Dick Durbin’s “back of the bus” comment is the occasion for my Politico column today:
All of this is transparently in bad faith. Durbin may be many things, but he is not stupid enough to believe that Republicans oppose Lynch because she’s a black woman.
Did Durbin vote against the confirmation of Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state because she’s a black woman? On his own stilted terms, he wanted to relegate Rice to drinking from the segregated water fountain of failed secretary of state nominations, and used the snarling police dog of his “nay” vote to try to do it. It’s hard to believe this could still happen in 2005 America, but it almost did.