Nobody seems to think that Elena Kagan, Obama's nominee to replace John Paul Stevens on the Supreme Court, will have much trouble getting confirmed. She was the strong favourite to get the nomination precisely because she is so confirmable. Obama has enough to contend with at the moment without having to fight for a controversial nominee. A moderate liberal is indicated, to replace Stevens, who was a moderate liberal. Ms Kagan seems to fit the bill.
She is an outstanding legal academic--a professor and Dean of the Harvard Law School. As Obama's solicitor-general and adviser in the Clinton White House, she has proven administrative talent. She gets on with conservatives as well as liberals. She has never been a judge; this is a further advantage, because it means no paper trail of controversial decisions to defend. Even as a scholar, she has been careful to avoid sweeping declarations on constitutional law. And she is a she, which helps.
The main sticking-point for conservatives, unless something entirely new turns up, is her support for banning military recruiting at Harvard in protest against the law banning people who are openly homosexual from serving in the military. Another law, the Solomon Amendment, withheld federal funding from universities which barred military recruiters. Kagan joined a brief seeking to overturn this law, which the Supreme Court subsequently upheld by a vote of 8-0.