As he struggled to survive the 2020 Democratic primary, now-US President Joe Biden made a striking pledge before voting began in heavily African American, must-win South Carolina: His first US Supreme Court appointment would be a black woman.
On Thursday, with his poll numbers reaching new lows and his party panicking about this year’s midterms, Biden turned again to the Democratic Party’s most steadfast voters and reiterated his vow to replace retiring US Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer with the first black woman to serve on the court.
The striking promise is a reflection of black women’s critical role in the Democratic Party and their growing influence in society.
Photo: AP
It is also a recognition that black women have been marginalized in US politics for centuries and that the time has come to right the imbalance of a court made up entirely of white men for almost two centuries, a change that Biden on Thursday said is “long overdue.”
Black women are the most loyal Democrats — 93 percent of them voted for Biden in the 2020 US presidential election, AP VoteCast data showed.
It is also black women’s reliability as Democratic voters that makes it so important for the party to respond to their priorities and keep them in the fold, said Nadia Brown, a professor of government at Georgetown University.
“Democrats know black women are going to turn out for them so they have everything to lose if they don’t do this,” Brown said.
Black women turned out to vote for Biden in greater numbers than for former US secreatry of state Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2016, and they were vital in Biden’s wins in states like Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
Overall, they made up 12 percent of Biden’s voters and reached even higher percentages in heavily African American states like Georgia, where they represented 35 percent of his support.
In that state, which Biden won by just over 12,000 votes, he earned the backing of 95 percent of black women.
Biden, in particular, owes black voters, and especially women, a debt from the primaries.
His campaign was on life support before South Carolina’s primary in late February 2020, when he secured the endorsement of US Representative James Clyburn, the “kingmaker” of the state’s Democratic political orbit, by pledging to select a black woman for the Supreme Court.
“His campaign was struggling,” Clyburn recalled on Thursday, citing Biden’s three straight losses in the early voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada. “This was quite frankly do or die for him, and I urged him to come out publicly for putting an African American woman on the Supreme Court.”
Biden already made a fundamentally important statement about the importance of black women in his coalition by selecting Kamala Harris as his vice president.
However, putting a black woman on the court is another historic step.
Former US president Ronald Reagan, in his 1980 presidential campaign, vowed to put the first woman on the Supreme Court and nominated Justice Sandra Day O’Connor once in office.
However, Biden’s pledge also responds to issues black women care about, said Glynda Carr, president of Higher Heights For America PAC, which advocates for black women in politics.
“Black women are very in tune with knowing the court is important to our daily lives,” said Carr, citing big cases on voting rights and abortion.
The decision is not just a win for black women, but for all voters concerned with ensuring that government reflects the actual population, said Tom Bonier, a Democratic data analyst.
It should rally Democrats of all races, he said, adding: “To the extent that Biden, at this point, is suffering from lower approval ratings, part of his challenge is just reassembling his coalition and reminding those voters who sent him to the White House why that vote mattered.”
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