Identity Politics Fail: Biden's 'Black Woman Only' SCOTUS Nominee Criteria Blows up in His Face

AP Photo/Susan Walsh

Not that hapless Joe Biden has ever been accused of being a wizard at messaging, let alone a word-meister or, dare I say, a great communicator, but to suggest that Corn Pop’s pal blew it bigly by publicly announcing in advance that his only criteria in selecting his first — and hopefully last —Supreme Court nominee was that it would be a “black woman” is an understatement of significant proportion.

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Don’t misunderstand me.

Biden could have very easily kept his mouth shut and in the end nominated a black woman to the highest court in the land, based only on her qualifications to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court vs. the color of her skin. 

I don’t know if the Democrat Party invented identity politics but I do know they have not only spent decades perfecting the hell out of it; it has been a foundational cornerstone of the left for 60 years or more.

Hence, given the Black Lives Matter movement, pretend ‘”systemic racism,” and “white supremacy,” and in particular the ridiculous notion that White people are “inherently racist” because they were born that way, come hell or high water Biden was going choose a black woman as his first SCOTUS nominee.

Again, don’t misunderstand me.

Fox News host Trey Gowdy on Sunday night said it best, as the former South Carolina congressman often does: Regardless of whom Biden ultimately selects, he should have considered all nominees.

As transcribed by Fox News (emphasis mine):

Now Joe Biden has promised to make the next Supreme Court Justice a Black female. Americans – including a majority of Democrats – believe Biden should consider all nominees. So why not look for the most qualified candidates, period, Mr. President?

I’m fully convinced some of the names on that list would be Black women. I can think of several right now. One would be Michelle Childs from South Carolina.

She can compete no matter the pool of applicants. The people who know her, and worked with her, and appeared before her are universal in their praise for her character, intelligence, work ethic and demeanor.

She was elected to a state court judgeship in South Carolina, a state not known for quotas or affirmative action. She was elected out of all the candidates because she was the most qualified, not because she was a Black woman.

She was elected by a Republican-dominated legislature, another entity not known for its embrace of quotas, affirmative action, or set-asides.

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All excellent points. Every one of which could have been and should have been the only qualifications Biden needed to identify prior to making a selection.

As Gowdy went on to note, Childs was later unanimously confirmed by voice vote by the U.S. Senate for a federal judgeship. Why? She was nominated and confirmed because she was supremely qualified —  not because of her gender or the color of her skin. 

Gowdy then nailed it:

There’s a difference between picking someone who is supremely qualified and happens to Black, and picking someone because she is Black.

Harvard Law Professor Emeritus and Fox News contributor Alan Dershowitz — who knows Biden well and voted for him in 2020 — agrees with “all of the above.” As reported by Just the News, Dershowitz said his old pal made a “serious error” by announcing in advance that he would choose a Black woman to replace retiring Justice Stephen Breyer.

I think it’s wonderful if the most qualified person and maybe she is is a black woman, that’s great. That would add diversity to the court. I would welcome that enthusiastically.

But to say to every person who’s not a black woman, ‘No, I’m sorry, you’re not qualified to serve on the Supreme Court, at least not in this appointment’ … That just is not the American way. I don’t think it’s fair.

“I think he made a serious error here in announcing that he was going to limit” [the nomination search to black women], Dershowitz added.

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Dershowitz then suggested Biden’s announced criteria is unconstitutional.

Under the Fourteenth Amendment and the Nineteenth Amendment, he said, “you cannot use race and gender as a disqualifying factor in appointing people to the Supreme Court.” Um, Joe? I’m no constitutional lawyer, but unless I’m missing something that appears to be about as clear-cut as it could be.

No matter. Democrats gonna Democrat. But if or when Republicans attempt to Democrat, all hell breaks loose.

As Trey Gowdy suggested, Joe Biden and the Democrats tell the rest of us ad nauseam how they want the Supreme Court — and every other federal government institution to “look like America.” “Despite the fact that [Biden] whiffed when he could have done that in past,” he said.

In the process, he has refused to do the one thing that looks the very most like America – picking the most qualified person. I have every confidence that would have been a Black woman. I wish you did too, Mr. President.

As reported by The Washington Post, then Sen. Biden and his fellow Democrats in 2003 filibustered the George W. Bush nomination of  Judge Janice Rogers Brown to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. As noted by WaPo, Brown was immediately hailed as a potential Supreme Court nominee. She was highly qualified, having served for seven years as an associate justice of the California Supreme Court — the first Black woman to do so.

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So what was wrong with that Black woman, Joe? (I got this one.)

Biden’s Democrat political narrative was far more important than the color of Judge Brown’s skin. Ain’t that something? Now, almost 20 years later, Biden considers skin color to be the only criteria for selecting a SCOTUS nominee. The difference being, of course, he now holds the cards. And those cards have hypocrisy scribbled all over them.

The bottom line:

All Biden had to do was say he was going to find the most qualified person for the job. Period. That list would have rightly included Black women, undoubtedly with Michelle Childs at or near the top.

But that’s not what Democrats do. Being the consummate Democrat Joe is, he wanted and needed to first make a political point, and Democrats being Democrats, he sent the entirely wrong message to the country as a whole.

As Gowdy suggested, Black women do not need to compete only amongst themselves for a Black woman to prevail. Then again, if you’re a guy who tells Black America “if you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.”? Yeah.

The mics drop… Gowdy, Dershowitz, and Miller walk off the stage… the house lights fade to black.

As the Democrat song remains the same.

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