Joe Biden Promises to Nominate Black Woman to Supreme Court for ‘Representation’

Former Vice President Joe Biden promised at the Democrat debate on CNN and Univision Sunday night that he would nominate a “black woman” to the U.S. Supreme Court if he were elected president in November.

Asked what he would do to fight for women’s rights, Biden said: “Number one, I committed that if I’m elected president, to have an opportunity to appoint someone to the courts who will be — I will appoint the first black woman to the courts.”

Biden appeared to be referring to the Supreme Court.

He continued: “It’s required that they have representation now. It’s long overdue.”

Biden seemed to be endorsing the idea that the primary qualification for a Supreme Court justice would be race, gender, and the ability to “represent” a demographic section of the population.

That stance reprises what President Barack Obama said to Planned Parenthood in 2007: “[W]e need somebody who’s got the heart — the empathy — to recognize what it’s like to be a young teenage mom. The empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old–and that’s the criteria by which I’ll be selecting my judges.”

His first appointee was Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who infamously said that a “wise Latina” could reach “a better conclusion” than a white male judge in certain cases, based on “the richness of her experiences” rather than the law.

Biden then added: “Secondly, if I’m elected president, my Cabinet, my administration will look like the country, and I commit that I will, in fact, appoint a woman to be vice president. There are a number of women qualified to be president tomorrow. I would pick a woman to be my vice president.”

His rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), said he would probably do the same.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He earned an A.B. in Social Studies and Environmental Science and Public Policy from Harvard College, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.