There was no great controversy in the 2020 election about Joe Biden’s vow to nominate a Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court. There were no attack ads about the Democrat’s promise, for example, and there was no polling evidence to suggest a public backlash.
And that’s because Biden’s commitment was, and is, uncontroversial. There is a universe of possible Supreme Court nominees, each of whom is qualified and has the requisite background, and the president has decided he will select a Black woman from this group.
Biden made the pledge to help diversify a Supreme Court that has been dominated for generations by men who look like him. There have been 115 justices in U.S. history. Women represent only 4 percent of that total and black women represent zero percent.
The fact that the Democratic president wants to make some history is drawing all kinds of complaints from the right, though as The Washington Post noted, one Republican senator in particular seems especially annoyed.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) says President Biden’s vow to nominate and confirm the first Black woman to the U.S. Supreme Court is “offensive” and “an insult to Black women.” … On his podcast, “Verdict with Ted Cruz,” the Texas senator argued on Monday that Biden’s pledge to nominate a Black woman sent a message to other Americans that they are automatically “ineligible” because of race and gender.
“The fact that he’s willing to make a promise at the outset, that it must be a Black woman, I got to say that’s offensive. You know, Black women are what, 6 percent of the U.S. population? He’s saying to 94 percent of Americans, ‘I don’t give a damn about you, you are ineligible.’”
Six years ago, Donald Trump said he’d choose from a pre-approved list of jurists backed by conservative advocacy groups, including the Federalist Society. Or put another way, in a nation of 325 million people, the Republican said when choosing a Supreme Court nominee, he’d limit his focus to a small handful of individuals, representing an infinitesimally small percentage of the American population.
As far as Cruz is concerned, was Trump telling countless Americans, “I don’t give a damn about you”?
In 1980, Ronald Reagan, for purely political reasons, made a public commitment to nominate the Supreme Court’s first woman justice. By Cruz’s standards, did Reagan say to half the population, “I don’t give a damn about you, you are ineligible”?
Michael Gerson summarized the historical landscape nicely in his latest column: Over the centuries, U.S. presidents have selected Supreme Court nominees in part because they were Federalists, or Southerners, or from a Jewish background, or Westerners, or African Americans, or women (in the case of Ronald Reagan’s first choice), or Hispanic, or Federalist Society-approved. Now, with Black women treated this same way by Biden, some have declared the whole enterprise illegitimate. Everyone gets their day in the sun — until a group of Americans who, throughout our history, has suffered greatly from injustice and fought it mightily is about to be honored. What Biden sees as an opportunity to add some welcome diversity to the nation’s highest court; Cruz sees “an insult to Black women.” The Republican Party’s efforts to narrow the gender gap and expand its reach to communities of color just took another step backwards. Postscript: In the same podcast, Cruz added that the White House is looking for a nominee who will “drive the court even further Left.” In reality, the Supreme Court hasn’t been this conservative since the 1930s, and even if Biden’s choice is confirmed, it will have no bearing on the court’s dominant six-member far-right majority.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
Latest Post
Recommended
