious conservatives in public office. These concerns strike me as live issues on both sides.

A few years ago, I thought (and wrote) that social-issue politics had reached a dead end because the Republican party had absorbed so many social conservatives. Any attempt by Republicans to attract additional social-conservative voters would repel an equal number of socially liberal voters. But the last few election cycles, I think, disproved that theory. The Republicans have managed to pick up new socially conservative voters and gain net. Isn’t it possible that a Supreme Court fight would help them do it again?