Yesterday Rolling Stone reported that a progressive coalition is gearing up to attack the Supreme Court.

UNITED FOR DEMOCRACY, a coalition of progressive groups and labor unions, is gearing up to launch a $10 million persuasion and base activation campaign centered on “the MAGA Supreme Court.” The coalition will spend $1 million on ads in Arizona and Pennsylvania, as well as in the Washington, D.C., area, and the campaign will also involve canvassing and events, officials tell Rolling Stone.

The United for Democracy coalition, which launched last year with a seven-figure ad buy, counts 140 member organizations, including major labor unions, reproductive rights advocates, environmental groups, and liberal think tanks.

The group's list of members really does seem to include a lot of the big money organizations on the left including the NEA, SEIU, NARAL, MoveOn, etc. This coalition got started last year with a $1 million ad campaign. The general idea is to make the court radioactive and tie it to Trump and congressional Republicans. Here's a sample of an ad the group is planning to release.

A video script says: “The MAGA Supreme Court is making a relentless power grab. While some fight to defend our rights, MAGA Republicans are working to help the court strip away our freedoms. They’ve stolen our reproductive freedom, our freedom from gun violence. They’ve let corporations pollute our drinking water. Again and again, this court has ruled for their billionaire donors — at the expense of our rights and freedoms.”...

“Over the last several years, we’ve seen the extreme majority in the Supreme Court roll back our basic freedoms,” says Kim Anderson, executive director at the National Education Association, pointing to the court’s decisions on “abortion rights, and interpreting the Second Amendment as if we are all living back in the 1780s.”

I have no doubt that repeating the phrase "MAGA Supreme Court" will be considered a brilliant insight by many on the left. My question about this plan is whether it will convince people who aren't already planning to vote for Joe Biden or simply against Donald Trump. 

The problem with this plan is that it won't really connect with all of the blue voters in states like New York and California because abortion is still completely legal in those states. So lines like "They've stolen our reproductive freedom" don't really ring true for a lot of those progressive voters. Now it's true that if you live in Texas things are different but there are fewer blue voters in Texas and the ones who are there are probably already voting for Biden.

I guess I'd describe this as preaching to the choir which guarantees a positive reaction to your message and probably a solid stream of funding but it may not win over a lot of converts. I don't think the text of that ad (quoted above) sounds like the kind of thing you say when you're trying to win people who might be in the middle.

The only thing that makes sense about this (to me, anyway) is that progressive groups would rather make this a negative campaign about the court rather than a positive campaign about the candidate. To be fair, I guess that's where a lot of campaigns wind up. In this case, it's just a lot easier to shout about the MAGA Supreme Court than it is to sell progressives on why they should vote for Joe Biden.