Sotomayor Nomination: Obama's Wedge Politics
Cross-posted from The Huffington Post President Obama's nomination of Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court is stunning on many levels: She's the third woman to serve on the high court, the first of Latino descent and the first to grow up in public housing. On her own merits, Sotomayor is a deserving nominee. Yet in his choice of Sotomayor, Obama has also made a brilliant tactical move -- one that not only shores up his standing with the Latino community and the women's rights community, but also serves to further divide the beleaguered Republican Party. In discussions of this nomination, much will be said about the debt Obama owes to the Latino community for his 2008 electoral victory. As Politico 's Ben Smith recently wrote : [McCain] got 31 percent of the Latino vote to the 44 percent that George W. Bush took in 2004, according to exit polls. And it was enough to put much of the West and Southwest out of reach for the Republican Party, to give Florida to the Democ...