Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Elena Kagan and Barack Obama: Out Of Touch Elitists

Ben Smith from Politico:

President Barack Obama introduced Elena Kagan on Monday in the terms that have come to define his approach to the Supreme Court: She understands the law “as it affects the lives of ordinary people,” he said, adding that her presence will make the court “more reflective of us as a people than ever before.”

Obama promised judges with at least a passing knowledge of the “real world,” but Kagan’s experience draws from a world whose signposts are distant from most Americans: Manhattan’s Upper West side, Princeton University, Harvard Law School and the upper reaches of the Democratic legal establishment.


Reflective of which people, exactly? Well-to-do Upper West Side graduates of places like New York's elite Hunter College HS? Princeton honor students? Oxford attendees? Harvard Deans? Or holier-than-thou New Yorkers, always a favorite of the American people?

If Elena Kagan is confirmed...the Supreme Court will contain three female Justices. And it will be a diverse group of women too -- one originally from Brooklyn, one originally from Manhattan, and one originally from the Bronx.

No, this is more of Obama's bullshit, of course. She is reflective of his people, the liberal elitists. Jen Rubin:

So she brings neither an abundance of non-elite experience nor an intellectual record of achievement...she’s not very real world, and she isn’t a renowned scholar, but she sure understands the president’s liberal agenda.

Which is why that I think any conservative optimism that she might be some sort of closet centrist is misguided. This is a woman who grew up in the dictionary definition of a "limousine liberal" neighborhood, and has gone to school with, worked with, and socialized with people who think exactly the way she does.

Without exception, and for her whole entire life. Can you imagine Ms. Kagan hanging out in a blue-collar bar in Pennsylvania, conversing with the hardhats and other varieties of "rough trade" about the way the world ought to be? Can you picture her casually chatting with military families in Texas, or with harried suburban moms in South Jersey? Can you envision her working shifts in Wal-Mart, or at a department store, or putting in the 90 minute commute to a high-stress office job in the city?

Me neither. Because it never happened. She's lived and worked in a small, insulated ivory tower her whole life, and from upon high, she will be appointed by Barack Obama to pass judgement upon us "ordinary people" based on her knowledge of the "real world".

May God have mercy upon the American people...

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