Juan Williams: Biden’s promises on women are a big deal

Here are Trump-supporting women on Joe Biden’s promise to name a woman as his vice president.

“It feels part contrived, part consolation prize,” for women defeated by Biden for the Democrats’ presidential nomination, Kellyanne Conway told The Washington Post.

“Saying you’ll choose ‘a woman’ instead of naming a specific woman is wildly patronizing,” tweeted Karol Markowicz of the New York Post.

{mosads}Their dismissive view of Biden’s pledge to name a woman as his running mate is a hint of their likely distaste for his promise to nominate a black woman to the Supreme Court.

No black woman has ever been considered for the court, much less served there. Of the 114 people who have been on the bench since 1790, 108 have been white men. Over those 230 years, the exceptions have been two black men and four women. Three of those women are white and one, Sonia Sotomayor, is Hispanic.

For most of my life, the idea of a woman as vice president or a black woman sitting on the Supreme Court amounted to a progressive’s pipe dream.

The core of the GOP argument is that Biden is guilty of pandering to women instead of seeking the best qualified person for the job.

The air goes out of that putdown with a look at how President Trump handed the vice presidency and two court nominations to white men.

Trump’s Supreme Court nominees both came from a list provided by the conservative Federalist Society. Clearly, a consistent conservative political leaning — not simply top judicial qualifications — has been the determining factor for Trump.

The only time a woman was named as the Republican vice-presidential nominee — Sarah Palin in 2008 — few argued that her resumé made her the best qualified person for the job.

Palin was selected because the Alaska governor was a fresh voice and she generated excitement. But her lack of experience in national politics and foreign affairs — in other words, a lack of qualifications — became a burden on Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) unsuccessful run for the White House.

Contrast Palin’s nomination with the female Democrats likely to be considered this time. Just look at the record of national political achievements from the four U.S. senators who ran for the nomination – Sens. Kamala Harris (Calif.), Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.).

And beyond those political leaders, there are other supremely qualified women for the job among Democrats, beginning with Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), Sen. Tammy Baldwin (Wis.) and Rep. Val Demings (D-Fla.).

The same is true of the wealth of well-qualified black women for Biden to nominate to the Supreme Court.

Biden has an array to put on his shortlist. It begins with Harris, who previously served as District Attorney of San Francisco and Attorney General of California. But it also includes Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and Justice Leondra Kruger of the California Supreme Court.

Biden could even go out of the box with a political star with a Harvard Law School degree — former first lady Michelle Obama.

The only lack of ‘qualification’ for these women is that they are not men.

And the U.S. has never had a woman serve as president or vice-president.

Keep in mind that the majority of the voters in at least the last five presidential elections have been female, and most of them cast their ballots for the Democrat.

A majority of women of color voted for the Democrat in each election — including 94 percent of black women in 2016.

But in all five elections, a majority of white women voted for the Republican presidential candidate. However, in the most recent national elections, white women have been trending away from Republicans.

In 2016, white women voted for the GOP by 11 percentage points but in 2018 they voted for Republicans and Democrats in equal numbers — 49 percent for each party.

{mossecondads}Exit polls from those midterm races found 59 percent of all women voted for the Democrat in that year’s congressional races compared to just 40 percent of women who voted Republican.

Note that when Democrats won those 41 seats, most were won by female candidates. The Democrats’ class of 2018 in Congress introduced the nation to a new generation of female leaders like Reps. Katie Porter (Calif.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), Elissa Slotkin (Mich.) and Abigail Spanberger (Va.).

So far, Biden’s primary campaign has succeeded by attracting the same suburban, white, moderate female voters who rewarded the Democrats with a House majority in 2018.

That why his promise to nominate a female vice president makes sense.

To use Biden’s famous hot-mic line from the Obama years, this is a “big f-in deal.” 

Juan Williams is an author, and a political analyst for Fox News Channel.