Assessing Sotomayor

What to make of the Sonia Sotomayor selection?

Her pick -- Pres. Obama's first nominee to the nation's highest court -- is not unexpected but still markedly political and shrewd -- and a sign of a president well aware of his political heft, in Washington and nationally. While Sotomayor might spark a frenzy on the right -- Rush Limbaugh has already assailed Sotomayor today for being a "reverse racist" -- GOP lawmakers are unlikely to block her for at least three reasons.

-- She is the first Hispanic selected for the SCOTUS, a nod to a demographic that voted two-to-one for Obama for president but whose leaders have expressed less-than-stellar reviews of the administration's inclusion of Latinos in top positions. (In 2004, by comparison, Pres. Bush won 40% of the Hispanic vote, a "modern high" for a Republican. A growing voter group, Hispanics will continue to hold sway in national elections, and the GOP is going to have to find a way to win their favor again. Knocking the first Hispanic nominee to the high court would not be well-received.)

-- She is a woman, the third ever appointed to the court. And while this attribute is secondary to breaking the first-ever barrier noted above, it's not at all insignificant. Third ever. In the history of this nation. Mary G. Wilson, president of the League of Women Voters, heralded the pick as "another milestone on our path toward a democracy that is truly representative of its citizenry."

-- She has an up-from-the-bootstraps story -- raised in a Bronx housing project, she graduated from Princeton and Yale University -- that apparently resonated with Obama. Hers is a narrative that, much like the president's story, reflects a truely American trajectory. The daughter of immigrants, she rose from humble roots to the country's most storied schools to the bench. Obama today said Sotomayor has a "practical understanding of how the law works in the everyday lives of the American people."

Let's not also discount another important fact -- Sotomayor was first appointed by Pres. George H.W. Bush, a Republican, to the federal district court for the Southern District of New York. And in 1998, when nominated by Pres. Bill Clinton to her position on the 2nd Circuit, she won bipartisan support, including from several sitting GOP senators. Among them, Orrin Hatch and Judd Gregg.

(JENNIFER SKALKA)