The U.S. Supreme Court

also he needs 14 GOP senators. there ain't that many "reasonable" ones

although i guess if i had to put money on it i'd say he will get someone confirmed, i can't really imagine the GOP would risk looking this bad in an election year

The key people for getting a nominee voted on before 2017 are McConnell and the judiciary committee chairman, Grassley. We already know McConnell's position. If Grassley decides to report a nominee to the floor, then McConnell will take all the flames for deciding to stonewall, but he won't much care if he thinks there's a political win to be had. If, by early October the presidential race looks like a done deal for the Democrats, he may relent.

i can't really imagine the GOP would risk looking this bad in an election year

see: last night's debate.

anyway clinton is going to win this election so I'm honestly not that concerned about how this plays out.

Still the best recent moment during a confirmation hearing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tku61sKhPGo

stating the obvious here, but, he needs five GOP senators for a bare majority. so if the nominee is actually put to a floor vote, the politicking of this gets more specific: individual senators would have to choose to filibuster and make themselves the center of the controversy. which they probably want to do - ted cruz made his name with that kind of thing, and guess who's promised, today, to filibuster any obama nominee? cruz is absolutely willing to look that bad while he's trying to get the nomination even if he has advisors telling him "uh this may kinda be a problem when you're debating hillary clinton in october." i'm not sure there's anything the republican senate leadership (who loathe cruz and vice versa) could offer him to back down, even if they (the leadership) suddenly and decisively united around the this-will-make-our-party-look-really-bad concept.

with all that in mind i think it is most likely, from the handful of pre-kagan and more recent shortlist articles i've skimmed, that obama pushes srinivasan, on the logic of putting out someone about whom they can say, look, no reasonable person should argue against this. middle of the road, just like you're asking for, etc. that would also be very consistent with the obama playbook, for better or worse. at that point it's a totally political move - give them a damned-if-they-do, damned-if-they-don't choice - but has the veneer of looking like a just-doing-my-job move.

SCOTUS Blog guy picks another dude: http://www.scotusblog.com/2016/02/ninth-circuit-judge-paul-watford-is-the-most-likely-nominee-to-replace-antonin-scalia/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=107&v=VcFLpCzZea0

also man, brace yourself for another round of this. ready-made campaign ad fodder. "ted cruz says he cares about the constitution. but when it came to his constitutional duty to 'advise' the president on a supreme court nominee, he spent days on end just blocking the discussion. so here are the real issues, according to ted cruz...."

It seems to me the whole situation puts some specific interest groups in a strong position. The Wall St. wing of the GOP presumably still has the clout to flip a few senators if they were reasonably assured of a nominee's friendliness.

Given recent history, my guess is we'll get a ferocious, theatrical fight over a softy "moderate" who will eventually be confirmed to the equal dismay of conservatives and liberals, and the delight of Chuck Todd (and probably Chuck Schumer too).

Given recent history, my guess is we'll get a ferocious, theatrical fight over a softy "moderate" who will eventually be confirmed to the equal dismay of conservatives and liberals

otm

reasonable leftists will spend a lot of time explaining to us more emo types why this is the best that can be hopes for so stfu about the problems with the moderate SC nominee, and they'll be right

art of the possible

yeah i can totally see us getting some corporate-oriented "moderate" who two decades hence will be understood as part of the bedrock of the court's conservative wing "who sometimes breaks to join the liberals on social issues" or w/e. which is more or less what i expect a president clinton to put forward for RBG, breyer, and/or kennedy. nonetheless, the imo not overwhelming chance that the next president is a republican sorta makes me want to see anybody who's measurably left of antonin scalia get nominated and confirmed this year. i mean that's still a huge fucking improvement, just not the glowing left turn we might have hoped for in 2008 being told "the next president might get to fill three supreme court vacancies!"

Obama filled two: kagan and sotomayor

and now he may fill a third

also with some exceptions
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/supreme-court-justices-get-more-liberal-as-they-get-older/

even scalia moved more to the left over time. getting a young left-centrist is prob a good longterm investment

@ aimless - yeah that's what i was referring to. like at the time you picture getting three RBGs, this new era of a liberal court shining just over the horizon. i think we got two solid picks tbh, but it may be that the third (if confirmed) will end up being the more rightward. that's all i was saying. i dunno.

Kagan and Sotomayor have been more consistent libs than Breyer, who like Byron White often sides with conservatives on police procedural matters.

I mean, in 2009 I was one of those ILE libs disappointed in Sotomayor but her voting patterns haven't much distressed me.

If I want anyone in a Dem president pick, it's a progressive ideologue that would command respect like Nino Scalia; but I understand the election year calculations. Going before the public and saying, "See? Sinivasan got unanimous confirmation, several GOP bar mandarins love him, look how dangerous Ted Cruz is!" is irresistible.

Replacing Scalia with not Scalia is a great deal even if replacement is not Brennan or Douglas.

Yep. Choosing even a Byron White would be enough to cripple a 5-4 conservative majority.

supreme court justices get the full secret service security package i assume?

They've got their own squad of supercops: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Court_Police

Poor Clarence. I don't think Sam or John will ever be as good buddies for him as Nino was.

