“It’s deeply disappointing that President Obama failed to use this opportunity to add the voice of another progressive woman of color to the Supreme Court, and instead put forward a nominee seemingly designed to appease intransigent Republicans rather than inspire the grassroots he’ll need to get that nominee through the Senate gauntlet,” said Democracy for America’s Charles Chamberlain in a statement.

Even groups that weren’t so vocally negative put out statements that grudgingly pushed Republicans to confirm the nominee. Progressives had been salivating at the prospect of replacing Justice Antonin Scalia, whose influence they reviled, with one of their own. They’re not so sure Garland is one of them…

“Judge Garland’s background does not suggest he will be a progressive champion and he is not the justice a conservative Republican would have nominated, but it is Pres. Obama’s Constitutional duty to nominate Supreme Court justices, and he is clearly qualified,” said Murshed Zaheed, political director of CREDO. While CREDO has sometimes been one Obama’s sharpest critics from the left, the group has been part of a coalition that includes his Organizing for America formed to hammer Republicans on obstruction.