Andrew Cline misses the mark with his essay this morning by asking, What If Sotomayor Were White?

Take everything that is known about Sonia Sotomayor and change three factors -- her race, sex, and family's initial socioeconomic status -- and the points cited in praise of her selection would be diminished by more than 50 percent. The complimentary commentary would be reduced to: Mr. Sotomayor graduated summa cum laude from Princeton and has had a breadth of experience over his lengthy legal career. That's it.

First, I'd argue that high marks from Princeton and Yale Law and a lengthy legal career would be enough to qualify her for the Supreme Court. But Kline also misses the fact that she has a compelling personal story which, like it or not, is part and parcel of the selling of a Supreme Court Justice in the modern era.

The dividing line here isn't race, and it isn't gender. It's partisanship. The better question is: what kind of treatment would Sotomayor receive if she were a Republican? It doesn't require too much imagination, since just a couple of years ago we saw the way the Democrats in the Senate treated a very well qualified Hispanic nominee with his own compelling up-from-the-bootstraps story.

Democrats went out of their way to block Miguel Estrada from being put on a track (the DC Circuit)  to even have a future shot at the Supreme Court, with Dick Durbin going out of his way to mention Estrada's ethnicity in an email as a reason for the Democrats to stonewall his nomination.

The bottom line is that both sides play identity politics when they can. It's just that Democrats are a lot better at getting away with it than Republicans.