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President Barack Obama plans to announce his nominee for the Supreme Court in a Rose Garden event at 11 a.m. Wednesday, according to an email distributed by the White House.

In the message, Obama did not name his choice, but said he sought someone with "an independent mind, unimpeachable credentials, and an unquestionable mastery of law."

The nomination kicks off what the White House and its allies expect to be a very long and difficult fight for confirmation - and one that they are not at all confident they will win.

The president alluded to that looming battle in his email on Wednesday.

"I'm confident you'll share my conviction that this American is not only eminently qualified to be a Supreme Court Justice, but deserves a fair hearing, and an up-or-down vote," Obama said. "In putting forward a nominee today, I am fulfilling my constitutional duty. I'm doing my job. I hope that our Senators will do their jobs, and move quickly to consider my nominee. That is what the Constitution dictates, and that's what the American people expect and deserve from their leaders."

To replace the late Antonin Scalia on the bench, Obama will need to convince at least 14 Republican senators to join Democrats to break an inevitable filibuster and at least five Republican senators to vote with Democrats for confirmation - but first somehow convince Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to back off from his absolutist position against even giving the nominee a hearing.

So far, there are few signs that the Republican stand against any action on an Obama nominee is likely to crack. All 11 GOP members of the Senate Judiciary Committee signed what amounts to a written pledge that no nominee will be granted a hearing until after a new president is sworn in next January.

The White House is hoping to create some movement by this summer, but many expect that this battle will go all the way through November, with Democrats threatening to turn it into a major political issue in all five states with vulnerable Senate Republican incumbents. They also hope to expand the 2016 battleground to more states with an argument about GOP obstruction, which they're aiming to tie to Donald Trump's rise as the likely Republican presidential nominee.

Democrats feel that in addition to their own base, support is high among independents for Obama going through the normal process of replacing a justice on the Supreme Court, as recent polls show. But Republicans are equally confident in their firm position, especially since filling Scalia's seat with an Obama nominee would change the ideological balance of the court for a generation.

Josh Gerstein contributed to this report.

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