You know, there was never a meaningful principle to keep Republicans from filling this slot. To people who strongly believe that abortion is murder and disrespect of police is dangerous, there's a moral imperative to enforce that view.

For the vast majority of this country's history, the Supreme Court has been a conservative institution, opposed to most things that liberals want. And yet, people still gained important freedoms.

So the next 30 years, minimum, will be spent on defense. Laws important to liberals will be struck down. But if folks can be half as galvanized by this change as conservatives were in the wake of Roe, this may create an issue, election after election, that makes people vote.

And also, of course, there will be pleasant surprises. When you choose extremely smart people to sit on the Supreme Court--and many on the President's list are excellent--their views are unlikely to be in lockstep with their party's.