WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – President Barack Obama cannot select the most liberal possible candidate for the U.S. Supreme Court and should seek a “consensus” pick who could attract Republican support, Vice President Joe Biden said yesterday.
A fierce political fight is brewing as the Democratic president prepares to name a successor to conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, who died on Saturday. Obama’s nominee could change the court’s balance of power. Scalia’s death left it with four conservative and four liberal justices.
Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid told MSNBC in an interview that he spoke with Obama on Thursday about the nomination and expected the president to name his choice in “a little over three weeks.”
Many Republicans, led by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, have said the seat should remain vacant until Obama’s successor takes office next January so voters can have a say in the selection when they choose a new president in the Nov. 8 election.
“The Senate gets to have a say,” Biden, a former senator, told Minnesota Public Radio in an interview broadcast on Thursday. “In order to get this done, the president is not going to be able to go out, nor would it be his instinct anyway, to pick the most liberal jurist in the nation and put them on the court.”
