Democrats are considering bills in Congress to codify various Supreme Court decisions based on privacy rights, including access to contraception and same-sex marriage. They figure it’s a win-win. If Republicans go along, then each bill that passes would be a policy win many Democratic groups care deeply about. If Republicans block them in the Senate, then Democrats can run on those issues in the midterm elections this November.

This seems like a sensible thing for Democrats to do.

But messaging bills should not be a high priority for a party that’s almost certainly in the last months of a rare period of unified government. The top priorities should be substantive bills that would be unlikely to pass if Republicans win back majorities in the House of Representatives (extremely likely) and/or the Senate (somewhat likely).

Confirming as many judges and executive branch nominations as possible should also top the to-do list.

However, nominations move on their own track, and the Senate isn’t going to be delayed by bringing up a handful of additional bills. If it becomes an issue, Democrats can always cut short the August recess; doing so to consider legislation they want to categorize as urgent seems like a good way to squeeze a bit of extra publicity out of it. As far as other legislation is concerned, there isn’t much that is expected to pass. As far as I can see, floor time isn’t a problem in the House, and wouldn’t be a significant problem in the Senate.

The trickier question is whether Democrats should lean toward passing these measures or hope to use them as campaign issues. That is, do they want Republicans – at least 10 Senate Republicans, at any rate, to overcome certain filibusters – to support or oppose these bills?

The answer depends, to a large extent, on how important Democrats believe each bill might be. Some of the rights in question do not appear to be in much danger. Even if the court majority was prepared to overturn Loving v. Virginia, the 1967 case that established the right to interracial marriages, it doesn’t appear likely that any state is interested in reviving bans on them.

On the other hand, it’s not hard to imagine some states acting if they’re allowed to legislate against marriage equality, or even to outlaw same-sex sexual relations. Many Republicans scoff at the notion that they would ever ban contraception, but there are already efforts to count some forms of birth control as abortions, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some legislatures made access to all contraceptives more difficult, at least for some people. Congressional action could presumably prevent that from happening.

Congressional leaders tend to overvalue the electoral importance of messaging votes. Most of the time, even unpopular votes in Congress aren’t going to have large effects in November. During this period of partisan polarization, most voters are going to back their party no matter what happens. Those who don’t tend to pay the least attention to politics, and that means they are less likely to absorb (or, perhaps, even care about) new information they learn in TV ads. And whatever voters learn about single votes must compete with all the other information that’s out there.

It is true that heavy media coverage of an issue can help a party if it has an advantage with voters in that area. So it’s possible that media coverage of bills passing and being signed into law would help Democrats this fall more than coverage of Republicans blocking popular legislation.

It’s usually best for a party with a unified government to pass whatever it can. Save messaging bills that aren’t going to be enacted for a divided government. That can still leave difficult decisions; a bill might have the votes only by omitting one or more provisions that some groups in the majority party’s coalition consider important. And it’s possible that Republicans will block these measures no matter how they’re drafted. If that’s the case, then messaging is all that’s available. But if Democrats think these bills are important, then they should try to pass them.

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