Former Alaskan governor Sarah Palin is one of the most influential Republican figures today. Her “mamma-grizzly” endorsements have won a surprising number of victories, and much of the Republican base holds admiration for her. It is almost natural, then, that many pundits consider her as a front-runner or strong candidate for the 2012 Republican nomination.

Democrats like this. They salivate at the prospect of a Palin candidacy, believing that her unpopularity with non-Republicans will enable any standard-fare Democratic candidate to crush her in a presidential election. This belief is probably true; it would take a remarkable set of circumstances for Ms. Palin to win a general election against Mr. Obama.

But Republicans know just as well as Democrats do that Ms. Palin could not win a general election. That is why they will never nominate former governor Sarah Palin for president, no matter how popular she is amongst the Republican base.

American voters are incredibly brutal when it comes to the test of viability. If voters do not think that a candidate has a chance of winning, they will abandon that candidate in the blink of an eye. A vote for a candidate they like but who cannot win, the logic goes, is effectively a vote for a candidate they really dislike and who stands a strong chance of winning. Better to vote for somebody who stands a chance of defeating the candidate they really dislike.

This problem has bedeviled political campaigns throughout American history. In the 2008 presidential primaries, victims included John Edwards and Bill Richardson on the Democratic side, and Mike Huckabee and Rudy Giuliani on the Republican side. It is a problem that faces every third-party candidacy in the United States - and precious few of them overcome it.

It is also something that will curse Ms. Palin if she ever runs in the Republican primary. Ms. Palin cannot possibly win in the general election, her opponents will charge, so a vote for her is effectively a vote for President Barack Obama. There is nothing Ms. Palin can really say to this, because it is true. While Republicans might personally like Ms. Palin, they will not vote for her. She might be polling well right now, but that support is ephemeral. It will melt away as quickly as Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s did in 2008.

All in all, this is probably a good thing. There is always the chance, of course, that Ms. Palin could actually get elected if nominated. This could happen, for instance, if unemployment is at double-digits in 2012. And Sarah Palin, for all her political celebrity, would probably not make a very good president.

--Inoljt, http://mypolitikal.com/

I have a whole lot of notes on Supreme Court nominations right now for my law school writing requirement, which is somewhat timely considering that it is on the topic of (you guessed it) Supreme Court nominations, so I thought I might pass on a few quick tidbits before putting together something more comprehensive.

• More than a third of Supreme Court Justices in American history have (38) come to the high court without any prior judicial experience.
• Well over half of all Justices -- 60 out of 111 (.pdf), or 54 percent -- have come to the Court with prior experience in elective office. That is to say, a majority of Supreme Court Justices over time have run for and won public office in the past, from city councils all the way up to the Presidency.

So if you hear a pundit intone that someone on President Obama's shortlist to replace Justice John Paul Stevens is unacceptable because they would come to the Court without prior Judicial experience, or that they are not suited for the Court because they had previously worked in politics, do note that these assumptions aren't really grounded in the history of the Court (even if they have come to be accepted in recent years).

Competitive primaries can have positive effects.

Nominees for the U.S. Department of Justice are rarely high-profile enough to warrant attention in an election. Not so in this year's Democratic Senate primary in Pennsylvania.

Rep. Joe Sestak, who is challenging Sen. Arlen Specter for the Democratic nomination, sent an e-mail to supporters today about Dawn Johnsen. Johnsen, an Indiana University at Bloomington law professor, is President Barack Obama’s pick to head the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, and last year Specter helped delay Johnsen’s nomination. Specter was the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee at the time.

[...]

Republicans, including Specter at the time, have criticized Johnsen for her writings about abortion and civil liberties, and her stalled nomination has become a leading cause for advocates of abortion rights. Johnsen’s supporters say they might have enough votes for confirmation if the Senate’s Democratic leaders decide to take the time to break the GOP filibuster.

Just a few hours after being challenged by Congressman Sestak, his opponent in the Democratic Senate primary in Pennsylvania, Republican-turned-Democratic Senator Arlen Specter responded:

A statement from Specter's office: “After voting 'pass' (which means no position) in the Judiciary Committee, I had a second extensive meeting with Ms. Johnsen and have been prepared to support her nomination when it reaches the Senate floor.”

With Republican Richard Lugar, Johnsen's home state Senator, already committed to backing her nomination (update: and confirming his support), it appears that Johnsen should now have sufficient support to make it through the Senate (even with conservative Democratic Senator Ben Nelson in opposition). The special election in Massachusetts could potentially alter this math, but if the Democratic caucus remains at 60, and both Lugar and Ben Nelson vote as expected, a filibuster could not be sustained.

Indeed, once her nomination hits the 60-vote mark, I would expect it to get more support than that on a cloture vote as Senators like Judd Gregg, Lamar Alexander and Orrin Hatch -- Republicans who tend to vote for cloture on nominees even if they eventually vote no on the final vote (as they did in the case of the nomination of Harold Koh as legal advisor to the State Department) -- jump on board.

I'm sorry, but I couldn't help it.  That is, I couldn't help but bring a bit of the media's horse-race sensationalism to myDD just one time.  With Obama's possible pick just days away, now is the time to offer up our predictions.

The Democratic and Republican presidential tickets of 2008 (in my book):
Obama/Biden versus McCain/Fiorina.

An explanation below the fold--

There's more...

The other to the Veep chair...How can it NOT be Clinton/Obama or Obama/Clinton?

I gotta think that, either way, it's a tough sell in "Mid-Dull Murka."

There's more...