Reality check from E. J. Dionne: Sotomayor as the Remedy for Roberts

[Richardo]

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/outlook/6444273.html

Dionne makes some excellent points here:

- Sotomayor's record is centrist and even pragmatic.
- Conservatives should realize that Sotomayor is the most conservative nominee Obama will ever offer them.
- Liberals likewise should not expect her to be 'one of our own' - she's a moderate.
- Obama picked her as a counter-balance to Chief Justice Roberts

To me, the salient points (in four paragraphs) are:

In this battle, it’s important to separate Obama’s reasons for choosing Sotomayor from her actual record. He was drawn to her not simply because the politics of naming the first Latina justice were irresistible, but also because he saw her as the precise opposite of Chief Justice John Roberts.

In his September 2005 speech explaining his vote against Roberts, Obama argued that 95 percent of court cases are easily settled on the basis of the law and precedent. But in “those 5 percent of hard cases,” Obama said, the “legal process alone will not lead you to a rule of decision” and “the critical ingredient is supplied by what is in the judge’s heart.”

<snip>

Obama believes Roberts’ subsequent behavior on the court has justified his initial suspicions. He hopes that Sotomayor will be the anti-Roberts, a person whose experience growing up in the projects of the South Bronx will allow her to see life and the quest for justice in a way Roberts never will.

<snip>

<discussion of Sotomayor's judicial record>

<snip>

Liberals should not take the bait of the right-wingers by allowing the debate over Sotomayor to be premised on the idea that she is a bold ideological choice. She’s not. But if conservatives succeed in painting this moderate as a radical, they will skew future arguments over the court. In fact, liberals should press Sotomayor on her more conservative decisions on business issues.

[DJ13]

1. If Roberts is a right winger

How can a "moderate" counter balance that?

[Richardo]

4. By voting the opposite way he does?

The choices in any decision are 'Yea' or 'Nay'.

Roberts can't vote 'Extremely Nay'. :shrug:

[DJ13]

7. You're forgetting that in addition to yea or nay they issue detailed opinions

Many times the written opinions are as important as the actual vote.

No moderate's written opinion will act as a counter balance to a right winger.

[Richardo]

9. If the right winger is writing a dissent the extremeness is moot.

[peacetalksforall]

12. Absolutely - written as important as the one word deciders. The written is

borrowed for ongoing interpretations and new laws. I agree that her writings would be an improvement. Roberts= predictably slanted. So that he can get his bonus from the Bilderberg(ers), Councils, all the other barons.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

2. How is a "moderate" a counter-balance to Roberts?

?

[Richardo]

6. See my post #4 above

[Political Heretic]

3. Liberals likewise should not expect her to be 'one of our own' - then why should I support her?

Then why should I support her nomination?

The interpretation of the Constitution isn't something you can play politics with. It's not "Okay" to nominate a so-called "moderate" or "the most conservative" appointment Obama will ever make.

If there's anyplace were a conciliatory, hat-in-hand appease-the-other-side action isn't acceptable, its when making a lifetime appointment to the highest court in the land.

[Richardo]

8. As Tom Tomorrow says:

We voted for a centrist technocrat, who campaigned as a centrist technocrat, and who promised to govern as a centrist technocrat — and now the true believers are shocked to find a centrist technocrat in the Oval Office.

Ergo, you're not likely to see anything that will pass a progressive purity test from Obama. That would include Supreme Court Justices.

And if you ever thought you were getting a dyed-in-the-wool progressive in the White House, you were apparently not listening to his actual words during the entire campaign.

[Political Heretic]

13. Does that some how mean I should stop advocating for what I believe to be right?

[Richardo]

14. Of course not.

It just means you shouldn't be surprised that you're not getting what you want from him.

[Political Heretic]

15. I'm suprised at the *extremity* of my disagreement. And I certainly should be surprised by that.

I knew how Obama campaigned, and I was prepared to have disagreements. For example it was made clear from the beginning that Obama believed in the ideology of the so-called "war on terror" and claimed that we only "took our eye off the ball" in Iraq and needed to wind down operations in Iraq only so we could refocus our military campaign in Afghanistan.

I knew that I completely disagreed with that idea. There were other things too. I listened pretty carefully in the campaign. But in the end I believed and hoped that the positives the administration would implement would outweight the negatives.

What is surprising me now is not that I have disagreements, is that I have far more disagreements than I have agreements, and that I find this administration doing things that even I never thought they would do and that Obama certainly didn't talk about during the campaign.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=5696719
Single Payer is left off the table. The administration EPA is tossing out ridiculous environment screwing policy. We are escalating wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan and leaving residual bases and forces in Iraq. We're making Bush-era legal arguments against government transparency, and against civil liberties, We're "moving forward" on the biggest federal crime scandal in the history of our government, proving that there is no accountability and no meaning to the concept of "law" when you have enough power.

The Wall Street bailout is a disgrace to working America, designed to reinflate a false bubble for rich people without fixing the fundamental flaws and excesses that will ultimately bring our economy to complete collapse (you can't ask for a bigger warning sign than what we've just experienced, and instead of really doing something about it, we've punted the problem to our children while propping up the very people who are doing the most damage). There is silence on EFCA and push make concessions to Business. Don't Ask Don't Tell is off the Table. So far the highlight of educational policy reform is the failed GOP idea of so-called "merit" pay.

It's not that positive things haven't happened. It's that the sheer contrast between the scale of the positive things that have happened, vs. the extensive number of major issues on which the exact opposite of anything I could support has happened is simply shocking. It's that every morning I get headlines and find more bad news about something this administration is doing that I completely oppose.

[digidigido]

16. I understand how you feel, the Bush cabal pushed things to the extreme right

Obama is a centrist, he also governs with the "just consent of the governed" to that end
he is leading the country back to the center. I suspect the country, or large portions of it
are more to the left then he is, so it will be interesting to see how things play out. But he
is an intelligent centrist democrat who understands politics. If he can deliver health care
with a single payer option in the package, that's about as much as progressives can hope
for in the short term. If he delivers that, he's a success, then we push for the rest. If he
doesn't, we push harder.

[Jackpine Radical]

5. I just saw a NewsMax thing by Toesucker Morris

who portrayed Sotomayor as "the most liberal candidate ever nominated to the SC" or some such. Too bad I deleted it before seeing this thread. To call Morris delusional would be to provide him with an unwarranted excuse. He's a deliberate liar, part or the right-wing character assassination team, who think pinning the term "liberal" on somebody is equivalent to signing their political death warrant.

It is quite amusing, though, to see the right wing self-destruct. They have now cost themselves at least 50% of whatever Latino vote they might ever have gotten. Only a few hord-core mobbed-up Batististas in Florida now remain loyal to the party.

[madrchsod]

10. she`ll make roberts look like a first year law student

[jaysunb]

11. Roberts is a racist...

Obama, and the rest of us knew that when he was appointed.

In his September 2005 speech explaining his vote against Roberts, Obama argued that 95 percent of court cases are easily settled on the basis of the law and precedent. But in “those 5 percent of hard cases,” Obama said, the “legal process alone will not lead you to a rule of decision” and “the critical ingredient is supplied by what is in the judge’s heart.”

And that is where Obama found Roberts wanting. The young senator insisted that Roberts “far more often used his formidable skills on behalf of the strong in opposition to the weak” and “seemed to have consistently sided with those who were dismissive of efforts to eradicate the remnants of racial discrimination in our political process.”