Elections have consequences, right?
Well, so far, progressives have gotten the short end of the stick on far too many things over the past year+. Whether it was a lack of a public option, or coddling of Wall Street or being called "fucking retarted" by the White House Chief of Staff or being sold out by Stupak, Nelson and a large number of others in Congress when it comes to basic planks of the Democratic Party platform, or a whole slew of other issues – fact is, progressives have been given a giant lump of coal as opposed to so many others who had less of an impact on electing President Obama and the increased Democratic Party majorities in 2006 and 2008.
And as we saw with Bush’s nominations of Roberts and Alito – two hardcore rightists who have helped the Supreme Court become more radicalized – these are incredibly important positions in so many areas. Back in May 2009, I wrote a similar-themed diary about the importance of a hardcore liberal on the Supreme Court. Back then, the "conventional wisdom" was that since it was Justice Souter retiring, he was a so-called moderate and therefore it would only be right to nominate a moderate.
Never mind that the aforementioned right wing extremist Alito replaced a relatively moderate Sandra Day O’Conner, and that Republicans have been packing lower courts with similar extremists at all levels for years.
Back when it was Alito and Roberts (and other lower court nominees), the Republicans threw hissy fit after hissy fit about "upperdown votes" on Judicial nominees. They threatened to eliminate the filibuster (which by the way, they have used an unprecedented number of times since becoming the minority party) if Democrats didn’t cave on the most extremist of nominees.
But another funny thing happened recently - certain Democratic Senators threatened to end the filibuster due to the absolute abuse by Republican Senators since 2007. And here, we have more than one precedent – a hardcore extremist nominated to replace a relatively moderately right wing Justice, Republican hissy fits to not filibuster Judicial nominees AND Democratic Senators recently discussing the abolishment of the filibuster as well.
Sorry, but progressives are owed big time for electing a Democratic majority in both houses of Congress and sweeping Obama into the White House. After being brushed aside, and certainly after seeing the damage that extremists on the Supreme Court have done, another "well qualified nominee" who doesn’t further progressive causes is completely unacceptable and should be viewed as nothing short of giving the finger to progressives.
On the flip side, it is a GREAT way to use political capital in a way to motivate a base that is becoming more apathetic as each blow-off occurs.
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Update [2010-4-10 16:16:12 by clammyc]: I originally had the current title as my original but it got cut off so I shortened it to "A non-liberal..." I just changed it back a few minutes ago....