President Obama needs to keep some balance on the SCOTUS, he's not going to be able to change the make-up of the court, merely make the liberal bloc a little younger...
I hope he doesn't take centrist picks like Elena Kagan, or, an even worse choice would be Merrick Garland....If he selects Garland, then he might as well just ask John McCain to make the pick for him...
Bush excited the base w/his 2 choices, President Obama needs to do the same...Such names would include Harold Koh, Kathleen Sullivan, Pam Karlan, Cass Sunstein, Diane Wood, or Goodwin Liu...Liu would enrage the right worse than Bork enraged the left...
John Paul Stevens was ocnfirmed 98-0 19 days after President Ford nominated him...Now those days are definitely gone (and that's the fault of both parties), but let's see if Republicans practice what they preached when Bush was around, saying all candiates deserve an up or down vote....
One thing we'll never see again (related to President Ford) was an election like 1976 where the Republican was more Socially Liberal than the Democrat..
The best way to do that IMHO is to pass the Equal Rights Amendment. That will forever take the Abortion debate off the table.
As long as religion is allowed to influence politics, abortion will never be off the table.
If there is ANY hot button issue that crosses party lines, its religious manipulation, of which abortion, euthanasia, the right to put religious symbols where they don't belong and the death penalty all play a part.
Separation of church and state my ass. This country started sliding downhill the moment religion, aka the CHURCH was allowed to influence secular government.
The Founding Fathers understood the difference between spirituality and religious dogma. Too bad that distinction has been lost amongst all the self-serving and self-righteous bullshit of our era.
I have no clue who Obama will nominate, but i already know it won't matter to the opposition, who would rather denigrate than cooperate.
If he nominates anyone who isnt a lily white frothing at the mouth dittohead, he will be called a socialist, communist nazi uncletom auntjemima and whatever else the haters we call the extreme right wing call anyone who isn't one of "their own".
On the other hand, I expect him to appease his own base. Which means we are in for a protracted battle where bullshit being slung will be the order of the day on both sides.
It's going to get very ugly.
But not half as ugly as when the next conservative judge has to be replaced. You thought the haters were in full swing? Just wait till obama tries to replaces a scalia with a bader-ginsburg.
To the victor goes the spoils. Obama will almost certainly appoint a liberal judge to the SC, that's one of rewards of winning the election.
When the GOP reclaims the Oval Office, whenever that might be, they will certainly try to pack the court with conservative judges, why should anyone expect different from the Dems. It's just the way thing work.
As much as I despise the Dems in general and Obama in particular, I think it's a good thing that the right will not be able to further stack the court with right wing judges. We need balance in this country, and a court loaded 6-3 or 7-2 with either conservative or liberal jucges is not a good thing for this country.
Personally, Unlike many conservatives, I support not only the 2nd and 10th Ammendments, but the 1st, 4th and 5th as well. A far right wing SC, that would dismantle our rights in the name of "law and order" would be a very scary thing to consider.
but the roberts alito thomas scalia faction is pretty entrenched and lean very far to the right.
the left wing is not quite as entrenched and ideologically locked in.
i wish there was some way, any way to remove the politics from the scotus.
So what we are left with, is the hope for balance.
Don't get me wrong, I am just as scared of the left as I am of the right, but politics swings like a pendulum, and so far neither side has been able to control the court to any major degree, which is as it should be.
I do have to confess, I a bunch of religious zealots rewriting the Constitution in "The name of God" is a much scarier proposition than a court stacked with bleeding heart liberals.
It's not a given that the next Supreme Court nominee will be a liberal. There is a good body of thought that Obama may opt for a moderate such Solicitor General Kagan or Judge Garland who is easy to get through Congress following the long fight over health care, even though Judge Wood or Cass Sunstein would be better choices
If President Obama is a 2 term president (and i think he will be for several reasons) i do think its unlikely he'll really get to change the make-up of the court, short of someone's illness or death...
Things are too polorized anymore, i can't see Scalia, Thomas, etc. retiring with a Democratic president...(Thomas replaced the very liberal Thurgood Marshall)..
To describe the chances of a conservative justice retiring under a Democratic president, I'll go to an NCAA analogy...Before this past tournament started, noted oddsmaker Danny Sheridan gave the odds of all the teams...I think Robert Morris was 3 Trillion/1...For some of the 16th. seeded teams, there chances were SO slim & their odds were so great that one teams chances (i think it was the team who played Kansas in the 1st. round) of winning the entire tournament was 5 Googleplex to 1 (i'm not making that term up, each googleplex must represent a number so great, like 1 with a 1000 zeros, etc.)
Well, that's the chances of Scalia retiring under President Obama - 5 Googleplex to 1, LOL...
Scalia is a few cheeseburgers from being replaced.
This is no longer the court that decided Bush v. Gore. There have been retirements and new appointments so that the court is now far more "conservative" (read that "activist right wing") than it was in 2000. Roberts is particularly dangerous, smooth and serpentine. Unfortunately, there is no likelihood that there will be a change in the foreseeable future because the four legitimate jurists are all much older than the five politicos on the court.
when his career on the SC has been that of a slightly left of center moderate.
Shows how far right the entire political debate has moved over the past 30 years. The teabaggers would be hating on Reagan if he were pres today.