The Democrats' Judicial Problem

The New York Times confirmed Justice Alito this morning on its front page, quoting various Democrats as running up the white flag in the face of the Bush administration judicial juggernaut.

According to Adam Nagourney, Richard Stevenson and Neil Lewis:

In interviews, Democrats said the lesson of the Alito hearings was that this White House could put on the bench almost any qualified candidate, even one whom Democrats consider to be ideologically out of step with the country.

That conclusion amounts to a repudiation of a central part of a strategy Senate Democrats settled on years ago in a private retreat where they discussed how to fight a Bush White House effort to recast the judiciary: to argue against otherwise qualified candidates by saying they would take the courts too far to the right.

Even though Democrats thought from the beginning that they had little hope of defeating the nomination, they were dismayed that a nominee with such clear conservative views -- in particular a written record of opposition to abortion rights -- appeared to be stirring little opposition.

Republicans say that Mr. Bush, in making conservative judicial choices, has been doing precisely what he said he would do in both of his presidential campaigns. Indeed, they say, his re-election, and the election of a Republican Congress, meant that the choices reflected the views of much of the American public.

That last is the key -- not in the sense the GOP spinners mean it, but in the why-the-Democrats-have-gotten-spanked sense. Democrats, as members of the reality-based community, have assumed that they can rely on a nominee's (presidential or judicial, take your pick) record to persuade the public that s/he is an extremist. The GOP spinners then talk a good game about how the nominee is mainstream or open-minded, playing the media con where they deny, deny, deny -- regardless of the facts, counting on the mainstream media's need to be fair-and-balanced to wash it all out.

So the Democrats are slow. They were slow to learn in actual elections that endless recitation of facts -- or as GOPers might call them, "facts" -- is not a winning strategy when the other side is making slicker appeals to the heart, especially when there are no hard facts. And then they were slow to realize that things would be any different with regards to the judiciary, where the electorate is a mere 100 people.

Oh well, it not only pays to have a plan, it pays even more to have a good one.