Michael Barone highlights the Italian American factor; In opposing Alito, Dems face big risks

Michael Barone has a word of advice for Democrats threatening to filibuster nomine Sam Alito. Don't mess with the Italians. They have clout politically all over the Northeast.

But if they[the Senate Democrats] filibuster, they risk alienating another constituency, Italian-Americans. To understand the risk, consider the number of votes cast against the confirmation of Antonin Scalia in 1986. That number was zero. Democrats knew Scalia was a judicial conservative?he had a paper trail as an academic?but they also knew that Italian-Americans very much wanted to see a fellow Italian-American on the Supreme Court.

For many years I have attended events sponsored by the National Italian American Foundation, an organization established in the 1970s in large part to dispel the Mafia stereotype. NIAF has been proud to seat the director of the FBI at the head table as its annual dinner. It was proud that in 1984 the four Democratic and Republican nominees for president and vice president (including Geraldine Ferraro, remember) attended its dinner?the only time in American history, I believe, that four nominees attended a single event.

The late Peter Rodino, longtime chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and a liberal Democrat on most issues, once told me with tears in his eyes that one of his greatest regrets in life is that his father did not live long enough to see the first Italian-American on the United States Supreme Court. In 1987 I spent a day in Wilmington, Del., with Joseph Biden, who was running for president. He took me around the town, introduced me to his mother and father, and took me to lunch at a little restaurant in Wilmington's Little Italy. He knew everyone there very well and was very warmly received. The thought later occurred to me: There was no way this guy was ever going to vote against the first Italian-American on the Supreme Court. And no way any senators from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts were, either. They all had their friends in their state's Little Italy, and they weren't going to disappoint them. Scalia seems aware of this. He's reportedly willing to speak to any Italian-American organization that invites him.