One last win for Obama as Elena Kagan joins the US supreme court

Moncler Vest Women sale There has been thunder and lightning outside in Washington DC, but inside the Senate chamber it was plain sailing for Elena Kagan's nomination to join the US supreme court.Kagan was comfortably confirmed as an associate justice by a vote of 63 to 37, with five Republicans – Lindsay Graham, Judd Gregg, Richard Lugar, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe – crossing the aisle to vote for Kagan and just one Democrat – the always disappointing Ben Nelson of Nebraska – voting against.The remarkably trouble-free confirmation process for Kagan means that three of the nine members of the supreme court will be women, itself a remarkable shift in the court's make-up since Kagan will be only the fourth woman to sit on the nation's highest bench. And it means that Obama has already successfully nominated as many justices as his predecessors George Bush and Bill Clinton: two.Republicans made a half-hearted effort to fight Kagan's nomination, attempting to paint her as anti-gun and anti-military, but couldn't make it stick, in part because the Democratic majority in Senate made it numerically too difficult and because Kagan was replacing a liberal justice, John Paul Stevens, thus not upsetting the balance of the court, which currently has a conservative bent – the most conservative in decades, according to New York Times analysis. As well, the White House did an excellent job guiding its candidate through the process, while Kagan herself didn't put a foot wrong.On top of the successful nominations of Sonia Sotomayor and Kagan, the administration has also had success in passing its healthcare reform and its overhaul of financial regulations, which is a lot of heavy lifting in a short legislative period.But that may be it for the time being. Any more supreme court nominations seem unlikely, given the extraordinary longevity of modern-day supreme Europe's north Africa policy drowns in a flood of migrants ourt justices. The last three members of the court to be replaced – Stevens, David Souter and Sandra Day O'Connor – all chose to retire and could, if they wished, have still been serving on the court today.That said, Ruth Bader Ginsberg is 77 years old while Anthony Kennedy and Antonin Scalia are both 74, so it would not be an actuarial surprise if any of the three were to depart the court in one way or another.But it's the political lifecycle that is more likely to concern the Obama administration.Despite this year's achievements, and the successful withdrawal of US forces from Iraq as well as the conclusion of BP's oil well disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, the US economy remains in rotten shape. Unemployment hovers around 10% and the housing market is still under water in many parts of the country.With such a gloomy economic background, voters are likely to take out their anger on the Democratic party in the midterm elections come November. The Republicans seem almost certain to gain control of the House of Representatives and eat into the Democratic majority in the Senate. The Congress that Obama faces in January 2011 will have a very different attitude, and the chances of the White House achieving anything like it has in the past year will be nonexistent.With two years left to run it seems premature to close the book on Obama's first term. But inevitably, as the 2012 presidential elections draw closer, Obama faces a race in which his own electoral fortunes are tied to those of the economy.That's not to say Obama can't win in 2012 even if the economy moves too slowly. The Republicans are very capable of shooting themselves in the foot through their policies and choice of presidential candidate. And it helps that he had had significant success to point to. But the economy remains the biggest arbiter of his fate from now on. Secretary Clinton, please call time on the Keystone Kochs