Today’s New York Times has an interesting article on the politics of filling the anticipated Stevens vacancy. It identifies three frontrunners: in the order in which it lists them, Solicitor General Elena Kagan, Seventh Circuit judge Diane Wood, and D.C. Circuit judge Merrick Garland.

The article spurs these thoughts on my part:

1. The idea on the part of some on the Left that enactment of Obamacare gives President Obama “momentum” to select an aggressive liberal seems to me misguided. I doubt that there are many Democratic politicians up for re-election this November who are eager to defend yet another of Obama’s excesses. It’s telling that the article suggests that even Senator Schumer wants to avoid conflict.

2. The article states the “front-runner with the most support among liberals would be Judge Wood, who has opposed some abortion restrictions.” The phrase I’ve italicized is accurate but dramatically understated. As I wrote last year in my summary of Wood’s terrible record:

No judge whom I’m aware of is more extreme than Wood on abortion. Her defiance of the Supreme Court’s mandate in NOW v. Scheidler (and her incurring successive 8-1 and 8-0 reversals by the Court) ought alone to be disqualifying. In addition, Wood has (in dissent) voted to strike down state laws banning partial-birth abortion and (again in dissent) voted to strike down an Indiana informed-consent law that was in all material respects identical to the law upheld by the Supreme Court in Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

(See this post of mine for my discussion of Kagan’s problems with the Left.)

3. The article states that “Judge Garland might be the safest choice,” with Kagan somewhere between Garland and Wood on the spectrum. I think that it’s right to distinguish Garland from Kagan on this score (for the reasons I’ve spelled out).

4. The article identifies senators Dick Durbin and Claire McCaskill as possible candidates. I find it difficult to take either seriously. In particular, I doubt very much that the nomination of a hard-edged political partisan like Durbin would be received well by the public (or by the justices). Also, Durbin is 65.

5. The article paraphrases SCOTUSblog’s Tom Goldstein as saying that the White House “want[s] to duplicate the success of the Sotomayor confirmation.” What success was that? The disgust and demoralization that Sotomayor’s confirmation testimony engendered on the Left? Her incredibly deceptive testimony about her support for freewheeling resort to foreign and international legal materials? Her emphatic repudiation of Obama’s own empathy standard? Her overall performance that was so feeble that 31 Republicans saw no serious political risk in voting against the first (not-so-wise) Latina nominee? Yes, of course, Sotomayor got confirmed, but with the huge Democratic margin in the Senate, that could hardly be counted as a grand achievement.