Biden should nominate Judge J. Michelle Childs to the Supreme Court.
Who is she?? She's the one who didn't go to law school at Harvard or Yale.
She went to the University of South Carolina Law School.
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| Judge Childs |
A Washington Post columnist, Paul Waldman, wrote about why Democrats risk a major shellacking in 2022. He was addressing the brand image of Democrats. They are the party associated with the triumph of the elites. Democrats aren't really for the little guy, and the public knows it. They are the party of highly-educated experts who tell the little guy how to live.
Democrats will have proven unable to address the fundamental inequities in the American system that contribute to the widely shared — and correct — feeling that our system is rigged in favor of those with wealth and power.Wealth and power compound through inheritance and privilege passed down to children. Ambitious parents work to get their kids into an Ivy or Stanford or MIT and a few other brand-name schools. It is confirmation of success in the Darwinian struggle for status. Yale or Harvard law schools grease the wheels for the climb up the ladders of power and money. It's not what-you-know, it's who-you-know. From Harvard and Yale law, to a judicial clerkship, to a good law firm, to judgeships on higher and higher courts. We consider people on that track "superbly qualified." At the time of Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death, all nine Supreme Court justices attended either Harvard or Yale Law Schools.
Biden has an opportunity. Nominate Judge Childs.
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| Yale Law School |
Biden's bigger opportunity is to use this appointment to redefine affirmative action and diversity, by making it not about race but about the narrow-minded elitism of the privileged. He made a necessary campaign decision in promising to nominate a Black female Supreme Court justice. That promise backfires now that he is president. He appeared to undermine the qualifications of his nominee since he pre-judged that he was looking for a Black woman. Race and gender should be incidental in affirmative action. One notices race within the entirety of life experience. Biden's campaign pledge set him up for the criticism we are hearing from Republicans appealing to White grievance. We were excluded! How unfair! How discriminatory! How come everybody's always picking on me?
Biden can change the frame. He can praise Harvard and Yale Law Schools. Sure. Why not? It shows that he isn't acting out of malice. He can--indeed must--praise the potential nominees who have those Ivy League credentials. He put potential nominees like Harvard College-Harvard Law Judge Jackson into the public eye. He must not disrespect them. By acknowledging the elite tracking system he sets it up for his main point. It is too narrow, elitist, and most important, built on a false premise. Biden can tell the simple truth, understood by every sane and honest graduate of Harvard and Yale: There are a great many extraordinarily smart, able people who went to school elsewhere. This includes people who attended community colleges, night schools, public schools, schools no one has heard of, and no school at all. Elite schools have their dummies, too, but his message isn't about their bad apples. His key message is that there are a great many pathways to superb qualification for any job, and Scranton Joe Biden understands that.
Biden could blow this. He must not imply he is accepting second-best to get diversity or that diversity was his goal. That would ruin the message. He must insist he is taking the very, very best, damn it. Diversity is a consequence, not the cause. People will get it. You are nominating a Black, female, graduate of a public university in South Carolina. That is diversity. Take the win.
Joe Biden wants to be seen as the defender of the little guy, the person without all the elite credentials. Good. So defend the little guy lacking all the elite credentials. Say it: The best candidate for the Supreme Court happened to go to law school at the University of South Carolina. It is a good message.
9 comments:
Biden is right to use this opportunity to demonstrate true equal opportunity. I think I agree with Peter that, to my way of thinking, it is at least equally important to get off the Ivy road and demonstrate that great legal minds have been educated elsewhere. My brother-in-law has taught at the University of South Florida for decades (where Childs got her BA) and that even trumps where she went to law school. Diversity covers many realms; recently, the Ivy realm has squeezed out all else. (Funny, we think we're a WASP country but there hasn't been a White Protestant on SCOTUS for decades; it's majority Catholic for god's sake. Hey, maybe Biden needs to stand up for WASPs everywhere?) Anyway, I'm just saying I'm rooting for Childs not for her lived Black femaleness but rather for her college experience at USF, and her further education in South Carolina.
President Biden won't choose the candidate. It will be chosen for him by consensus in the Democratic Party, and more specifically the Black Caucus. I hope they pick the most Progressive social justice warrior, someone that will make Republicans heads explode en masse.
Who gives a (you know what to do here) what Republicans think? It's highly likely they will oppose whomever is picked, with Collins making little bird noises right up to the point she votes no.
On the same day he reveals the candidate, he should also announce he's adding three more seats.
Judge Childs is probably the "best" candidate for the new SCOTUS position, yes. "Best" here means best politically, however. Best for the nation? Perhaps. Best as in among the most qualified, per traditional assessments of merit? Statistically, very unlikely.
Ironically, it's Harvard and Yale which have done the most to reset the longtime dynamics Mr. Sage decries. Justice Sotomayor thanked Princeton undergrad and Yale Law explicitly for the affirmative action without which she would have had no chance at admission.
Harvard and Yale Law have taken it a step further and are scorning the undergraduate school, grades there, and especially the LSAT scores which comprised the traditional core for law admissions. Judge Childs may actually hail from a more competitive background.
Sean Hannity said, “There’s never been a president (before Joe Biden) who made race and gender the defining factor” for a Supreme Court nomination. His deliberate lie has been thoroughly debunked (https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/presidents-factored-race-gender-ethnicity-scotus-picks/story?id=82585364)
But that doesn’t stop Republicans from parroting the disinformation. They accuse him of playing identity politics, as if they weren’t equally guilty of it.
By promoting diversity, Biden is appealing to his liberal base and by opposing it, Republicans are appealing to their white nationalist base. The fact is that all the candidates being considered are qualified – that’s the primary consideration. In spite of all the feigned outrage from white-wing media, race and gender are ancillary. Childs would be a welcome improvement to recent Supreme Court nominees and is certainly more qualified than Brett "I like beer" Kavanaugh, Yale or no Yale.
Let’s not forget that GWB intended to nominate his personal attorney Harriet Miers who is still unrated to this day and hailed from a non Ivy League school. They call the man at the top ‘The President’ because he gets to decide who he wants not who you want.
Agreeing with Rick, on about everything. It's important to note that quite possibly President Biden owes his victory to James Clyburn and his endorsement before th he South Carolina Primary, which winning rescued a Campaign about to sink. And from what I've read, Judge Childs is eminently qualified to be appointed to SCOTUS, certainly far more qualified than Amy Coney Barrett, and probably better qualified than Kegger Kavanaugh, and possibly Neal Gorsuch.
edc.pers—
Upon what facts or information do you rely to you assert that Judge Childs is “certainly far more qualified” than Justice Barrett, “probably” than Kavanaugh, and “possibly” Gorsuch? It goes without saying that you wouldn’t offer such nuanced specificity in a rarefied subject-area merely from knee-jerk partisanship. Please, then, your rationale.
Every time Hannity lies an angel gets its wings.
Diversity is a feature of this country. The republicans think it's a bug.
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