Liberals responded with a policy of moving as much power to Washington as possible, explicitly to enforce a policy of, No, we will decide how everyone lives, and enforce it federally to minimize others' ability to escape our reach.
Libertarians have been saying that judges should do their best to interpret the meaning of the legislators, so that whatever laws we had would be those written by legislators elected by the people. Liberals said, No, we want judges to interpret laws to mean what they ought to have said if they people had done as we wanted, so that the laws will be what the political elite want them to be, regardless of what the know-nothing rabble choose for themselves. So now, we have the precedent established and argued for for years from the left that the law is what the court wants it to be, not what the people said. Nice work.
All along, those promoting local government rather than central, unescapable authority have been derided as fascists by liberals. Now the chickens come home to roost. Do you think now that maximizing and centralizing and moving out of reach as much power as possible was a good idea? No? Want to change it? Why didn't you in all the years you were in power and advocated the opposite, because now you've turned that power over to another group. It didn't have to be this way, but you wouldn't stop. Probably still won't and will instead just fight to regain control.