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Politics

"The reality is that Democrats, including liberals, will accept and push whomever Obama picks." 

Damon Root | 5.10.2010 10:29 AM

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That's liberal University of California legal scholar Erwin Chemerinsky, explaining to the Daily Caller that President Barack Obama's failure to nominate a "Scalia of the left" to the Supreme Court won't be a deal breaker for the president's liberal base. Liberal Salon blogger and outspoken Elena Kagan opponent Glenn Greenwald agrees, though he's none too happy with the implications of this approach:

Yesterday on Twitter, Matt Yglesias supplied the rationale for this mentality:  "Argument will be simple: Clinton & Obama like and trust [Kagan], and most liberals (myself included) like and trust Clinton & Obama."

Just think about what that means.  If the choice is Kagan, you'll have huge numbers of Democrats and progressives running around saying, in essence:  "I have no idea what Kagan thinks or believes about virtually anything, and it's quite possible she'll move the Court to the Right, but I support her nomination and think Obama made a great choice."  In other words, according to Chemerinksy and Yglesias, progressives will view Obama's choice as a good one by virtue of the fact that it's Obama choice.  Isn't that a pure embodiment of mindless tribalism and authoritarianism?

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NEXT: Greece At Debt's Door

Damon Root is a senior editor at Reason and the author of A Glorious Liberty: Frederick Douglass and the Fight for an Antislavery Constitution (Potomac Books).

PoliticsSupreme Court
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