In the future, John Roberts could be the Supreme Court's swing vote

Sad as it may be, liberals may have no choice but to put faith in Roberts as a political actor. With Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr., Clarence Thomas, Gorsuch and another hard conservative to his right, Roberts could calculate that overturning Roe vs. Wade — and turning the abortion question over to the states — would actually be disastrous for the Republican Party. Suddenly every state election would become a battle over abortion, and many apathetic liberals could turn into motivated ones. Granted, Roberts would almost certainly not fight to save Roe — but he might vote to kill it with 1,000 cuts rather than overturn it outright.

I don’t mean for liberals to find comfort in this scenario. (Roberts likely won’t have any compunction against destroying what is left of affirmative action, or removing the remaining limits on money in politics. Want to donate $100 million to your favorite presidential candidate? No problem.) On the contrary, the possibility that Roberts’ restraint is the best hope for preserving progressive constitutional rulings shows us that the left is in a truly poor position.

The only real solution is for Democrats to pray for the current justices’ good health — and then to take back the presidency and the Senate. And once they do, perhaps they’ll play hardball themselves by increasing the number of justices on the court and packing it with liberals.