Biden actually makes progressive Supreme Court pick

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It was assumed he'd pick someone conservative, to appease Republicans, because that's what Joe Biden does. He actually had something else in mind. Of course, it could be a ruse that is expected to fail. All Democrats in the senate would have to approve, and there are at least a couple who are democrats in name only.

Anyone who expected Biden to pick a conservative hasn’t been paying attention to anything Biden has done in the last two years

He’s literally picked exactly the person I said he was most likely to pick, because it has been telegraphed for at least two years.

Do judges have to be republican or democrat? What if you are a judge but you do not subscribe to either party in your politics? Or is this not legal in the US, and you have to actually pick a party, if you want to be a judge? Like what if Biden picked a judge who said she was neither or she was a centrist?

No, judges don’t have to belong to a political party - and strictly speaking, they don’t. They are not politicians.

You might remember that Barack Obama tried to promote Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court. Garland is registered independent (as most Supreme Court contenders probably are to be fair) and was someone who a lot of Republicans said would be good… before suddenly changing their mind when he was actually picked.

However, members of political parties tend to pick judges whose judicial philosophy is more favourable to their political philosophy.

Perhaps counter-intuitively, the Republican Party is both more dedicated to this and worse at it! There is a society of judges called the Federalist Society dedicated to advancing the careers of conservative jurists. The Republican Party very strongly favours members of the Federalist Society, while the Democrats will basically promote any qualified candidate who isn’t a member of the Federalist Society. The issue is that the best lawyers and judges don’t tend to favour Republican policies at the moment. So the Federalist Society largely promotes 1) people who aren’t very good (Alito, Barrett, Thomas) and 2) people who are very good, but who deviate from the Republican orthodoxy (Gorsuch and Kavanaugh).

Why did I say the Republicans are worse at it? Well, while the Democrats tend to appoint people like Breyer and Kagan and Garland more often than people like Sotomayor, they’re still very much “on the liberal side”. That’s a simplification and the court doesn’t always divide along those lines. But while Republicans have made far more appointments in recent decades, here are the ten prior to Barrett (who is too soon to judge):

1) Brett Kavanaugh (moderate-leaning conservative)

2) Neil Gorsuch (libertarian-leaning conservative)

3) Samuel Alito (conservative)

4) John Roberts (moderate-leaning conservative)

5) Clarence Thomas (conservative)

6) David Souter (liberal)

7) Anthony Kennedy (conservative-leaning moderate)

Antonin Scalia (conservative)

9) Sandra Day O’Connor (moderate)

10) John Paul Stevens (liberal)

So Republican justices have only appointed three reliable conservatives in their last ten attempts, and have appointed two reliable liberals! For some reason, justices who seem to be reliable conservatives tend to drift leftwards once they’re actually on the Supreme Court.

Doesn't Jackson have a reputation as a coalition builder who can reach compromises? She was on the list of possibles from the beginning; there shouldn't be anything shocking about it. I feel like she is being mischaracterized for political reasons.

Let's be real, Republicans weren't going to support anyone Biden went with.

Still will be interesting to see if there will be the same level of theatrics as the last two confirmations.

"Oh, the senate parliamentarian says we can't do that? Oh, okay, I guess we have to give up."

That's what Joe's been doing for two years.

Yeah. The Democrats only hold 50% of the Senate. If one of Manchin or Sinema doesn’t support something that needs to pass the senate, it can’t be done.

That being said, Manchin and Sinema have voted to approve a large swathe of judges like Jackson - including Jackson herself!
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/ho ... he-courts/

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That's unexpected good news.

If Jackson was a moderate, we could have had a vote from Collins and/or Murkowski.

I think it's still possible.