As Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson moves closer to being confirmed as the next Supreme Court justice, the clearer it becomes that much of the public will be pleased when she’s sworn in. A FiveThirtyEight report explained:
For weeks now, anywhere from a plurality to a majority of Americans have said that they support confirming Jackson. No polls have been conducted entirely after the start of the confirmation hearings — but nine different polls have found plurality support for Jackson’s confirmation since Jackson was announced as the nominee and five more have found majority support for it.
A day later, a CNN report added, “According to an average of polls by Gallup, Fox, Monmouth University, Quinnipiac University, and the Pew Research Center, about 53% of Americans supported her confirmation, with about 26% of Americans opposed. This is good for a +27-point net popularity rating.”
NBC News’ latest national poll found that the judge isn’t especially well known, but Jackson nevertheless enjoys “the highest net support rating of any Supreme Court nominee since 2005.”
This was not inevitable. President Joe Biden’s popularity is not exactly riding high, so there’s no reason to assume his nominee would necessarily enjoy broad public support.
What’s more, Republicans took the judge’s confirmation hearings in an unusually ugly direction. Their lines of attack, among other things, included “barely coded appeals to racism“ and messages that appeared designed to appeal to adherents of the deranged QAnon delusion.
The New York Times’ David Leonhardt added late last week, “Jackson’s Supreme Court confirmation hearing has turned into a case study of how disconnected from reality large parts of the Republican ecosystem have become.” And yet, none of these tactics had the intended effect. Jackson remains on track to be confirmed, probably next week, and polls suggest the attempted GOP slander did not undermine public support for the jurist’s nomination. All of which suggests several Senate Republicans humiliated themselves and tarnished what’s left of their reputations with little to show for their efforts.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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