Well, hallelujah! At long last, Democrats are poised to highlight our highest court as a top-tier campaign issue.

The opposition camp has been doing this for decades – to devastating effect, as you may have noticed – so it’s nice that the Dems are finally waking up. It’s a tad late, of course, but better late than never.

President Biden made the wake-up call at a fundraiser last weekend. He correctly warned that if Trump is reinstalled in the Oval Office, the convicted felon will likely have the opportunity to appoint a few more MAGA jurists to the Supreme Court.

Or, as Biden himself put it, “he’s going to appoint two more flying flags upside down,” a barbed reference to you know who. That would be “one of the scariest” aspects of a convicted felon administration.”

The president said, “The Supreme Court has never been as out of kilter as it is today, I mean never,” citing the theocratic decree that overturned women’s right to bodily autonomy – although he could easily have mentioned any number of decisions (including last week’s ruling that puts rapid-fire machine guns back into the hands of American lunatics), plus the court’s slow-mo deliberations on presidential immunity, which have all but guaranteed that the convicted felon, prior to the 2024 election, will not face a federal jury verdict for fomenting an attempted coup.

But Biden did call out crooked Clarence Thomas’ recent contention that the court “should reconsider” its rulings codifying contraception and gay marriages. Regarding the latter threat, Biden said: “Not on my watch.” (Why would the court reconsider those rulings? I thought that conservatives pride themselves on respecting judicial precedent.) So bravo, Joe.

Granted, the Biden campaign needs to highlight a lot of things – like his first-term domestic achievements (a huge list, starting with the strongest post-pandemic economy in the western world, assuming that voters are willing to process factual reality), his second-term goals (all of which have been itemized, assuming voters are willing to pay attention), his vow to defeat fascism at home, and his characteristic decency – in sharp contrast to the felon’s babbling imbecility.

But between now and November, Biden and his surrogates need to hammer the Supreme court issue 24/7. Just as conservative Republicans have been doing for umpteen presidential election cycles dating back to the late 20th century.

I’m frankly at pains to explain why most blue voters (especially blue-leaning voters who stay home) have never seemed to understand that whoever sits in the Oval has the power to shape the bench that has the final say on virtually every hot-button issue in American life. Conservatives said that out loud in 2000 when they coalesced around George W. Bush – who later gave us Sam Alito. They said it with peak fervor in 2016 when they rallied around Trump. They knew he was a lowlife, but so what.

John Boehner, the ex-House Republican speaker, said it best in 2016. He admitted that Trump’s behavior “disgusted” him, but “the only thing that really matters over the next four years or eight years is who is going to appoint the next Supreme Court nominees…The biggest impact any president can have on American society and on the American economy is who’s on that court.”

They didn’t care about purity; they understand what it takes to seize and exercise power. By contrast, the Dems in that consequential year didn’t campaign on the future of the court; they were far too invested in finding fault with Hillary Clinton. And the subsequent exit polls told the tale: Among the 14 percent of voters who said the court was “a minor factor” in their balloting decision, Clinton won by nine points; among the 14 percent of voters who said the court was “not a factor at all,” Clinton won by 18. But among the 21 percent of voters who cited the court as the “most important” factor, Trump swamped Clinton by 15. And those stats don’t include all the Democratic leaners who embraced Jill Stein or simply sat on their rears at home.

Presumably – if Biden’s comments are any indication – Dems have finally learned their lesson. If the death of Roe v. Wade can’t wake them up, nothing will.

To update James Carville’s old strategizing slogan: It’s the Supreme Court, stupid.

Copyright 2024 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at [email protected]