Some factoids about the Senate confirmation of Sonia Sotomayor, who was promoted to the U.S. Supreme Court this afternoon by a vote of 68 to 31:
1. When compared to all the confirmation votes since World War II, Sotomayor is the seventh most contentious nominee. The six who have received more than 31 No votes are Robert Bork (58), Clement Haynsworth (55), G. Harrold Carswell (51), Clarence Thomas (48), Samuel Alito (42), and William Rehnquist (33, when he was already on the bench but tapped for the chief justice job). And since those six were all nominated by Republican presidents, Sotomayor now ranks as the most contentious Democratic nominee of the postwar era.
2. How many Republicans had to support Sotomayor in order for us to view her confirmation as "bipartisan?" Nine of the 40 Republican senators - 22 percent of the minority - crossed over to vote Yes. Given the temper of the times, that seems like a sizeable group of defectors, but this can be spun the other way. Three Republicans with big Hispanic constituencies (John McCain, John Cornyn, Kay Bailey Hutchinson) nevertheless voted No. Two Republicans who in the past had always supported Democratic nominees (Charles Grassley, Orrin Hatch) this time voted No. And four of the nine Republican Yes votes were cast by lame-duckers (Mel Martinez, Judd Gregg, George Voinovich, Kit Bond) who don't have to worry about ticking off the right-wing base back home because they're not running for re-election anyway.
3. Two of those imminent Republican retirees, Voinovich and Bond, skewered President Obama quite effectively in their Senate floor speeches. They pointed out that Obama, as a senator, had opposed both Alito and John Roberts on ideological grounds - whereas they were voting to confirm Sotomayor on the basis of her professional qualifications, regardless of how they felt about her ideology. As Bond put it yesterday, "I could easily say, as Senator Obama said, that I disagree with a nominee's judicial approach. and that allows me to oppose the nominee of a different party. Luckily for President Obama, I do not agree with Senator Obama."
4. The National Rifle Association got its clock cleaned, a relatively rare event. The group, which opposed Sotomayor on Second Amendment grounds, decided to make this confirmation vote a litmus test of loyalty. But 12 senators with "A" ratings from the NRA - four Republicans and eight Democrats (including Pennsylvania's Casey-Specter tandem) - nevertheless voted to confirm.
5. The Sotomayor tally was a long way from 1994, when Democratic nominee Ruth Bader Ginsburg was confirmed by a margin of 96 to 3. Today's 31 No votes might well prove to be the foundation for greater GOP opposition when the next Obama nominee comes along. If Obama's political fortunes decline further, if his party loses Senate seats in 2010, and if the next high court candidate is tapped to replace a conservative...well, to quote Bette Davis in All About Eve, "Fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy night."
This really isn't terribly important. Your trading apples for apples here. The makeup of the court does not change. The Republicans put up a token challenge. It was nothing like what would have been if Sotomayor was replacing Scalia or Thomas. That would have been a real war.— jmc
Sorry, from the prior blog:) The bottom line is the elderly better be worried, very worried when a govt. bureaucrat gets to decide, well "he is 50 so he gets the expensive cancer treatment, but she is 70 so pain meds and counseling is all she is worth"! Or he is 80 so he gets no hip replacement surgery, but she is 52 so she does. That is what 'efficiencies' are:) That is a very real possibility and I know the other side will say insurance companies do that now, but of the bad stories I have heard of, once the bad publicity kicks in the insurance companies cave most of the time! Ever hear of the govt. caring about its image or bad publicity, please! We need to think long and hard about what we are willing to give up as individuals to cover that last 17% of the country w/out health insurance! I say we could probably buy them all catastrophic care insurance for a fraction of what the total cost of this thing finally will end up being!— NEPhilly- Also from the prior blog...What else that is not being said is that group plans, which most employer based plans are, cannot by law deny care or coverage for pre-existing conditions. I changed jobs seven months into one of my wife's pregnancies and had no trouble having her delivery etc covered and paid for by my new employer's health care plan. So, group plans (even I believe small employer group plans) cannot deny coverage. hejira...I too have worked in healthcare and the only type of plan which I saw deny treatment was an HMO Managed Care plan. Just the term Managed Care implies someone other than your doctor will be deciding on your treatments. However, plans which are not "Managed Care" plans have no such overseer, or gate keeper. Is the government option being considered a managed care plan? I believe it is. So you find it okay to trade in one type of plan that denies care for another type of plan that might deny care? Just for the record....contrary to what JourneyHome wrote, in the 1990's it was not a Democrat Congress which produced a balanced budget and a surplus. Those budgets were written by the Newt Gingrich led Republican Congress. As for Sotomayor....zzzzzzzzzzz— tom - wilmington, de
- "the elderly better be worried, very worried when a govt. bureaucrat gets to decide, well........... 'she is 70 so pain meds and counseling is all she is worth' or 'he is 80 so he gets no hip replacement surgery.'" Ummmmmmmm - if your are 70 or 80, your healthcare is already being decided by the govt bureaucrats running Medicare........... seems to me that the "govt bureaucrat" warning for the elderly is about 44 years too late. Or had Medicare been killing-off the elderly since it was created in 1965 and noone happened to notice until now?— the stupid does burn
