This gets to the seemingly never-ending debate about Republicans and conservatives who took a Never Trump stance in 2016 — and particularly, the subset of those Republicans and conservatives who (1) profess to still be conservatives and believers in all the things conservatives believed in before 2015, but who (2) have come to the conclusion that Donald Trump, for various well-known reasons, is unfit for the presidency and should be replaced by Joe Biden. Whether or not you agree with this stance, it is a morally serious position that flows from the premise that having Trump in office is so dangerous that accepting the consequences of a Biden administration would be worth it to be rid of Trump. (I would argue that it ceases to be a morally serious or coherent stance once you start also arguing that Biden should have a Democratic Senate majority to work with, but that’s another day’s debate.)

If these are your premises, how do you evaluate the Barrett nomination? If you were a Republican or a conservative before June 2015, you almost certainly would have supported Judge Barrett as a Supreme Court nominee. Even if you think the benefit of stocking the courts with serious, rigorous, originalist, textualist, constitutionalist judges is not worth the costs of a Trump presidency, it is hard for any conservative of any stripe to say that it is not, by itself, a good thing.

In fact, if you are making the case for a Biden presidency, there are few bigger obstacles than the Supreme Court.