You think a 51 seat majority will not result in a liberal SCOTUS? That ignores all history. If we had 60 votes, we’d still end up with fairly liberal SCOTUS appointments by Obama. Unless they had major scandal erupt, they would get many votes from our side. Look how many voted for Kagan. She’s about as unworthy and as much of a political hack as we’ll ever see appointed.
It makes virtually no difference. I hope we get 51, but I really don’t care all that much because the impact will be miniscual if at all. More than likely our side will sign on to a bunch of crap to ‘win over’ voters for 2016. Things like amnesty that are otherwise gridlocked.
FWIW, Kagan was a lot more worthy than Sotomayor. Kagan is a smart, capable lawyer well-liked by leading lawyers and leading academics from all ideological corners. Sotomayor is a thorough mediocrity who did one thing well in her career: managing to be in the right place at the right time to be “first Latina to do X” — there are a dozen liberal Latina law professors whom Obama could have drawn from but he was too risk averse to do anything but appoint a Circuit Judge.