Having been away for a few days, I’ll re-enter the fray by offering a few thoughts on the rhetoric surrounding President Biden’s impending selection of a nominee for Justice Breyer’s seat:
1. As this New York Times article recounts, “Many [black women lawyers] say they have experienced discrimination or been second-guessed” and have at times “felt dismissed by others in the legal world.” It is not surprising that their experience of feeling belittled will shape how they view commentary on the various candidates for the vacancy.
2. Biden’s commitment to consider only black women for the vacancy means that he is excluding from consideration lots of other candidates that he might deem qualified for a Supreme Court seat. It is a logical error to conclude that none of the current contenders would be under consideration if Biden were considering all possible candidates. At the same time, the unfortunate but foreseeable effect of Biden’s explicit exclusion of other candidates is to cast a cloud of suspicion over all of the contenders.
3. A Supreme Court nomination ought to be a time for public debate over the relative strengths and weaknesses of the leading candidates. But the Left has attempted to squelch debate at the outset by proclaiming all the contenders to be beyond amazing and by screeching racist in response to any scrutiny of a candidate’s record.
4. The public rhetoric is now shifting, as the behind-the-scenes fights among supporters of the various contenders come out into the open. Consider this NYT article that disparages Michelle Childs’s candidacy as a “blatant effort” by Congressman James Clyburn to “call in a political favor.” Ironically, this attack on Childs involves the same sort of logical misstep that the Left has been decrying: Clyburn’s support for Childs provides no more reason to discredit her as a candidate than Biden’s blatant commitment to nominate a black woman provides to discredit all the contenders.