I currently oppose Kagan's confirmation, How about you?

[usregimechange]

We'll see what I think Monday afternoon.

[sandnsea]

1. How can you support Robin Carnahan

and oppose Elena Kagan.

[usregimechange]

2. A SCOTUS nominee doesn't have to get elected.

and I like her better.

[sandnsea]

15. Not logical

Elena Kagan is a much more reliable liberal than Robin Carnahan. She sounds like Blanche Lincoln half the time.

[usregimechange]

21. How do you figure that?

[PBS Poll-435]

3. At least there is a pathway...

They are called confirmation hearings.

[Nite Owl]

4. Leaning against but

will give it a fair listening then decide.
This article was in another thread tonight:
http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/TPV3/Voices.php/2010/06/22/kaganaccomplice
it needs an explanation.

[usregimechange]

6. That would have offended someone, can't blame her for that

because not offending people is the most important quality a human being can ever possess.

[Unvanguard]

5. I support it, but less so than I did before.

Hard to see what the alternative is, at this point. And so far, while the signs are not great, there is very little definitive that reflects badly on her--and against what evidence there is, you have to weigh the fact that she was appointed by a president whose constitutional values are almost certainly to the left and whose last appointment was excellent.

But I don't feel particularly good about it. I wish Obama had chosen someone else. And if the confirmation hearings go badly enough, well, opposition is not off the table for me anymore.

[usregimechange]

8. I could think of about 15 alternatives off the top of my head.

[Unvanguard]

10. Alternative appointments, maybe (though that list would get a lot narrower.)

But I said "at this point" for a reason: that is to say, I don't think participation by liberal Democrats in the inevitable Republican filibuster will lead to a significantly more positive outcome, and it might lead to the opposite.

[usregimechange]

12. Maybe get us Garland? I don't know, the Right went from Meyers to Alito or was it Roberts

ah, what the difference? And yes I know the Right is nothing like the Left and I am generally glad.

[Unvanguard]

13. But why would Garland be any better than Kagan?

Someone like Diane Wood would be an improvement, but the Democrats are not going to be able to get away with so overtly pushing the nomination process to the left. They need at least one Republican vote, and there are enough socially-conservative Democratic Senators that there might be reason for worry even there. A bipartisan Supreme Court defeat at this stage would upset the process in a way that would deal significant harm to Obama, and he would likely have much less control over the final result as a consequence--and while you might say he deserves it, unfortunately that's likely to mean not that liberals have more control, but rather that Ben Nelson and Olympia Snowe and Scott Brown do.

Miers was something of a different case because she was manifestly unqualified, and attracted criticism from all across the political spectrum for that reason, quite aside from her alleged lack of social-conservative fanaticism. Nobody wanted her on the Court, and rightly so.

[usregimechange]

14. I don't think Collins and others would block a SCOTUS nominee, hasn't been done before

at least not with someone who wasn't a criminal. The Right got Thomas through, how many votes did they have? And I meant the Garland would have been worse, maybe.

[Unvanguard]

16. SCOTUS nominees have been blocked before.

Bork, for instance, who actually lost a straight-up confirmation vote--I think he was the most recent (though far from the first), if you don't count Miers. And, of course, our hypothetical presumes that Kagan will be blocked, too.

Clarence Thomas gave little indication of his judicial views during the confirmation hearing, and in those glorious pre-filibuster days managed to be confirmed 52-48.

[usregimechange]

18. he wasn't filibustered, we could send up Karlan and get 50 almost without a doubt

if there was enough courage in the White House.

[Unvanguard]

19. But Karlan would certainly be filibustered.

It is not a question of courage, it is a matter of recognizing the difference between the Senate in 1991 and the Senate in 2010.

Karlan, probably more so than any candidate to the Supreme Court since Bork, has made her ideological views on controversial constitutional questions very clear.

[usregimechange]

20. Who are the 9 we would lose?

[Unvanguard]

22. We'd have to gain one, and avoid losing any.

And because Karlan is on the record as a supporter of same-sex marriage, abortion rights, affirmative action (she is particularly strong on this point), and so forth, those Democratic Senators who are on the right of the party on those issues will be in a difficult spot. A vote for Karlan will be portrayed as quite literally a vote for liberal judicial activism, and the record will be there to make the connection definitive.

[bluestateguy]

7. Undecided

If Jeff Sessions and the other Southern Republicans become very shrill in their opposition, however, I will likely support her.

Whatever they are for, I am against and vice versa.

[usregimechange]

9. Well, that is as good a compass as any

[SidDithers]

11. Why can't we see what you think now?...nt

Sid

[amandabeech]

17. I think that the President could have done much better.

This lawyer's record shows that she's too quick for my tastes to abandon civil liberties to fight "terror."

I haven't seen anything where she's actually asking about what fighting "terror" means, and whether it is a 1984-like war that never ends.

And if the war has no ending, does that mean kissing the Bill of Rights good-bye until we get someone in the White House who will say, "Get the h**l out of there"?

Who on the Judiciary Committee is really going to ask the tough ones about terra, terra, terra?

[BzaDem]

23. Most of what I have seen so far has made me generally supportive of the nomination.

There are a few issues I'm concerned about, but on the vast majority of the issues I haven't seen anything that makes me think she would be largely different from Breyer/Ginsberg/Sotomayor.

[gleaner]

24. I oppose her confirmation. n/t