Elena Kagan: Day Two

Josh Marshall Andrew Pincus describes today's politics in fewer than 1,000 very spot-on words. C'mon, people write books about this stuff. But I don't have time to read that much.

The scenes on television and cable yesterday were as civilized, and as choreographed, as the steps in a seventeenth century minuet: the announcement in the East Room...The trench warfare now underway is the laboratory in which lines of attack and defense are tested and refined. The attackers are trying to identify arguments that will "stick"--that are not batted down quickly enough by the nominee's defenders, and therefore begin to migrate into more mainstream media and, ultimately, into the Senate hearing. Think of it as a very specialized form of test marketing...In many ways, Supreme Court confirmations are the ultimate "dog whistle" issue--very important to the base, but virtually ignored by ordinary voters. That is why every Democratic Senator who aspired to be President voted against confirming Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito. And it is why every Republican Senator with the same aspirations for 2012, or later, will almost certainly vote against Elena Kagan.