My man Obama is going to drop his SCOTUS pick tomorrow after Trump cleans up tonight to let GOP stew about shit for a while. No fucks given
— John Cole (@Johngcole) March 16, 2016
Reuters agrees with Cole’s prediction:
President Barack Obama is likely to announce either Judge Sri Srinivasan or Judge Merrick Garland as his pick for U.S. Supreme Court nominee and the announcement could come as early as Wednesday, a source familiar with the selection process said.
The team of advisers helping to vet candidates, line up their public supporters and answer the president’s questions had finished its work, the source said on Tuesday…
Srinivasan, 49, and Garland, 63, serve together on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. That appeals court has served as a springboard to the Supreme Court for several justices including Scalia in recent decades.
Srinivasan, who was born in India and grew up in Kansas, would be the first Asian-American and first Hindu on the high court. Obama appointed him to the appeals court in 2013. The Senate confirmed him in a 97-0 vote…
Garland, who has earned praise from lawmakers of both parties, is the chief judge of the Washington appeals court, where he has served since being appointed by Democratic President Bill Clinton in 1997, winning confirmation in a 76-23 vote. Prior to that, he served in the Justice Department under Clinton…
Presidents tend to pick nominees younger than Garland, so they can serve for decades and extend a president’s legacy. But Obama may reason that the choice of an older nominee might also entice Senate Republicans into considering Obama’s selection…
In other news, you’ve probably heard that Hillary Clinton won all five primaries last night — Missouri by so narrow a margin that even most online headlines have yet to be updated. Glenn Thrush, in Politico (hardly a pro-Clinton outlet):
Hillary Clinton has been her own worst enemy at times (think homebrew servers and Goldman Sachs speeches) but her big win in Ohio Tuesday night likely catapulted her into history as the first female nominee of a major party.
Bernie Sanders’ presidential dreams aren’t quite dead. Yet his remarkable insurgency is a teetering Jenga pile of youth support, momentum and access to online millions — and Clinton just plucked out the buttressing block. She won Ohio resoundingly (her massive wins in Florida and North Carolina were a much, much bigger deal in terms of delegates) and she proved that she could capture a diverse and populous industrial Midwestern battleground a week after her shocking loss in Michigan.
This is a big haul. The delegate math for Sanders has been pretty dim since Super Tuesday, but now his core rationale (that he owned the hearts and votes of liberal and working-class northerners) suffered a serious, probably fatal, blow. He started off the night about 215 pledged delegates in the hole and will end the evening more than 300 behind Clinton, a margin bordering on the insurmountable…
Sanders has vowed to push on to the convention, hoping to persuade superdelegates to switch to his side.
On the Republican side, Rubio has suspended his campaign (much to the glee of certain Floridians), but Kasich succeeded in becoming a boulder in Trump’s path by winning Ohio. If you want a breakfast buffet of schadenfreude, Margaret Hartmann at NYMag has a comprehensive roundup of “What the March 15 Primaries Mean for the GOP Race”.
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Apart from much more prognostication and postmortems (and perhaps a few adrenaline hangovers), what’s on the agenda for the day?
Wednesday Morning Open Thread: Excelsior!Post + Comments (261)