Biden’s first term has become a complete disaster. He’s underwater and losing support among most Dems. He’s not about to reclaim national support, but he needs to at least build up support among the two groups that are the Dem base,

That means, and it’s all but inevitable, that the nominee will be a black leftist woman. Biden already promised as much and these are the two groups that Biden needs to survive a Dem primary, where he’s underwater, never mind a general election.

But Biden also needs to make the nomination look like a win, rather than being at the mercy of Breyer’s decision to step down, and to amp up identity politics.

Manchin and Sinema are pretty certain to support anyone Biden picks. Unlike restrictions on Senate powers, this isn’t going to be a battle. While Biden has put forward nominees, like Comrade Omarova, so extreme that even some Senate Dems said no, don’t expect that to happen here. Especially with a black woman and all the political theater that will go with it.

 What happened: Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said he’s open to supporting President Joe Biden’s nominee to the Supreme Court, even if the pick is more ideologically liberal than he is.

“Whoever he puts up will have experience and we’ll be able to judge them off of that. But as far as just the philosophical beliefs, no, that will not prohibit me from supporting somebody.”

— Manchin to West Virginia MetroNews’ “Talkline”

While Republicans should dig up and explore just how extreme her views are, don’t expect that to stop the train. If Dale Ho can end up getting through, just about anyone can.

But Biden needs the identity politics and civil rights theater so expect an extreme nominee and accusations that Republicans are racist for as long as it takes for the nomination to go through… and then forever.

The political theater here will be as important as anyone else so the false racism smears will be center stage. Any Republican who asks her anything will be immediately accused of racism followed by, “Yet, she persisted” theater on her behalf.

Dems and lefties are looking forward to this show. And it likely will help Biden among his base, though the rest of the country is worried about kitchen table issues.

Republicans, legitimately, want revenge for Kavanaugh. 

Dems have spent two generations poisoning the Supreme Court nomination process to an unprecedented degree. The resulting ugliness is very much their doing but, as usual, they intend to spin it as another indictment of America.

The one-trick pony has one trick and that’s racism smears. Expect them to ride this pony for all that it’s worth.