I agree that he should have just picked a female black judge instead of announcing it before hand. It screams "virtue signaling" rather than choosing a SC who is very qualified who happens to be a black woman. Anyone who would criticize the pick for being black then cannot fall back behind the excuse of "they restricted to only choosing black female candidates. That's racism". Now it would be obvious the reason why they are angry is because its merely a black woman who was the selection.
Except 3 of the last 9 elections didn't have record turnout. That said, if it makes you feel better, only one election in the past 100 years had higher voter turnout as a % of eligible voters, and that was another election fought in the midst of major civil rights issues. No, you just have stupid premises. You're the one that claimed that Black Females today are the old White Males of the past. And that claimed that race issues are why we have low turnout despite racism-related elections are the ones getting the highest turnout - on both sides - in this country. Apathy was clearly not the issue here. The evidence shows that when you make voting easier, more people vote. So maybe the reason we have lower turnout than other countries is actually simply that we make it harder to vote than other countries instead of apathy. For example, places that have all mail voting have the highest voting rates. Meanwhile the states with the most restrictive laws have the lowest turnout. Coincidence? Or are those latter just states just more apathetic? The "elites" know why we have low voter turnout - and it's not apathy.
By giving a President the right to pick a nominee, you're certain to not pick the person best qualified for the job. You're likely to pick the person who's most politically suited for the job and most likely to be confirmable by the Senate. That's how the process was intentionally designed by the Founding Fathers. Do you have a problem with that? Do you think the Constitution needs to be changed? Odd how this "not picking the best qualified" was neve an issue prior to now. Trump didn't consider any liberal leaning justices, taking many qualified candidates out of the pool. With his last nominee, he didn't consider any men, taking out another chunk out of the pool. I didn't see you complaining about either of these. Nominating people for the USSC is not a hiring process.
Lindsey Graham saying the GOP is trying to recruit women of people and color, apparently admitting the party is racist and sexist according to many here. "Put me in the camp of making sure the court and other institutions look like America. You know, we make a real effort as Republicans to recruit women and people of color to make the party look more like America," said Graham, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Apparently, excluding qualified candidates of the other gender wasn't wrong then... https://www.politifact.com/factchec...den-isnt-first-prioritize-race-gender-pickin/ https://www.politifact.com/factchec...den-isnt-first-prioritize-race-gender-pickin/ Nor descent... https://www.politifact.com/factchec...den-isnt-first-prioritize-race-gender-pickin/ Nor religion... https://www.politifact.com/factchec...den-isnt-first-prioritize-race-gender-pickin/ But hey... lets ignore all that (and Reagan's commitment to name the fisrt woman justice) and instead claim Biden is a racist and sexist.
well known hack Turley helpfully explains the difference between preferential and exclusionary treatments: . . . commentators suggested that I ignored that prior presidents made such preferential picks. That is not true. My point was that Biden’s pledge was entirely unnecessary since he could have stated that he wanted to appoint a black female without barring consideration of other candidates on the basis of their race or gender. It is the difference between a preferential and exclusionary process. Commentators insisted that Ronald Reagan, Donald Trump, and George H.W. Bush made the same pledge. That is also false. While seeking to appoint women and African Americans, none of the three excluded other races or genders from consideration and had diverse short lists. Yet, even if they did, the question remains: should admission to the Court be based on an exclusionary threshold qualification that the Court has rejected as unconstitutional or unlawful for schools and businesses. more at this link
Part of this issue is that there is no exact standard of what it is a the "most qualified" nominee. It used to be the American Bar Association recommendation but even using that there are many judges and others who are can be recommended by the ABA. Also the previous presidency didn't use ABA recommendations and instead relied on the Federalist society.
ACB went to Rhodes College and then Notre Dame School of Law. Far lower, if you take into consideration Law School Graduation and bar passage. Only 8 percent of law school graduates are African-American, and as a group they have the lowest bar passage rate. This is obviously not true. There are many people who are qualified to be an NBA center, but Hakeem Olajuwon was better qualified than Greg Ostertag. It is the difference between passing a class and getting the top grade in the class. You were a Marine, was there any difference between some private fresh out of boot that barely met all the minimum requirements and some Force Recon vet that had top marks on everything and had multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan? If you had to put a mission together, would you want one of them over the other? It is possible, but statistically unlikely. The most likely best candidate would be some sort of Asian or Jewish person, if any actual objective measures were used. There have been eight Jewish people on the Supreme Court, zero Asians. Of course, I think Justice Thomas is the best Supreme Court Justice, and he is certainly black and was c*m laude in undergrad and middle of the pack at Yale Law, so what can the numbers tell you.
So now he’s arguing ‘I will nominate a women’ is not exclusionary. He is a political hack but this is just embarrassing.
When a Supreme Court Justice Throws Biden a Life Preserver https://www.allsides.com/blog/when-supreme-court-justice-throws-biden-life-preserver excerpt: But Biden’s selection will also give us some insight into how he sees himself just over a year into his presidency. He ran as a centrist establishment figure, even defining himself as a “transitional” leader. That elder statesman gave way to an ambitious FDR/LBJ wannabe after the election, whose agenda for sweeping change seems to have run aground. More recently, a partisan fighter has emerged, who used a recent speech on voting reform to compare his opponents to Jefferson Davis and George Wallace. We’ll get a strong sense of Biden’s next iteration when he announces his nominee. The early frontrunner appears to be DC Circuit Court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, a respected jurist known for her sharp edges and sometimes combative rhetoric. Her selection would suggest that Biden will continue in his current fiery partisan mode. California Supreme Court Justice Leondra Kruger is no less liberal than Jackson, but has developed a reputation as a bridge-builder and conciliator during her time on the bench. If Biden picks Kruger, we may see the return of the centrist Biden who ran in 2020. And while South Carolina US District Court Judge Michelle Childs is also eminently qualified, her candidacy is being pushed hard by longtime Biden ally Jim Clyburn, (D-SC), whose endorsement during the 2020 primary campaign may have rescued Biden’s candidacy from an early demise. If Biden opts for Childs, he’ll be displaying the pragmatic deal-maker aspect of his political persona. Biden is all of these things – an establishment figure, a progressive crusader and a back-room wheeler-and-dealer – and will continue to be all three for the remainder of his presidency. But when he announces his Supreme Court nominee, we’ll know which Joe Biden is now in charge. more at the link
The only real objective measures of a lawyer/jurist's qualifications would be things like LSAT score, class ranking, and to bar exam score (though the last two are affected by there being a subjective reader marking the scores). In these areas (as in most of academia, and in IQ testing) you see consistent patterns. Asians and Ashkenazi Jews are a standard deviation above the average, whites generally are at the average, Hispanic people are about half a standard deviation below the average, and black people are about a standard deviation below the average (all as averages of those populations). As I said, my preferred Supreme Court Justice would not rate highly by these metrics (though he is the most hated among the left). Unfortunately, they are the only real objective measures we have. Everything else is personal/political preference. Maybe you could make an argument for highest percentage of decisions upheld or something, but I think you would get pushback depending on the composition of the courts reviewing those decisions.
