Thank God he’s no longer on the Judiciary Committee
by digby
It was almost 25 years ago when Joe Biden, as chairman of the Judiciary Committee presided over the Clarence Thomas hearings. He was so deferential to him and so obtuse that it required a group of women marching over from the House of Representatives to force him to hold a real hearing. Everyone knows the result — 25 years of the most conservative court in American history, a court which has Biden’s fingerpints all over it. Let’s just say his judgment about these matters isn’t exactly stellar.
So hopefully President Obama will weigh his advice very carefully and listen to others as well:
Echoing some recent Republican arguments about judicial nominations, Vice President Joe Biden on Thursday suggested that President Barack Obama will not nominate a staunch liberal to replace Justice Antonin Scalia at a time when the ideological balance of the Supreme Court is up in the air.
In the wide-ranging interview that often turned provocative, especially when he complained about the Democratic presidential race he decided to skip, the vice president flatly said an Obama nominee in the outspoken progressive mold of former Justice William Brennan is “not going to happen.” Biden, who fiercely defended legislative prerogatives as the longtime chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, also volunteered that “it was never intended for the president to pick whoever he wants and that’s it.” And he suggested the Senate has the right to consider not only a nominee’s philosophy, but how much the nomination would change the court, a common GOP talking point these days.
“This is a potentially gigantic game-changer,” Biden told a POLITICO reporter and a Washington Post reporter during a sitdown on Air Force Two. “My advice is the only way we get someone on the Court now or even later is to do what was done in the past.”
Biden mentioned two examples of Republican nominees who were confirmed in times of flux because they weren’t overtly ideological conservatives — current swing Justice Anthony Kennedy, “who wasn’t a conservative’s conservative,” and former Justice David Souter, who often ended up voting with the Court’s liberal wing. He said Obama also intends to nominate “someone who has demonstrated they have an open mind, someone who doesn’t have a specific agenda,” even though Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said he shouldn’t bother nominating anyone in his last year.Biden said he hasn’t met with Obama to discuss the nomination yet, and he refused to discuss specific candidates like D.C. Circuit Judge Sri Srinivasan, who was unanimously confirmed by the Senate in 2013. But he said there are plenty of available candidates without reputations as liberal advocates.
“There are a whole hell of a lot of people who Republicans have already voted for who fall into that category, and also people they haven’t voted for yet,” said Biden, who noted that he has presided over more judicial nominations than anyone in history other than the late Sen. James Eastland of Mississippi.
This is the same guy who went behind Harry Reid’s back to make the 2011 budget deal even worse than it already was and who continuously advised the president to keep chasing the wingnuts over the cliff. Let’s hope the President has learned from that mistake.
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