Qualifications for most roles are not absolute. A 100m sprint, sure. Who is fastest is the choice.
A judge? Plenty of ways to have more than enough “merits” and then pick based on whatever other quality you wish to advance. For some, diversity of background and thought and experience is the plus. For others, similarity is the plus. I would argue those who only use exactly the background of predecessors are (lazily or actively) choosing similarity of backgrounds as favorable. And that is usually a problem.
(Judge is not the only role that suffers from this false belief in some of an objective “better”.)
He is on a mission to find the best black woman as opposed to the best candidate. This unknown black woman may very well be the best candidate (to get voted in). I understand that he could lose support from his own party if he deviates from his promise and nominates an other “type”.
I don’t know. I know it was to replace Marshall. Bush wanted to appoint a Hispanic judge (for political reasons), but felt that particular candidate was not ready. Thomas may have been in the top (Republican) candidate group. He was someone Bush felt would get voted in. It forced Democrats to say that he was the wrong black candidate, as if all black people should hold the same views.
Eh, I can see them opposing someone considered “radical” but at the end of the day they ARE still Democrats, albeit moderate ones.
Someone like Merrick Garland (or actually Merrick Garland?) should be able to get confirmed, no problem. Might even pick up Mitt Romney’s vote.
Someone like Sotomayor may not get confirmed by the current Senate. Although for kicks I looked up her confirmation vote and 57 Democrats, 2 Independents, and 9 Republicans - including Lindsay Graham (but not John McCain) - voted to confirm her in a 68-31 vote.
(Ted Kennedy is the missing vote - he was not present that day.)
The pool of best candidates is enormous, for any position. So yeah, unfortunately, it’s actually harder to get a black woman in than a qualified (simple statistics), thus “black woman” should be prioritized over qualification, but it’s not an either or situation.
Perhaps. And Biden may feel that a black woman has a better chance to get approved because enough R’s wouldn’t want to be asked if race was a factor in their vote against.
I agree with this, just because of today’s hyper-partisan atmosphere.
I saw 3 names almost immediately bandied about on Twitter & elsewhere:
Kamala Harris
Ketanji Brown Jackson
Leondra Kruger
I don’t know how serious people were about Harris. She has a legal background, sure, but not as a judge, right? People seemed to think she’s turned into a political liability for Biden (?) & this would be a way to deal with that. I’m not sure I agree with either part of that. Could almost guarantee no R’s would vote to confirm her, & could she cast the deciding vote for herself?
A quick perusal of Jackson’s & Kruger’s backgrounds leads me to think either would be plenty qualified. They both have impressive educations & careers. From what I was seeing earlier today it seemed people thought Jackson was a little more likely to be picked, but Kruger is a little younger (45). Not sure how much age might play into it. Jackson is not “old” (51).
Oh, here are a few more names, although based on these brief descriptions I’d still think Jackson & Kruger may be the front-runners:
My guess is that there are a few hundred people who have excellent qualifications to serve on the supreme court. Among those, there are almost certainly a handful of Black women, Asians, gays, Hispanics, handicapped people, and other underrepresented minorities. I think the court as a whole would benefit from having members with a variety of perspectives, and that is more likely to happen if the new justice isn’t a straight white men.
I don’t think he should go fishing outside that pool of people with excellent qualifications. But I’m pretty sure he can stick to that pool and also nominate a Black women.
Just be honest and say no one has ever searched for the actual best candidate. They searched for someone they thought was good enough and met a need.
Your purity test wielded now without a steident rebuke of (likely all) prior appointments might kind of have you painted in a certain light. It isn’t a great light, unless you think tiki torches are bright enough for marching
One would need to define “best candidate”, and it can be done in many ways. One’s top 10 candidates may be mostly different than another’s top 10 candidates. There isn’t any power rankings. Biden (likely) defined it as a black woman first, throwing out all others, then moving to qualifications next. That is his prerogative. I disagree with his approach.
She’s certainly a political liability in my opinion. I’m not sure if putting her on the SCOTUS is the right solution, but it’s a curious idea.
In the hypothetical event of a 50-50 tie in her confirmation vote, yes, she would cast the tie-breaking vote… presumably in favor of her own confirmation.
The other “tie-breaking vote for himself/herself” scenario would be in the event of a tie in the electoral college, or faithless electors in a close election resulting in no candidate getting to 270 votes. Then the newly elected Senate determines the Vice President but the sitting Vice President presides. If the sitting VPOTUS is up for re-election, and is one of the top two vote-getters (almost certain) and the Senate ties… then the sitting VPOTUS casts the tie-breaking vote… presumably for himself/herself. An unlikely scenario, but certainly possible in a closely divided election.
Eh, I think it’s more like Lucy said. There’s several hundred people with excellent qualifications and there’s not really an obvious way to rank them… it’s incredibly subjective and nitpicky at that level as they’re all extremely qualified.
While you & I might not like that it becomes political at that point, the reality is that it’s a political process and for better or worse, politics come into it.
The SOA board has “reserved seats” where the board must consist of members with various backgrounds (health, pension, Canadian is a new one IIRC, etc). Do you object to that process?
It seems like saying “we should have a woman” or a black or gay or Asian person on the SCOTUS is kind of the same idea.
Reagan made no bones about that when he nominated O’Conner. He said there must be extremely qualified women out there… let’s pick from that pool. Yes, some highly qualified people were disqualified from consideration for that opening because of their sex, but that doesn’t really mean they were any more qualified than O’Conner. There is a level where the qualifications are essentially equal.
It could be that Biden (or his team) already knew that their top choice happened to also be a black woman, or (possibly more likely) there is a pool of candidates who are all essentially equally highly qualified, and Biden would use race/sex as a “tiebreaker” among those. The pool of highly qualified candidates for SCOTUS was known when Biden made his campaign promise, & surely included at least the two women in my post above, both of whom appear to be very highly qualified in terms of education & career.
Two thoughts. First, was the title of this thread intentional? Second, why are the Democrats required to be held to a higher standard for their SCOTUS nominees than the Republicans? Does anyone really believe that the last three Republican nominees where in any way the best available options?
