That’s the title of my new Confirmation Tales post. There is much stronger evidence for a yes answer than you might think. An excerpt from the beginning of the post:
Stephen Breyer’s Supreme Court nomination had a fairly easy path to confirmation, but the path wasn’t celebratory. Rather than unify the Democratic party, the nomination exposed and exacerbated differences among its factions.
Ralph Nader testified vehemently against Breyer at his 1994 confirmation hearing and, more than six years later and just days before the 2000 presidential election, was still complaining about Breyer. There is thus ample reason to suspect that Bill Clinton’s nomination of Breyer spurred Nader’s fateful decision to run for president, first in 1996 and then again in 2000. If so, the Breyer nomination had a greater impact on a presidential election than any other Supreme Court nomination in American history ever did.
There is much more in the post that I hope you will find of interest.
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