Vox on SCOTUS choice Merrick Garland:
So why would Obama make the choice to nominate a man who is considerably older and therefore able to serve on the Court for a more limited number of years?
There are a couple of possible explanations. The first is that Obama might very well believe Garland won’t be confirmed, in which case it makes sense to use an older, distinguished judge as a sacrificial lamb and allow his successor to elevate a younger nominee next year.
That is probably part of the calculus. But there’s a second, more interesting explanation that illuminates President Obama’s strategic thinking.
It is, simply put, that Garland’s age, like his moderate record, is yet another compromise.
Garrett Epps:
Merrick Garland Is a Great Pick; That May Not Matter
Obama’s Supreme Court nominee is the least political, most conciliatory choice. Whether that’s strategy or naïveté, confirmation is still unlikely
In fact, Garland would have been the ideal conciliatory nominee in a world in which the Senate leadership had signaled even the slightest openness to compromise. Garland is nobody’s raging liberal, and he is widely liked and respected. (To that end, Republican Senator Orrin Hatch even recently said, “[Obama] could easily name Merrick Garland, who is a fine man,” before noting that the president probably wouldn’t for political reasons. Nonetheless, Hatch will dutifully oppose the fine man—despite, in 2010, calling Garland a “consensus nominee” who there was “no question” would be confirmed.) Garland served as a federal prosecutor in the Bush I administration. His most famous work, as Obama underlined in his announcement of the nomination Wednesday, was leading the investigation and indictments in the Oklahoma City bombing case.
Benjamin Wittes (indication of conservative support outside of the Senate):
I will not pretend to be unbiased on the subject of Merrick Garland. He is quite simply one of the very finest judges in the United States…
There are actually very few people who have a more diverse combination of judicial and executive branch experience in the national security space than does Garland.
This is not his leading qualification for the job of Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. But it is a feature of his resume, one that makes him qualitatively different both from other nominees available to President Obama and nominees Obama has advanced in the past. (To be sure, Justice Elena Kagan handled national security matters as Solicitor General.)…
My hint for Republicans: Back down now or this is going to end extremely badly for you.
The president has done very well today, both politically and in service to the country.
WSJ’s Trump Twerks to Contested Election via a delegate chart:
Trump’s Path to a Contested Convention
Despite strong results in Tuesday’s primaries, Donald Trump has a narrow path to clinching the nomination
Upshot, R Side:
Donald J. Trump’s series of victories on Tuesday extended his delegate lead and forced Senator Marco Rubio of Florida out of the presidential race. Mr. Trump’s path to winning enough delegates to secure the Republican nomination is not assured, but he is in a strong position.
Here are some ways the Republican nominating contest could unfold. Try adjusting the sliders to see how the outcomes change. Each line in the chart represents one possible outcome.
Harry Enten:
It’s Still Not Clear That Donald Trump Will Get A Majority Of Delegates
Upshot, D side:
Hillary Clinton won the majority of delegates in Tuesday’s contests, widening her delegate lead over Bernie Sanders and making it increasingly difficult for him to catch up.
Here are some ways the Democratic contest could unfold. Try adjusting the sliders to see how the outcomes change. Each line in the chart represents one possible outcome
Amy Walter:
Let’s dispel with the fiction that's there's a unifying GOP candidate. There are plenty of Republicans who don’t like Donald Trump. He is the most polarizing of the candidates in either party. And yet, the reality is that no single non-Trump candidate has been able to mobilize the majority of Republicans to their side. With both John Kasich and Ted Cruz staying in the race, it’s unlikely that we’ll see a consensus anti-Trump emerge. The more the field is divided, the better for Trump.
There’s perhaps no better indicator of the difficulty ahead for the non-Trump candidates than Illinois. This is the kind of state where a more traditional, “establishment” candidate does well. In 2012, Mitt Romney carried the state with 47 percent. This year, Trump carried Illinois with a smaller 39 percent plurality. But, Cruz took just 30 percent (five points below Rick Santorum’s showing in 2012), while the traditional, establishment GOPers Marco Rubio and John Kasich took a combined 29 percent. As long as that pattern continues in the upcoming states, it’s hard to see how Trump gets seriously derailed.
Nate Silver:
I’m intrigued by the parallels to the 2008 campaign perhaps because it’s where FiveThirtyEight cut its teeth. I spent a lot of time in the spring of 2008 arguing that Obama’s lead in elected delegates would be hard for Clinton to overcome. But Clinton’s lead over Sanders is much larger than Obama’s was over Clinton at a comparable stage of the race. At the end of February 2008, after a favorable run of states for Obama, he led Clinton by approximately 100 elected delegates. Clinton’s lead is much larger this year.1 Clinton entered Tuesday’s contests ahead of Sanders by approximately 220 elected delegates. But she’ll net approximately 70 delegates from Florida, 20 from Ohio, 15 from North Carolina and a handful from Illinois and Missouri. That will expand her advantage to something like 325 elected delegates.
Sanders will need to win about 58 percent of the remaining 2,000 or so elected delegates to tie Clinton.
NY Times:
On the Democratic side, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont’s aides were vocal about plans to keep marching on, even after Hillary Clinton added significantly to her delegate lead with her four wins. His team insisted that there was still a path to the nomination and that the coming states would be stronger for him than for her.
Privately, some of Mr. Sanders’s allies expressed frustration with the timing of President Obama’s announcement of his nominee to fill Justice Antonin Scalia’s seat on the Supreme Court. The timing, they suggested, seemed intended to remind Democratic voters of the stakes in the 2016 presidential race.
Note to self: It is impossible for Obama to do anything without being accused of playing politics.
Jake Novak:
There are the three key reasons for the Trump campaign's impending November doom:
1) Primaries are like congressional midterms. They draw a much smaller number of voters with a much more defined agenda. Name recognition, the kind that Trump has enjoyed for years, is more crucial. The primary and midterm voters are also usually angrier than the average presidential general election voter, and that has worked in Trump's favor since last June.
It's impressive and unprecedented that Trump has been filling large stadiums and arenas during the primary stage of this election. But in general elections, stadium-sized crowds are standard fare. So while those Trump primary voters are sure to come out in November for the general election, they're going to have a lot of company that's likely to drown out a bigger portion of their voices. By definition, general elections are thus tipped more in favor of the more moderate candidates.
2) Trump really can't track to the middle. ..
3) This is going to get uglier. I believe the nasty, violent, and clearly coordinated protests disrupting Trump rallies this weekend are actually helping his primary chances for now. At this stage, they make Trump look like the victim of decidedly liberal and non-Republican groups. But if there's similar chaos at the Republican Convention and at Trump rallies in the general election, the perception will go from sympathy to fear, scorn, and a legitimate worry that a Trump who can't keep the peace at his campaign rallies surely won't be able to keep America safe as president.