Barn door finally closes after horse gets three counties over

For decades culminating in the historically important (although you wouldn’t have known it from the press coverage!) election of 2016, Republicans enjoyed the incredible political gift of a Supreme Court that was both an increasingly reliable ally and a better mobilizing tool for their base than the opposition (which generally held the Court in high esteem.) This fact is probably one of the but-for conditions that swung the election to Trump. Dobbs has finally ended that:

Let’s start with the most basic measure: overall feelings about the court.

Back in January 2021, 44% of voters had positive views of the highest court in the land, while only 19% had negative views. That gave the court a net positive rating of 25 percentage points — not bad in a country that is deeply divided politically.

But by this month’s survey, those numbers looked very different. The positive feelings number had dropped by 9 percentage points, to 35%, and the negative feelings number had jumped by 23 percentage points, to 42%. That works out to a net negative of 7 points for the court.

Even more dramatic than the overall shift, however, was how widespread the changes were. Across the electorate, there were dramatic moves.

Men went from a net positive of 28 percentage points in January 2021 to a net negative of 1. Women went from a net positive of 22 to a net negative of 13.

The Republican justices themselves already have their supermajority, so as long as Alito and Thomas can hang on until Republicans get the Senate back they have no particular reason to care. Republicans in contested races, on the other hand, can and in some cases will definitely be punished.