Past presidents have not had to announce that they were going to appoint white males to the Supreme Court; it's what everyone expected them to do because white males were considered the only "qualified" candidates. Many people, men, women, people of color, etc., could, given an appropriate rubric, be considered the "best" candidate for a Supreme Court vacancy, but we know that that's not how life works.
I've gotten really tired of people saying, "Political, political, political, pandering, etc." When have choices not been? Heck, was the opposition against Merrick Garland because he wasn't the best candidate, or did the Republicans simply want to insult him, but more importantly, the president who nominated him? (Which is also why Kavanaugh was the pick after Gorsuch; Garland had been his boss.)
What they're really saying, to my hearing, is that no black woman could possibly be equal to or greater than any white, male candidate, and by pledging to nominate a woman of color, that Biden is making SCOTUS blatantly political, and racial, to boot.
He isn't. People fought hard against Clarence Thomas because he WASN'T "the best qualified candidate" among many choices, and he had a demonstrated history of sexual harassment. What people were either too afraid or too polite to say is that he had a history of disrespecting black women while revering white women. Few senators wanted to be considered racist, so they backed Thomas regardless because when given the choice between favoring someone black or favoring a female, they dissed the woman. . It wasn't that he was nominated by a Republican; it was who he was, in the same way that Brett Kavanaugh had demonstrated alcohol issues, sexual harassment claims against him by MORE than one woman, and had major debts that were mysteriously settled for him.
In this case, the Republican Senate, which has already pledged to work against the Democratic agenda "just because," is all ready to manufacture reasons why any of Biden's picks can't be supported. That he has announced that it will be a black woman has simply given them an even juicier target. Black competence is already anathema to most of those jerks. Black female competence is a threat they're not ready to face.
