President Barack Obama has a proven formula for getting big, politically charged nominations through Republicans in the Senate — and close observers say that now points to Sri Srinivasan as his likeliest Supreme Court choice, with Loretta Lynch suddenly lighting up chatter as a potential sleeper candidate.

In thinking about Antonin Scalia’s possible replacement, they look at how Obama won previous confirmations, including the two that Republicans most wanted to stop: Lynch as attorney general and Sylvia Mathews Burwell as Health and Human Services secretary, who each glided through confirmation with surprising ease just months after the 2013 Obamacare website launch disaster.


With those and others, Obama picked a nominee who would be a historic first or hail from a politically charged demographic, promoted their work with or, better, for Republicans and pointed out that the Senate had already confirmed the individual for a previous job. He touted their educational and professional credentials, and their life stories. And all of them survived this White House’s very extensive vetting process.

Srinivasan, a judge on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, checks every box — which is why he’d already been considered a shoo-in for the high court if Ruth Bader Ginsburg had stepped down before the end of Obama’s term.

But if Srinivasan doesn’t want to sign up for what could be a year in limbo or if Obama decides to go with the more politically potent choice, well-connected lawyers say Lynch makes almost as much sense.

“Obama’s had a record of nominating people with sterling credentials,” said Caroline Fredrickson, president of the American Constitutional Society, which does not endorse potential nominees. “He has brought greater diversity to the bench, so that will probably be on his mind to see if that’s a possibility.”

Srinivasan, who immigrated with his family from India as a child (then grew up in Kansas, to boot) and went on to Stanford for undergradate, law and business school, clerked for Ronald Reagan appointee Sandra Day O’Connor and was an assistant solicitor general under George W. Bush. He argued 25 cases before the Supreme Court and then became a deputy solicitor general under Obama.

Republicans delayed his appointment for six months when Obama nominated him to the D.C. Circuit in 2012. Then he was approved in committee and on the floor in 2013 by a vote of 97-0 — as it happens, just one short of the 98-0 vote count that put Scalia on the bench in 1986. Former Whitewater independent counsel Ken Starr was among the people who supported his nomination.

Srinivasan would be the first Hindu on the Supreme Court, and took the oath for his current job on a copy of the Bhagavad Gita. He’s spent just 2½ years as a judge, which gives him that politically important shine of experience on the bench, but before that was a litigator, which means he’s got very little record of judicial opinions to pick through. Democrats hate that he worked for Bush, Exxon, and Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling.

Obama’s nominating speech, delivered in his familiar how-can-you-disagree-with-this-based-on-anything-but-politics tone, would write itself. Well-connected lawyers in town spent Sunday imagining the possibility that O’Connor or Harvie Wilkinson, the conservative former chief judge for the Fourth Circuit whom Srinivasan also clerked for, might be willing to testify for him in front of Congress.

Plus, if Srinivasan were to be confirmed to the high court, he’d be 49 when he joined, allowing him to flip the ideological balance of the court now and likely for decades to come.

Lynch looks good for many of the same reasons that drive talk of Srinivasan, which all helped make her a surprise pick for attorney general in November 2014.

Obama touted her childhood in North Carolina rooted in the civil rights movement and her well-respected work as a United States attorney from Brooklyn (approved in 2010 for a second tour on the job), as she became his answer to how he’d possibly get a replacement for Eric Holder through Congress: by holding her up as the first female African-American attorney general.

Lynch’s confirmation fight became one of the longest in American history, but facing this same Republican Senate, the White House and allies wore it down to a win last year by pressing those points over and over again. But the wounds from that fight may still be too fresh for the White House to put Lynch’s name forward again, and there’s a sense among lawyers with close ties to the White House that she wouldn’t get as high a grade as Srinivasan on Obama’s former constitutional law professor test.

Obama might pick neither Srinivasan nor Lynch, but most of the other names floating as serious possibilities in the informed speculation fit Obama’s nomination formula, too.

The unfolding presidential election and the much higher stakes of a lifetime appointment make these circumstances different from Obama’s previous showdowns with Congress. Democrats’ best case scenario is probably that the five blue and swing state Senate Republicans up for reelection this year (New Hampshire’s Kelly Ayotte, Wisconsin’s Ron Johnson, Pennsylvania’s Pat Toomey, Illinois’ Mark Kirk and Ohio’s Rob Portman) are driven to help the 46 Democrats to oppose a filibuster, and nine other Republicans somehow come along, because they’re in safe seats or worried about the longer term political fallout for the GOP from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s threat to block any nominee.

“A large question is whether the fight is framed as one about the nominee, or President Obama. They are different fights,” said Robert Raben, a former assistant attorney general under Bill Clinton who’s managed and staffed many confirmations. Given how the battle lines have been drawn, Obama’s play is against Republicans, not so much keeping Democrats in line, Raben said.

The White House is avoiding any comment about Obama’s process or the potential nominees. All that aides will confirm is that he won’t make an announcement this week.

“Given that the Senate is currently in recess, we don’t expect the president to rush this through this week, but instead will do so in due time once the Senate returns from their recess,” said White House principal deputy press secretary Eric Schultz on Sunday.

The White House wouldn’t comment on whether Obama has started having meetings with staff or reviewing materials about a possible confirmation. People familiar with the West Wing say that this situation is a surprise, both in Obama’s confronting a vacancy in his final year and in having the open seat be Scalia’s.

The White House has been struggling with much simpler confirmations. Obama’s nominees to be ambassador to Norway and Sweden spent seven months held up by Sen. Ted Cruz, who was trying to make a statement about the Iran nuclear deal, and others are still being delayed. The White House also can’t get a vote on Adam Szubin to be the Treasury undersecretary in charge of tracking terrorist finances, despite many public complaints centered, naturally, on the fact that Szubin’s got strong credentials and a history of working for Republicans.

The White House was considering skipping a formal nomination of John King to be the new education secretary, though he’s qualified and an African-American and has amazing life story: He was orphaned at 12 and found his way through public schools in New York. King has been acting secretary since October, and Obama formally nominated him only Friday afternoon, when the West Wing felt it had received enough assurances from Congress that, at least at that moment, it seemed like he’d go through.

As the trenches are dug, the absolutists on the left are already preparing to settle for whatever they can get.

“But is Srinivasan progressive?” former Labor Secretary Robert Reich wondered on Facebook on Sunday morning, insisting that his “White House mole” had told him Srinivasan’s the one.

Reich couldn’t give an answer, but seemed fine with that.

“My suspicion is Obama couldn't do better than Srinivasan,” he wrote. “No other nominee [will] get a majority of Senate votes.”

Josh Gerstein contributed to this report.