Republicans and Sotomayor

Yesterday's historic swearing-in of Judge Sonya Sotomayor as Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court was marred by the politics of the Republican party. I only hope that it comes back to haunt them at the polls. With Hispanics as the largest growing segment of the voting population, Republicans beware: it isn't just ethnic and racial politics either. It's also the disruptive nature of their opposition to health care reform, economic policies, and the reality of climate change.

According to Taegan Goddard's Political Wire, hosted by CQ Politics, those Republican senators who voted for Sotomayor's confirmation were not themselves up for reelection. All twelve of the Republican senators who are up for reelection next year voted against Sotomayor. That could easily go either way: will Hispanic voters in their states have longer memories?

However, according to Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com, the nea votes by Republicans were really about fear of getting a negative score from the National Rifle Association. Of the seven Senators likely to retire between now and 2010, four voted for Sotomayor, including Mel Martinez, Senator from Florida, who then quickly annouced his early retirement. Supposedly they didn't need to care about Hispanic voters (except for Florida, the other nine Senators who voted for Sotomayor come from states with tiny Latino voters), and defied the NRA.

With the GOP overtaken by nuts and extremists, will the Democrats be able to get anything done, or will they, too, sabotage an energetic president who wants to change the culture of Washington?

The Bubble is Burst

All of the hysteria about Sarah Palin appears to have been diffused by some fact checking. I somehow feel that the reason why McCain's numbers went down this week is not the result of good journalism, but the fact that The Daily Show with Jon Stewart returned to the air. Let's face it: the "blink" comparison between Sarah Palin's interview with Charles Gibson and all of the George W. videos of him saying "blink" pretty much sent the message that the same handlers are handling two inexperienced and incompetent candidates. The difference, of course, is that George got elected, and we have the opportunity to prevent Palin from doing damage outside of Anchorage.

A great place to watch the figures on the upcoming election is a site called fivethirtyeight.com. Nate Silver is the founder, and he appeared on WNYC's On the Media on September 5, 2008. The transcript is fascinating. He uses a different algorithim to predict election results, and he has been better at it than many other pollsters. Take a look at his website and notice that once again Obama is ahead. The popular vote is scarily close. Now Nate is pushing numbers to see if a tie is feasible.

If there is a tie, the election gets thrown into the House of Representatives after a 41 day cooling off period where people try to convince the electors of the Electoral College to switch their votes. Imagine what that would be like! Then each state, no matter its size, gets one vote. The state representatives vote for the one vote. A majority of states votes in the next president. No one has to pay any attention to the popular vote at that point.

It's only happened once: 1824. It could be just the straw that breaks any remaining trust in the system after 2000 and 2004. Read this NPR article from 2004 for details.