The nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court is only 12 hours old and I’m already sick of it. Conservatives, who seem constitutionally incapable of viewing any non-white nominee as anything other than identity politics run wild, have already decided she’s just a crass affirmative action hire. 
Out of a decade-long appelate court career, the only opinion of hers they seem to have heard of, or care about, is Ricci. And unlike all the middle class white guys on the court, who are apparently paragons of race-blind rationality, they’re convinced that she’s just naturally going to be incapable of judging any case before her as anything other than a woman and a Hispanic.
Not that it matters. We all know how this is going to play out. First, everyone is going to start looking for some dark secret in her background that will derail her nomination. That will probably fail. Then she’ll testify before the Senate, and everyone will ask what she thinks of Roe and Casey and Kelo. She’ll dutifully claim that she’s never even heard of these cases, and on the off chance that any of them ring a bell, she’ll sing the usual song about how it would be improper to say anything about any matter that might come before the court in the future. Which is everything. After a few weeks of this, all the Democrats and maybe a dozen or so Republicans will vote to confirm her and she’ll join the court in time for the fall term.
It’s all so tedious. So instead of going though with it, why don’t we just pretend we did all this, confirm her tomorrow, and then get back to something important, like fighting a couple of wars, trying to rescue the world economy, creating a national healthcare plan, and stopping global warming?
We have a new comment system! We are now using Coral, from Vox Media, for comments on all new articles. We'd love your feedback.