I actually think this is true. But relatedly, I think conservatives are a little blasé about how radicalizing a confirmation here will be even for moderate Dems — especially given the decisions that may follow — and so unwisely assume there won’t be the votes to pack the court. https://twitter.com/neontaster/status/1308160101342220293

The thing is that conservatives quite genuinely think Kavanaugh was gravely mistreated, but liberals also genuinely think he was not — so liberals see grave GOP misconduct with regard to 1/3 of the seats on the court. This can do a lot to change institutional attitudes.

I also think people who are like “well Feinstein says she wouldn’t pack the court, so she won’t” are being very, very silly. What did Lindsey Graham say two years ago about confirming in this very situation we’re in now? People do not form and hold *procedrual* principles here.

Anyway I think one of the key mistakes people make about the Kavanaugh fight is they assume the other side was lying when in fact people were mostly describing their attitudes and judgments and values truthfully, just with perceptions heavily distorted by their interests.

And this is an area where if you don’t understand the other side’s mental state you are likely to guess wrong about what they’re going to do. The idea that Democrats don’t care about judicial appointments like Republicans do is out of date.

The other thing people miss about Kavanaugh is — there’s a sense it “backfired” on Dems politically because of some red-state senate races where it clearly hurt. And those races were important, as we see now. But if you look at the suburban House results, it likely hurt Rs there.

Those suburban dem voters, among whom the activists are heavily female, are a force that isn’t uniformly that left overall ideologically but that will be pushing the party to push back on the judiciary. They can be a constituency for court packing, not for institutionalism.

Finally, everyone fixates on the decisions they lose rather than those they win, and this has obscured the fact that we have a moderate supreme court and have for decades. I don’t think people have grappled with how public opinion about the court will change if that does.