Just before 8:30 A.M. on Tuesday, Brett Kavanaugh arrived in one of a trio of shiny black S.U.V.s at 1 First Street Northeast in Washington, D.C., for his inaugural day on the Supreme Court. As Kavanaugh took the bench, an unsettling sense of normalcy took hold. Justice Anthony Kennedy, whose seat Kavanaugh had filled, could be seen in the gallery alongside Kavanaugh’s wife, Ashley, and the couple’s two daughters. After a welcome from Chief Justice John Roberts, Kavanaugh began his lifetime appointment with little fanfare.

Outside the marble chamber of the Supreme Court, however, Washington’s many warring factions aren’t ready to stop fighting over Kavanaugh, whose fraught confirmation has become a blunt instrument of the culture war. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, ever the tactician, has declared the sexual assault allegations against Kavanaugh to be a “great political gift” for the Republican Party in the upcoming midterm elections, and has issued marching orders to make Democrats pay for smearing his name. “The tactics have energized our base,” he told The Washington Post last week. “I want to thank the mob, because they’ve done the one thing we were having trouble doing, which was energizing our base.” Early polls showing a boost in G.O.P. voter enthusiasm seemed to suggest that Kavanaugh-mania could, indeed, save Donald Trump from a blue wave in November.

Polls conducted in the days since, however, tell a different story. According to a new Morning Consult/Politico survey, 46 percent of voters said that the Senate “made the wrong decision” in confirming Kavanaugh. More than three in four Democrats (77 percent) say they are “very motivated” to vote in the midterms, compared to 68 percent of Republicans who say the same. And while there are likely regional variations in how voters are responding to Kavanaugh—anecdotal evidence suggests there are plenty of independents who felt he got railroaded—the fact remains that Republicans ultimately got their win, while Democrats are still smarting from a loss that could last a lifetime. “Midterm elections are always about punishment, and not reward,” Steve Israel, a former New York congressman and former chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, told me. “Republican voters who felt strongly about Kavanaugh’s nomination, they may forget a lot of this by the midterms . . . But Democrats will crawl across broken glass to punish the president and his party for this.”

Still, Democrats in red states are rightfully nervous, no matter which way they voted. Incumbent North Dakota Senator Heidi Heitkamp, who is facing one of the toughest re-election bids, has conceded she was likely hurt politically by her “no” vote on Kavanaugh. So was Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who voted to confirm the judge. Both are presumably eager to move past what has become a unifying issue for conservatives, and return to local issues—like Trump’s economically damaging trade war—that resonate with voters. “It would be too glib to say, ‘Oh yeah, we are glad that is over’—because it wasn’t a political decision, obviously, on Democrats’ part. We believed, and still believe, that it was something that actually should have been investigated,” a Democratic Senate aide told me, referring to Kavanaugh’s denials of sexual misconduct. “But any Democrat that tells you they are not excited to get back to issues like talking about health care I think would not be telling you the truth.”

The political calculus varies between the Senate and the House, too. “I think generally speaking, for Democrats, it was a bad couple of weeks for the Senate, and a good couple of weeks in the House,” the Democratic aide added. “Just based on where we are competing for House seats and where we are competing for Senate seats.” Israel expanded on the idea. “If you’re a Republican incumbent in one of the 23 districts that Hillary Clinton won, the Kavanaugh confirmation has completely riled up Democrats, and you’re facing a tsunami of anger,” he said. “If you’re in a ruby red Republican district, it has no impact—it’s still going to be ruby red. If you’re in a blue, bright blue district, it has no impact. It’s still going to be blue. If you’re somewhere in the middle, it definitely works against [Republicans].”