… At one level, the likelihood that the Supreme Court will overturn Roe v. Wade would seem to be an ideal vehicle to invigorate the left. Such a decision, in political terms, would amount to the imposition of a major change in social policy, by a bare 5-to-4 majority of an unelected court, against the will of a majority of the electorate.

In other words, at a time of growing anxiety over authoritarian trends in the Republican Party, the autocratic nature of a court decision jettisoning Roe has the potential to inflame an already divided nation.

“Research generally shows that anger is an emotion that mobilizes people to act, and many will certainly be angered by this decision,” Brian Schaffner, a political scientist at Tufts and at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard, wrote by email in response to my inquiry. …

There are a number of countervailing factors, however, not least of which is public ambivalence. Perhaps most important, before the Alito draft opinion became public, abortion did not rank high on the list when voters were asked to identify issues of importance to them. CONTINUED

Thomas B. Edsall, New York Times

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