SCOTUS Appointment Prediction

[MineralMan]

Whoever is the appointee, there will be outrage, both from the right and right here on DU, too. There is no potential appointee who will not be roundly reviled from both edges of the political spectrum.

That's part of my prediction. The second part is that whoever is appointed will be confirmed and will then surprise people further when decisions are rendered. Thus has it always been.

[HereSince1628]

1. I agree with your prediction but not your implication

DU isn't really out on the left edge. There are conservative dems here, there are New Dems (DLCers) here, there are progressives (surely on the left but most centered and on the right of the late Paul Wellstone, there are also some honest to goodness leftists out on the left that are anti-capitalism and others supporting Hugo Chavez

But as a whole the population of DU isn't the extreme left. DU is on average left of what the media and the republicants are calling centrist/moderate, but then, they are lying about where moderate is placed and they are entirely lying about the center being the center of a Bell-shaped distribution. The politics of this country have become increasingly bimodal.

[MineralMan]

2. The arguments against whomever is appointed will come from

the leftmost DUers, though. I was not implying that DU was generally far to the left. I understand that it is a cross-section. As for myself, I'm philosophically a pure socialist.

[scubadude]

3. Here's my quick take.

For certain whoever he picks will not be a hard core Liberal. Obama often uses the Republican re-defined center as his guide. If he capitulates to the Republicans as he tends to do, the pick may be near or slightly to the right of the Republican re-defined center position.

One given is that whoever is picked, he or she will be demonized by the Republicans. That is the only way they can freeze in the rightward trend they have spent billions of dollars and much effort to create in the post Nixon era. Every move by the Dems must be labeled "Liberal" in some way. After all, due to the Republicans efforts we all know what "Liberal" means, anyone on or to the left of where the center right was 40 years ago...

Scuba