As Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson gains support for her bid to become the first black woman to serve on the Supreme Court, Democrats are still debating a hugely complex and weighty topic: how to talk about race in America.
It’s a topic many Democrats prefer to avoid, according to strategists and activists who expressed a range of views and emotions during days-long conversations about Jackson’s rough treatment at the confirmation hearings last week.
“When racial issues come up, Democrats get scared,” said Rashad Robinson, the president of the nonprofit Color of Change. He lamented that President Biden and the Senate Democrats had not condemned Republicans more forcefully for what he said were racist attacks on Jackson’s track record and identity.
“The White House needs to take these fights,” Robinson told us. “Republicans will weaponize race and racism to achieve their goals, but Democrats don’t elevate racial justice.”
The criticism, largely but not exclusively from activists on the left, exposes a longstanding division within the Democratic Party over how to address one of the deepest and often ugliest rifts in American politics. And it comes as Republicans try to rattle Democratic candidates by associating them with critical race theory, a concept Democrats say is being dragged out of academic obscurity to be used as a racist dog whistle.
White House allies – who declined to comment on the record – say they are proud of the way Jackson treated himself during the hearings, and are aware of wider political interests. But they say it’s up to activists, not political leaders, to lead the fight for racial progress.
“Race is always on the agenda,” said Donna Brazile, former acting head of the Democratic National Committee, which informally advises the White House on Jackson’s confirmation.
“But look, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris can’t put out the flames that have been burning for over 200 years,” Brazile added. Racism, she said, “is a flame that doesn’t go out.”
‘You really can’t say or do anything’
One of the most polarizing moments from last week’s hearings was when Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz harassed Jackson over the curriculum of Georgetown Day School, a progressive private school in Washington where the judge is a board member. (Our colleague Erica Green wrote a nice article about the reaction of the school.)
As aides showed blown-up pages behind Cruz from “Antiracist Baby,” a book by Ibram X. Kendi, the senator asked, “Do you agree with this book being taught with children that babies are racist?”
For many Democratic women, especially black women, such exchanges were outrageous. It’s a sign, several said, of how women are often treated with disrespect in male-dominated institutions.
“So many of us have been in that space where you really can’t say or do anything,” said Karen Finney, a Democratic strategist who is biracial. “It was bullying and it made people angry.”
Brazile said, “She was constantly giving them the respect they wouldn’t give her.” But, she added, “when you go through that glass, you find you have wounds.”
On the left a popular nominee
Those close to the White House point to months of painstaking work by Democrats to build a coalition of civil society groups to defend Biden’s candidate, fully expecting whatever black woman he chooses to attack. of Republican attacks.
During the hearings, the Democratic National Committee and the White House released dozens of messages highlighting positive coverage of Jackson and accusing Republicans of being disrespectful.
Jaime Harrison, the DNC chairman, tweeted the proceedings live, cheering along at moments like Soliloquy by Senator Cory Booker in honor of Jackson’s nominationwhich became a viral sensation on the left.
White House allies are also pointing to polls showing broad public support for Jackson’s confirmation as a sign that the administration’s strategy is working.
On Wednesday, the latest Marquette Law School poll found that 66 percent of American adults said they support Jackson’s nomination. The poll also found that the percentage of Americans who said Jackson was suitable for the job had improved during the hearings.
Other polls, such as a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center in early March, found that black Americans, in particular, think it’s important to have a black woman on the Supreme Court. Seventy-two percent said it would be extremely or very important, including half who said it would be extremely important.
Attack, retreat or try both?
Ask Democrats how to respond to Republicans’ attacks on racial affairs and they shatter into a kaleidoscope of perspectives.
Some want the Democratic Party to fully embrace diversity as its “superpower,” as Robinson put it. Others are urging Democrats to adopt 1990s-style triangulation — making a show of denouncing activist slogans such as “defund the police,” as Biden did during his State of the Union address. speech.
Some, mainly party insiders who don’t want to speak officially, would rather turn the topic to so-called kitchen table issues like infrastructure, jobs and health care, where they think the Democrats are stronger.
Others say Democrats can do both.
Finney, who has advised top party officials on discussing race, said Democrats couldn’t ignore Republican attacks — and that they needed to learn how to turn the tables on the GOP by talking about “shared values” of fairness and equality. opportunities .
“The message should be: Everyone deserves respect and a chance to succeed, and part of what makes America great is that we are constantly working to improve our democracy and learn from our mistakes,” Finney said.
William Galston, a Brookings Institution scholar who wrote an influential treatise with Elaine Kamarck in 1989 on the Democratic Party’s problem with swinging voters, “The Politics of Evasion,” said it made sense for the party to “turn back.” to more defensible lines” on certain topics, including critical race theory.
In a recent essay reiterating some of their 1989 themes, Galston and Kamarck wrote, “Most Americans prefer to be taught both the positive and negative sides of our history, including slavery and racial discrimination, but they will do not tolerate pedagogy that they see as dividing students by racial and ethnic lines.”
3 Things You Need To Know About Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Nomination
1. Her confirmation is almost certain. After a series of crushing hearings, Democrats are united behind Judge Jackson. The support of Senator Joe Manchin III indicated that all 50 Senate Democrats would support her nomination, which the Republicans could not stop.
Withdrawing from cultural battles rather than responding to them represents an outdated point of view, argue a younger generation of activists. Inspiring voters of color and encouraging them to vote at higher rates, they say, is more important to the Democratic Party’s future than trying to cling to a disappearing white majority.
“Honestly, I think they’re bad at math,” said Steve Phillips, a prominent progressive Democratic donor, referring to party insiders. “They discount color voters and put a higher premium on supposedly convincing swinging white voters.”
He added: “They are limited by their fear of criticism from people who won’t vote for them anyway.”
GOP lawmakers in Georgia are (for now) back on an election law.
This week, a bipartisan group of local election officials in Georgia spoke out against a comprehensive election bill that Republicans accelerated in the state’s General Assembly, culminating in a two-hour hearing Monday in Atlanta.
Now Republicans in the state Senate appear to have heeded their concerns, reducing the bill to just one provision: a measure that would allow voters to take two hours off to vote in person early. (At the moment, they can only do this on Election Day.)
The stripped-down version, only a page and a half long, is markedly different from the original bill passed by the House this month. That 40-page piece of legislation would have broadened the Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s reach on potential electoral crimes; limited private funding of elections; authorized partisan pollsters; and established new requirements for tracking absentee ballots as they are verified and counted.
By eliminating nearly the entire bill at this later stage, Republicans in the state Senate appeared to be setting up a showdown with their counterparts in the State House, who had made it clear they wanted a much larger bill. But State Representative James Burchett, the bill’s sponsor, appeared Tuesday before the Senate committee currently debating the bill and appeared to agree with the changes.
As Republicans in the State House try to reinstate and re-vote some of the electoral provisions in the bill, they face a tight calendar: The Georgia legislature wraps up the year in less than a week.
So for now, at least it seems that the bipartisan criticism from local election officials was enough to convince lawmakers of an election law — and perhaps even spur them to modestly expand access to vote in a critical battleground.
But of course it’s not done yet, and the Georgian legislature has shown in the past that it can turn quickly. Stay tuned.
Thank you for reading. See you tomorrow.
— Blake & Lea
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