During his campaign for the White House, Biden stated in a February 2020 Dem primary debate that he was “looking forward to making sure there’s a black woman on the Supreme Court to make sure we in fact get everyone representation. Not a joke, not a joke,” Biden said.
Fast-forward two years and sure enough, after Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer’s retirement plans were leaked by White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain, President Biden announced a black woman — Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson — as his nominee. But Biden previously used his power as a U.S. Senator to block a black woman from being confirmed.
Ignoring history, the White House tripped over itself trying to pat President Biden on the back for his “historic” nomination while the mainstream media wept with joy as they declared him to be a hero for diversity, equity, and inclusion, and liberal pundits began writing the history book chapters about how President Biden shattered the Supreme Court’s glass ceiling for black women. But again, it was Biden who reinforced that ceiling during his time in the Senate.
What Joe Biden, Democrats, and the mainstream media are ignoring — and counting on Americans to forget — is that Joe Biden repeatedly blocked a black woman from being confirmed, first to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals and then to the Supreme Court.
More than 15 years ago, Judge Janice Rogers Brown — an associate justice on the California Supreme Court — was nominated in 2003 to serve on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals by then-President George W. Bush.
Despite being eminently qualified, then-Senator Biden and his fellow Democrats blocked her confirmation with the filibuster — that thing Biden and Democrats today say is a tool of racist white supremacy. Not very progressive to use such a Senate procedure, especially against the confirmation of a black woman.
Then after Democrats and Republicans in the Senate struck a deal to allow some of Bush’s judicial nominees to get through the confirmation process, Judge Brown was confirmed to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2005 — though Biden once again voted against her confirmation.
Shortly after Judge Brown prevailed over Biden’s attempts to destroy her career within the federal judiciary, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor announced she’d be retiring from the Supreme Court. Judge Brown was on Bush’s short list to replace O’Connor, but Joe Biden came blazing out of the gate with his opposition to her consideration.
In a 2005 interview on CBS’ Face the Nation, Biden tried to issue his threat to filibuster Judge Brown, but — even back then — gaffed and stated the wrong name. “I could see a circumstance, for example if he set up Edith Jones, I can assure you that would be a very, very, very difficult fight and she probably would be filibustered,” Biden said before correcting himself. “I misspoke, Janice Rogers Brown, I misspoke.”
When hosts pressed Biden about the fact that Judge Brown had just been confirmed by the Senate to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, Biden declared that the Supreme Court was a “totally different ballgame” because circuit court judges are bound by stare decisis and “don’t get to make new law.”
In the end, Biden’s threat to torpedo a black woman’s confirmation to the Supreme Court apparently worked as President Bush nominated Samuel Alito who was confirmed by the Senate. As several have pointed out in recent weeks since Biden announced Judge Jackson as his nominee, Judge Brown was the only contender on Bush’s Supreme Court shortlist that he threatened to filibuster — and Biden didn’t threaten to filibuster the confirmation of white judges under consideration. Democrats would, and have, lobbed accusations of racism at Republicans for much less than what Biden did.
If Joe Biden really cared about representation on the Supreme Court and thought it was critically important to have a black woman’s voice — despite the fact that race and gender don’t change the constitutionality of matters before the Court — he would have ensured it happened in 2005. But he didn’t, because just as he tried and failed to stop Justice Clarence Thomas from being confirmed, Joe Biden showed that he doesn’t actually care about race, he just cares about politics. Joe Biden would confirm a purple dinosaur to the Supreme Court as long as it was a leftist judicial activist guaranteed to rubber-stamp the radical left’s agenda for a generation.
For every speech Biden gives touting the historic nature of his nomination, every pablum-filled liberal think piece you read declaring Biden a warrior for gender and racial equality, every talking head overstating the progress Democrats like Biden have made, remember that he actively obstructed that progress in a move that Democrats today would castigate as racist bigotry.
Joe Biden doesn’t care about progress for black women, he cares about appeasing the radicals in the Democrat Party who are trying to set themselves up to have more power and more ability to inflict their dangerous so-called “progressive” ideology on the American people.
