Chris Cillizza at the Washington Post notes what's most important about today's Supreme Court nomination:
Republican strategists have fretted openly that if their party can't find a way to make Hispanics a swing group electorally -- as President George W. Bush did in 2004 when he won 44 percent of the Latino vote -- they may find themselves in a permanent minority status. Bridging that gap between the GOP and the Hispanic community just got a lot more difficult.It's a brilliant move by the Obama people. A very strategic, calculated move. A woman and, more importantly, a Latina.
Now let's see how well the Obama people, notoriously less than interested in working with others to achieve their goals, run this campaign. The stimulus battle was a disaster until Obama snatched victory from the jaws of the defeat - up until things went horribly wrong, there wasn't much interest in having "outsiders" help (for example, the Obama team never asked the blogs to help at all, even when things did go wrong). Gitmo is another example. Obama makes a grand gesture, about closing Gitmo, but no one does the leg work to turn the President's policy into law, so the Senate decimates Obama's proposal. Will the same thing that happened during the campaign happen during this nomination battle? Namely, that the Obama people, far too often, like to go it alone, thinking they don't need friends and allies to achieve their goals.
Time will tell.
