Tapped’s Tim Fernholz argues (correctly, I think) that the GOP is in a difficult position with regards to its efforts to oppose Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court:
No doubt that factor crossed the mind of the president’s political advisers, given that the share of Latino voters is one of the fastest growing in the United States. Steve Cobble and Jose Velazquez argue that they provided the decisive margin of victory for Obama in 2008, and keeping those voters energized and engaged is a key priority for the president going into 2010 and 2012, especially with the difficulty of pulling of comprehensive immigration reform, a top issue among Latino voters.
Just to be clear, I’m not suggesting this is a pick made for that reason alone or even at all — Sotomayor is obviously well qualified for the position, but everything the president does has political ramifications and it’s important to understand them. In fact, the logic of the pick may preclude a difficult confirmation fight if Republicans decide this is not only a battle they can’t win, but that if they do succeed in blocking Sotomayor they will further alienate a constituency that is already indifferent to the Republican brand.
As far as I know, there hasn’t been any systematic study of Supreme Court nominations and their impact on the voting patterns of a particular demographic. That said, I don’t think Fernholz is wrong in drawing the conclusion that he does; political scientists produced a wealth of information with regards to racial voting patterns and African-American’s overwhelming support for Democratic candidates. What they’ve found is that for various historical reasons, blacks approach political parties with an eye on the African-American community as a whole. Or in other words, if you think of a given voter’s preferences as a set of questions – “how does this party help me?" “how does this candidate help my family” etc. – then for African-Americans, that question is most likely to be “how does this party/candidate help black people?”
Assuming that this is also the case for Hispanic voters, it doesn’t take much thought to imagine how Sotomayor’s nomination (and likely confirmation) could further dampen Republican efforts to reach out to Hispanic voters. In addition to the possibility that Hispanics would feel alienated by Republican opposition, there’s the possibility that Hispanic voters could walk away from the Sotomayor confirmation with the sense that Democratic administrations have been better for advancing “Hispanic interests” (by which I mean according respect to Hispanics in the public discourse) than Republican administrations. If that happens, and if Hispanics assessing community concerns before individual ones, then there’s a fair chance that this could further entrench Hispanic support for the Democratic Party. Which, as I’m sure you can imagine, would leave the GOP in really terrible shape.
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