The Case for Nominating Elizabeth Warren to the Supreme Court

[silvershadow]

It’s been almost two weeks now, and the talk of who Obama may appoint to replace Justice Antonin Scalia has already been pushed off the front pages. The White House rather brilliantly trolled the GOP this week with rumors that it was vetting GOP Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval. Republicans dutifully refused to consider his nomination and scurried back into their dark corners. Sandoval removed his name from consideration. And incensed conservative commenters scolded Obama for playing games, as if they hadn’t been insisting for two weeks that they were going to pick up their football and go home.

There are a few lessons to be drawn from the Sandoval trial balloon: First, there is no point in Obama picking a conservative or even a so-called “consensus” candidate. Obama pretty clearly couldn’t get a vote if he nominated Eugene Scalia, the former justice’s son—this is the hill Mitch McConnell has chosen to die on. This issue will either remain in the forefront of the national conversation about the 2016 elections, or it will fade away. It’s in Obama’s and the Democrats’ interest to ensure that this unprecedented and wholly unprincipled obstruction remain an election issue every single day.

This leads us to the second lesson. To the extent that this is a political battle, it is a battle over symbols, not people. The loss of Antonin Scalia—the lion of the Federalist Society and the face of modern conservative jurisprudence—cannot be overstated. Had another conservative member of the Supreme Court passed away, I am not certain you would have heard McConnell insisting immediately that he could not be replaced by this president. For the GOP, losing Scalia was like losing Reagan. The notion that he could be replaced by anyone is still in doubt on the right.

In addition to Justice Scalia, there’s another powerful symbol in this constitutional game of chicken: President Obama. The GOP opposition to even discussing any nominee Obama puts up is just the latest attack on his legitimacy. It calls to mind birtherism and the incessant moves to repeal Obamacare and all the 101 other signals that they not only hate this president, they also don’t accept that he’s the real president.

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more at link: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2016/02/the_case_for_nominating_elizabeth_warren_to_the_supreme_court.html?utm_content=inf_91_2641_2&wpsrc=socialedge&tse_id=INF_f67c1785c32a4bd58908a715546dee28

[Ruby the Liberal]

1. That was a great read!

Slate has really been knocking it out of the park lately.

Loved this part:

I’m thinking of big political names: Deval Patrick, Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren, Loretta Lynch. I’m thinking of huge public reputations that will go undisturbed by a fight in the media: Bryan Stevenson, Steve Bright. Big and splashy and dramatic—the antithesis of an Obama judicial pick. It will spare a really great and tender judge the humiliation of being a political football and perhaps serve to get out the vote in November. This is less a trick than a pivot, a nonconstitutional response to a nonconstitutional impasse.

[Land of Enchantment]

2. Disagree given a couple of parts of the author's

premise, the most egregious being this excerpt:

"Dispiriting as it is, this election fight will not be won or lost with strong, well-qualified, or temperate candidates. And given that any of the wonderful, thoughtful centrist judges (confirmed by the Senate 97–0 and 98–0) on the various shortlists are not symbols, perhaps he needs to rule them out. Beyond that, Obama is going to have a tough time asking sitting federal appeals court judges to more or less destroy their lives and careers for the next 11 months while the world chomps away at their butts and reputations. So, as worthy as some of the brilliant and accomplished short-listers are, let’s agree that they shouldn’t be sacrificed to the obstructionist wood chipper of the Republican-controlled Senate. Nobody who has worked hard to be a respected jurist should have to ruin a life and a career over a political food fight.
Who does that leave? Someone who will mobilize and energize Democrats and inspire centrists and moderates. Someone accustomed to the bright lights of cable news and someone who doesn’t mind being flattened down to an election-year cartoon."

I doubt the author of that piece has read any of Senator Warren's books or paid attention to what she has been saying for years. She has a career she treasures and has made enormous effort to benefit the American people. Why would she, after refusing the opportunity to run for President, allow herself to be 'flattened down to an election year cartoon' and/or 'ruin a life and a career over a political food fight'?


Dream ticket is Sanders/Warren for so many reasons. If the DNC forces the Clinton Regime on us perhaps Warren will run in 2020.

[Ruby the Liberal]

3. He explained that

I posted the excerpt right above in #1. It really brought home the contrast in strategies.