Some of the comments here are good.
The post itself is just sad. The ideological opposition to experience and imagination, and then the discovery that experience surprises you.  The individualist's family dynamic
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Shelby County v. Holder  As I've said before, history is repeating with the court; it's now more conservative than the populace. In the middle of the century it was the reverse and earlier it was in a sense where we are now.  But the elite includes not only the court but the neoliberal elite and academy, and the the culture at large is more liberal, more open to change than the elite as a whole. 5 years ago the right would not have backed off the Woodward story. Woodward didn't just misread his audience he misread the times, and Josh Marshall is misreading the events.

Joey Fishkin at Balkinization makes a mistake in discussing the VRA case (issues explained here)  The VRA is not affirmative action. Josh Marshall posts a note from a reader

Compare and contrast.
1. Justice Scalia today regarding the voting rights act: “This is not the kind of question you can leave to Congress.”

2. The United States Constitution, Amendment XV: “SECTION 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. SECTION 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.” (My emphasis.)

The readership at TPM has always been sharper than the writers.

David Gans, also at Balkinization, focuses on a point similar to the letter writer to TPM: defending the VRA as fair without actively separating it from the history of positive discrimination. To attack rather than defend, the argument would end up weakening the case for positive discrimination itself.
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Gabriel Kolko on the New Deal, a link from a commenter at CT [Rauchway on Menand's perversity in the New Yorker]

Very very, smart.  A scholar's argument relating to my amateur's observations in re: affirmative action and Wickard v. Filburn etc. see (…) above.