It should be terrifying.

Lesson 1. It is not to your benefit as judge to follow sentencing suggestions from anyone other than the prosecutor. Doesn't matter what mitigation there is, nor does it matter what is just and appropriate. The person you offend by giving mercy, even if it is mercy suggested by an impartial party charged with making suggestions, is the mercy that can topple you from office. The safer play is to say the hell with judicial impartiality and the hell with your role of safeguarding the rights of the individual vs the power of the state. Max 'em out or at least give the government 100% of what it wants in sentencing.

Lesson 2. The public consumes information in twitter sized bites or at least facebook sized bites and will not listen to anything complicated. The public might listen to an entertaining rant but the public will ignore anything requiring thought and contemplation. If you can't defend your actions in 140 characters you lose.

Lesson 3. No one remains the sole nuclear arms nation forever. The good professor revealed the nuclear secret by showing that if you can build outrage over a ruling, you can get a judge removed. If I owned a business facing potentially very damaging tort claim or class action tort and it appears I've drawn a bad judge for my interests, you are nuts if you think I'm not sending a team of people to hoover up every ruling that judge has made in the hope of finding one that I can turn into a circus and get the public to recall the judge in an attempt to delay and draw a judge I feel safer in front of. The average citizen cannot afford to create an astroturf grassroots movement but there are companies that can easily find such an expense extremely affordable.