Let’s start of our analysis of the Sotomayer nomination by all heaving a sigh of sympathy for Sonia. She is about to have her entire life subjected to the most vicious political and personal attack machine ever created. No stops of the Mighty Wurlitzer will be left unpulled, no rocks left unturned, no dirt will be undug, no depths will be left unplumbed and no rumor….no matter how unfounded, will be left unscreamed in 100 point type.
Heck, we may even hear something about her actual legal qualifications….though I doubt it.
The RW will, I predict, reach a new acme of acrimony and angst over Sonia Sotomayer.
Why? Because she doesn’t count. She is not real. She doesn’t actually even exist….to them. To them, her feelings don’t count, her humanity doesnt count her record, intellect, and fitness to be on the SCOTUS certainly doesn’t count. Previously observed protocols standards and political rules of engagement don;t count. Only one thing counts.
She is other.
So all bets are off.
Things that would NEVER be said about a man will be said of her, regardless of that man’s qualifications. Things that would never be said about a white person will be said about her, regardless of that man’s ideology or “temperament.”
Sonia Sotomayer the person just disappeared. She is about to be reduced to caricature. And as always with the RW the facts will have no bearing on the nature of the character, No facts but two that is, she is not male and she is not white. Add in the fact that she is from a lower class economic background and all bets are off.
The RW is, by their rules, under no obligation to treat her as a human being.
And they won’t.
She is other. Therefore she is not entitled to the respect or consideration that entities that they are able to identify as members of the human race….white males, or as they have recently been dragged kicking and screaming to accept as human….non-white males, or white females. Sonia Sotomayer might as well be from another galaxy, or a non-carbon based life form.
It does not matter what she believes, how she would rule, or what she would bring to the Supreme Court, they will be unable to accept these two and a half strikes against her.
Turkana has a good analysis of reality here. But reality, as we well know, will have nothing to do with how the RW reacts.
Which brings us to the strategic question in the title. Personally I love this pick on every level. But strategically, Obama may as well have nominated Eugene Debs. The level of opposition and opprobrium would be the same. At least he was a white male.
Obama just picked a fight with the absolute worst element of the RW, the bigots and misogynists. (YAY!) He just walked up to Rush Limbaugh and Jeff Sessions and slapped them in the face with a gauntlet. Filled with rolls of quarters.
If it was his intention to make his first of his (we hope) many SCOTUS picks a quiet one, he failed. If it was his intentions to make a pick that would smoke out the racists, sexists, classists and rabid dogs of the RW in the media and in the Senate…..he has succeeded.
You did good Barack! especially as precedent for future SCOTUS fights, you are exposing their bigotry and lack of substance early and starkly.
With one HUGE caveat.
If you were going to pick a fight, you might as well have appointed a goddam LIBERAL, dammit.
