The XX Factor

Meghan, you posted yesterday on those Gallup numbers suggesting that Americans are less worked-up over the gender of the next Supreme Court justice than the media has been led to believe. I wonder whether Obama read the same polls, because his very short shortlist was evidently expanded yesterday to include a male, Carlos Moreno, the only Democrat on the California Supreme Court. Moreno is regarded as an extremely intelligent moderate-liberal jurist, and if selected he’d be the first Mexican American justice. I wonder how the same women who were incensed at Hillary Clinton’s treatment last year would feel if Obama seated an eighth male on the high court. I think I’d advise Obama to do so before Redding, the case about the strip search of a 13-year old girl. If oral argument was any predictor of outcomes, women are going to be pretty mad about the number of women on the court come June.