- Way to stimulate the economy...from the Washington Times about the grants Obama announced yesterday..."Three grants went to General Motors Corp., one for $105.9 million to help produce high-volume battery packs for the GM Volt automobile. But cells for the packs will be built in South Korea and by "other cell providers to be named." The largest single grant, for $299.2 million, went to Johnson Controls Inc. for the production of nickel-cobalt-metal battery cells and packs at plants it plans to build in Holland, Mich., and Lebanon, Ore. Johnson has partnered with Saft Advanced Power Solutions LLC, a French company, to develop the batteries. Saft, which makes its batteries in France, also won a separate $95.5 million grant." Yep, that money for production in South Korea and France will surely create and save thousands of jobs here in the USA.— tom - wilmington, de
- the, not a bad point! Just spouting off the top of my head:)— NEPhilly
- Medicare is drowning in high costs as well, so if the plan is to do to the rest of the insurance industry what medicare is doing to senior healthcare, then that may not be the best way to go!— NEPhilly
- smike, here is the rest of your list! ***Fact No. 8: Americans are more satisfied with the care they receive than Canadians. When asked about their own health care instead of the "health care system," more than half of Americans (51.3 percent) are very satisfied with their health care services, compared to only 41.5 percent of Canadians; a lower proportion of Americans are dissatisfied (6.8 percent) than Canadians (8.5 percent).[10]***— NEPhilly
- Fact No. 9: Americans have much better access to important new technologies like medical imaging than patients in Canada or the U.K. Maligned as a waste by economists and policymakers naïve to actual medical practice, an overwhelming majority of leading American physicians identified computerized tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) as the most important medical innovations for improving patient care during the previous decade.[11] [See the table.] The United States has 34 CT scanners per million Americans, compared to 12 in Canada and eight in Britain. The United States has nearly 27 MRI machines per million compared to about 6 per million in Canada and Britain.[12]— NEPhilly
- Fact No. 10: Americans are responsible for the vast majority of all health care innovations.[13] The top five U.S. hospitals conduct more clinical trials than all the hospitals in any other single developed country.[14] Since the mid-1970s, the Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology has gone to American residents more often than recipients from all other countries combined.[15] In only five of the past 34 years did a scientist living in America not win or share in the prize. Most important recent medical innovations were developed in the United States.[16] [See the table.]— NEPhilly
- And 525,000 more unemployment claims were filed. Only a media in the tank for Obama could possibly spin this as a positive. I think the line was " it was lower than expected ". On the front page of the life section in the USA Today is a headline "Staying Positive in Negative Territory, happiness can be found amid the wreckage" . The cover story was continued on page two where the subheadline read "Less Money can make life simpler, easier to enjoy ". To me these headlines are astonishing considering unemployment is approaching 10% but when unemployment was 4.9% under Bush we were told that people just dropped out of the workforce all together or settled for a job flipping hamburgers. And in case you care I really couldn't give a hoot that Sotomayer will be confirmed.
- NE Philly- I wasn't on here much the last two days. I certainly didn't hear much grumbling from the left on the healthcare facts. Those darn facts can be awfully pesky to the liberal agenda. I also heard that on the white house website you can report your neighbor or the bothersome blogger to the President if any rhetoric regarding healthcare is " fishy ". Kinda sounds like the type of thing you would expect under Chavez or Castro. But rest assured. I went on the site and couldn't find it. So maybe just a rumor or maybe they took it down already.
- @NEPhilly and swedesboromike - OK. Let's take those top 10 facts at face value. (I'm not willing to do the refutation research sully64 might be.) How does the USA stay on the cutting edge of healthcare innovation, offer top quality service and provide it for all her citizens at an affordable cost? No, healthcare isn't a constitutional right, but I believe most fellow Americans take it to be a moral obligation. I'm sure it will be MORE difficult if we continue to protect the status quo that allows a very few to skim the cream so a great many can suffer. Are you guys willing to admit that skyrocketing healthcare costs are hammering most middle class families' ability to make ends meet? If so, then what do we do about it (besides shout down the ideas of the people who are trying to do something about it)? If you're not willing to admit healthcare costs and how they're administered is fubar, then I guess there's no arena for debate.
As for Sotomayor, I probably shouldn't confess this, but I'd be hard pressed to name all 8 justices without aid from Google.
— Phrossty - Very interesting blog post--I appreciate the background/perspective you provide on this issue. In the larger scheme of things, as you have pointed out, Sotomayor's appointment was a done deal from the beginning, and by casting a "no" vote, Republicans have tried to appeal to their base but are losing Hispanic support, the same Hispanic support which is crucial to their future. An interesting example of letting the past overcome the future.— Nalaka
Comment removed.
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