Elena Kagan, President Obama’s choice to replace retiring Justice Stevens on the Supreme Court has been attacked by purist progressives (repeatedly and at great length) for her record of hiring a few conservative scholars at Harvard Law School and for her views on executive power, among other deviations from Required Thought ™. She has also been attacked by conservative purists for well, pretty much everything, but especially for her presumed liberalism on social issues (as if a Democratic President should be expected to pick anything else). More disturbingly, she has been attacked primarily from the left by increasingly left-leaning blogger Andrew Sullivan seeking to force her to disclose what he believes is her homosexuality in order to use her nomination to spark a debate on gay rights. (Some conservatives have for their own reasons jumped on board with Sullivan’s innuendo campaign, often using code language to inquire about Kagan’s sexuality.)
In short, the attacks have been coming from both extremes and in volume that suggested that we may have another “Harriet Miers moment”, where a seemingly safe pick collapses for lack of political support.
But it’s not turning out that way. A Washington Post poll shows that Kagan enjoys public support comparable to that of Sonia Sotomayor, a relatively comfortable majority of 58%. In light of that, it is likely that she will be easily confirmed notwithstanding near-unified Republican opposition in an election year. Many are seeing the critiques from left and right as just “the usual hype”, tired and boring recitals of talking points that are disconnected from the real word.
The purists don’t like her. And that alone makes it a win for moderates. That right there could explain why a majority of voters would support a nomination regarding which few of the biggest voices in media and the blogosphere have had much good to say. A great number of people — probably a majority — are tired of the hackneyed talking points, crudely-cut categories and shouted name-calling that controls the political debate from the fringes. They’re ready for some candidates for high office that reflect thoughtfulness and tolerance rather than exacting adherence to an ideological program underwritten by the rhetoric of demonization. The exact things that make some progressives dislike her — her openness to contrary views — is exactly what could make her a great Supreme Court justice. Indeed, some moderate conservatives have sharply broken with conservative opposition to Kagan to endorse her on exactly these grounds. And the evidence available suggests that her views are nuanced and relatively moderate.
But the movement toward moderation is hardly an overwhelming groundswell yet. A string of victories and near-victories by partisan purists in political primaries presages an ugly election season on both sides. Progressive purists in Arkansas went hunting for Senator Blanche Lincoln’s political head and only barely missed reprising their temporarily successful (and continuing to this day) political assault on Joe Lieberman. And conservative activists of the “Tea Party” faction have rung up victories in Nevada, Kentucky, and other states on promises to combat “socialism” and other overheated allegations of political heresy.
The already-entrenched forces of political intolerance aren’t going away either. Nevada Senator Harry Reid’s strategy of combating his Tea Party opponent is to “vaporize” her with “napalm”, indicating Reid intends to continue his post-2006 pattern of clumsy demonization. Progressive activist Tina Brown even attacked moderate Republican candidates in California as being bad women for their failure to exactingly hew to a progressive ideological line. Meanwhile, right-wing talker Glenn Beck continues to cast the President and Congressional Democrats as not only wrong, but actually harbingers of the anti-Christ bringing forth the End Times.
One win for moderates with Kagan leaves a long and tedious row to hoe in the struggle to return a modicum of civility to American politics.