You think there are already conspiracy theories about Nino dying at some weekender party in west Texas? Just wait until they find Clarence three-days dead inside his RV parked in the corner of the Taos Walmart parking lot this July.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkDmbnhyxdU

Given recent history, my guess is we'll get a ferocious, theatrical fight over a softy "moderate" who will eventually be confirmed to the equal dismay of conservatives and liberals
otm

reasonable leftists will spend a lot of time explaining to us more emo types why this is the best that can be hopes for so stfu about the problems with the moderate SC nominee, and they'll be right

― tremendous crime wave and killing wave (Joan Crawford Loves Chachi), Sunday, February 14, 2016 3:08 PM (2 hours ago)

et tu?

'fraid so kev

As mentioned upthread, Cruz's more blatant error is implying that Abe Fortas was nominated for the Court in 1968; he was already on the Court, the nomination was for Chief Justice.

When asked by “Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace about Reagan’s late-term appointment, Rubio doubled down on his debate comments.

“It doesn’t really matter what they’ve done, what Reagan did back in ‘87. It was in ‘87 when he nominated him, so obviously it was still earlier in the year. If this was November, October or September of last year where the president had more than a year left in office, then perhaps this would be a different discussion,” Rubio said.

^^^ penetrating legal insight

the definitions section of the constitution clearly specifies "calendar year"

If Obama gets anybody confirmed before November, it will drive turnout down for his party and up for the GOP.

Since Obama knows exactly what he's doing, he will nominate one or more poor brave souls who will march in to get denied vociferously by a bunch of white male myopic cowards, making headlines which will make anybody to the left of Mitch McConnell feel a compulsion to show up to the polls, out of solidarity, morality, patriotism or spite, it doesn't matter.

Alternatively he does nominate somebody "perfectly acceptable" like Sri, the GOP leadership lets the nominee through because they suddenly remember that one move from judo class, and the Republican nominee easily gets every facet of the conservative base motivated around the horrible stakes of allowing the Democrats to continue to stuff the bench with communists and homosexuals and Jews and so on. Meanwhile the Democratic nominee is left arguing for the vital importance of eventually replacing RBG with another aisle-crossing "moderate" and progressives stay home.

I'm 50/50 between the "Obama will deliberately provoke them to encourage turnout in November" reading - which Scotusblog's Goldstein has taken up in his original pick of Watford and his update this evening to Loretta Lynch - and imagining Obama wanting to cement a "legacy." He'd have to consider the worst case: vacancy unfilled and Republicans win in November and Obama is remembered as letting the slot slip through his fingers by trying to work the political angles or something. Even if the odds were very poor of that happening, the negative consequences would be huge. The ideal then might be to nominate someone who could, with some lucky twist of fate, get the nod from the Senate... but who, if they don't, provokes such frustration that it adds to the Dem win in November and specifically helps unseat a few purple-state Republican Senators.

Seven years ago he'd totally go for an "art of the possible" nominee whose record put them right in the window of acceptability to the pre-Tea Party GOP caucus. Today I think he's much more in the Take This And Fuck Yourselves With It camp

From August to November he's going to be beating the drum for the nominee as much as he possibly can, so the "worst case scenario" you mention is not exactly out of his hands, either. Basically I think the idea that he'll nominate anybody the Republicans could remotely be happy with is out of the question; these dopes have made it clear they would like more rope

I'm 50/50 between the "Obama will deliberately provoke them to encourage turnout in November" reading - which Scotusblog's Goldstein has taken up in his original pick of Watford and his update this evening to Loretta Lynch - and imagining Obama wanting to cement a "legacy."

everything we know about how obama makes decisions and acts on them suggests he will do the latter, no?

No way, Tombot otm

Also latter not really incompatible w the former

It's just a matter of how big you wanna gamble. There is a risk of losing everything: nominee doesn't go through, Republicans somehow win in November and get to appoint this slot and probably a couple more. Of course, even the "safe" nominee might not go through, and, as y'all have observed, the "provocative" nominee may reduce the chance of the Republican win. It's kind of a beautiful conundrum, like you would use this as the setup for a novel or a season of the West Wing or something.

I think it's time for a boring white guy that he trusts. How can the senate oppose a white guy??

Alan grayson for sc!

it's too bad we already got 'the hispanic justice' since otherwise nominating a hispanic person would be a pretty cynical political move

What does anyone know about the Sri guy and his legal predilections? He seems the likely replacement pick, but his paper trail is pretty mysterious.

so in the LMGTFY section I found a long list with references which is basically what most clickbait pushers news sites appear to have used to write their "explainers"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama_Supreme_Court_candidates#Names_mentioned

I'm going with a black woman under 60, like Loretta Lynch or Kamala Harris. Rope, rope, rope.

Although JUSTICE ECHO HAWK would be pretty much impossible to beat in the amazing real names + titles category

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Echo_Hawk

Kamala Harris is about to be a senator from California, and may want to be president at some point, so she's not going to just throw out her political career. Lynch is more of a possibility, but her confirmation took eons.

"it's too bad we already got 'the hispanic justice' since otherwise nominating a hispanic person would be a pretty cynical political move"

guess what you can have more than one hispanic person

yeah I don't think Harris will want this; I mean she might want it but I think she might want senator more.

Obama's Scalia Replacement The Poll