President Obama on Wednesday nominated the widely liked and indisputably highly-qualified Merrick Garland, chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has doubled down on his refusal to allow a hearing or a vote on the nomination, citing the non-existent “Biden Rule” and using the preposterous claim that the people should have a say, as if they did not know they were voting for a four-year term when they gave Obama five million more votes than Mitt Romney in November 2012, and as if two-thirds of Americans polled are not telling the Senate to do its job and give the nomination fair consideration.
Many supporters of the President are unhappy that he did not choose someone else. Dr. E. Faye Williams, with whom I had the honor to spent election night 2008 in Mark Thompson’s SiriusXM studio, issued a statement supporting the president. She says in part:
I don’t want a Black woman to be bashed and battered by a group of men who don’t even come close to having the credentials a Black woman nominee has. We already know they wouldn’t confirm her-no matter what. When a Black woman goes to the Senate for consideration, I want her to have a real and fair chance of succeeding on her merits and not denied because a group of insecure men can’t deal with the fact that a brilliant President who happens to be a Black man has made the nomination.
The president is in a high-stakes struggle with the increasingly nihilistic Republicans. His and Garland’s conduct yesterday in the Rose Garden was exemplary.