I wrote a long Twitter thread on Kavanaugh a week ago, the first time that I thought he was going to get in. This piece by Matt Yglesias covers much of the same ground that I did, but better. This Boston Review article by Sam Moyn says what I wanted to say about courts and democracy, but is sharper. Still, there’s one idea in neither of them that I think is worth developing.

That is Kavanaugh’s role as a frame. The sociology and political science of social movements talks a lot about how movements on the street need frames – simple representations that provide a common focus for the very different people with different interests that make up a movement. Kavanaugh – angry, distorted, shouting face and all – provides the most concrete imaginable metaphor for what the Republican party has become, and for the white conservative elite that is trying to cripple American democracy. The ways in which conservative judges are undermining American democracy are apparently a-political, and hard for many people to focus on and understand. Kavanaugh represents and personifies this silent judicial revolution. And he does so in an especially visceral way for the women who are the backbone of the social and political movement that has to be at the heart of any hope for political change in the US. He can – and should be – hung like a rotting albatross around the neck of the Republican party.

Democratizing the Supreme Court is a long term project. It is going to require a fundamental reshaping of the American legal elite – focusing on the cosy relationship between top law schools and the judiciary, and the ways in which the Federalist Society has finessed the ambiguities between debating ideas, providing a pipeline for judges, and vetting Supreme Court justices. It will also require politics on the streets. The circumstances of Kavanaugh’s elevation have temporarily raised the costs of overly comfortable relationships in the legal world. Keeping them raised – and turning them into a broader democratic agenda – will require active and continued mobilization. Pressing for investigations (should the Democrats win in November) of the role that Whelan, Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society and others seem to have played behind the scenes in trying to discredit accusations. Framing the court and every rotten decision it makes as the Kavanaugh Court. And protesting in every way possible to raise the costs for the politicians who voted for Kavanaugh, and where possible to replace them.

None of this changes the fact that it is very, very bad that Kavanaugh has been confirmed. But it does mean that Kavanaugh can, despite himself, become a political engine for change, in ways that would have been impossible if he had been confirmed without controversy, as seemed likely to happen just a few weeks ago.