John Paul Stevens to Retire

Bart Stupak’s retirement may be a blessed thing for conservatives, but the retirement of John Paul Stevens is going to have the most interesting repercussions. The ninety year old justice’s announcement put Barack Obama and the democrats in an incredibly difficult position durig an election year.

Stevens will retire at the end of the current supreme court session in June. Obama will have to name a replacement immediately thereafter because the new session will begin in October. There has to be time for confirmation hearings, which may drag on for weeks if the nominee is a controversial one, and give him or her time to settle into the role post-confirmation.

What does Obama do? Stevens was the most reliably progressive, Great Society type on the Court. Progressives are going to demand a worthy successor. But vulnerable democrats are wary of supporting such a nominee within the current climate. So Obama has a choice: go for broke and satisfy ideologues and probably himself or pick a stealth candidate Senate Democrats can safely support.

If he does the former, you can expect a far left nominee who has a paper trail of advocating every wild, out of the mainstream progressive position imaginable from slavery reparations to installing drive up windows at abortion clinics and any oppression, real or mostly imagined, in between. Republicans will drag every bit of the record out as long as possible, perhaps even filibuster. What will Democrats like Arlen Specter and Blanche Lincoln, both at risk of alienating moderate constituents, do?

If Obama goes the safer route and choose a safer candidate, he is going to alienate ideologues even if a safe progressive will still vote to uphold Roe and other sacred cows of the left.

My guess is obama will go for the progressive replacement anyway. Hewill argue the ideological balance of the Court must be maintained. Besides, I do ot think he cares much about the electoral difficulties his agenda causes for his fellow Democrats. So I think you can expect a long, hot summer.