Just my two cents on the Clarence Thomas hearings

[DemocratSinceBirth]

I was traveling through the south and listening to the hearings on NPR. Bush Pere knew exactly what he was doing when he appointed an African American arch conservative juror to replace an African American liberal juror. He knew he could split the Democratic party and African Americans and turn them against each other and themselves.. He even came out on the White House lawn to tout polls that showed African Americans favored Thomas' appointment. Look it up. Of course with the benefit of hindsight all progressives, regardless of color, see his appointment as a colossal mistake.


In retrospect it would have been better for the Judiciary Committee to have let Hill's corroborating witnesses testify. What we can not allow is for Donald Trump to appoint Clarence Thomas' replacement.

[cannabis_flower]

1. It was no mistake

The outcome was exactly what Bush Sr. wanted.

[sarabelle]

24. Lived through this and lived through the Crime Bill. You just shouldn't try to rewrite history,

It was a time when he would have been raked over the coal for seeming to deny another black man one of the most esteemed position in civil service. Many blacks supported Thomas, I wasn't one of them but I understand the sentiments on both sides.

Same with the Crime bill (which Bernie also signed). Many blacks in inner city and poor neighborhood wanted something to be done to protect their neighborhoods, their children, their elderly who were being victimized by drug runners and other hoodlums in the streets. The Bill had already been vetoed by Clinton twice. Activists were able to get quite a few important measures added to the Bill. And the Congress was ready to override Clinton's next veto and threatened to pass a Bill without the measures many had fought for so Clinton signed the Bill. Like so many other ill-bills, many hoped to be able to make amendments to remove measures that blacks felt were harmful to them. But elections have consequences...and here we are. Scandals side-track a lot of legislation.

Context is everything! We must fight for the here and now and not allow the past to do anything to thwart our best intentions now. We are still stronger together. Get the right "Bill signer" in place and hold his or her feet to the fire.

Look how this has worked for the GOP. Trump had no other original idea except to ban Muslims. The tax bill was waiting for signature, a SCOTUS appointments had been stolen from Obama and was waiting and a second SCOTUS nominee was sitting on the Heritage Foundation desk. Trump has been their "signer-in-chief."l Most everything else his administration has either fought him on or just ignored his orders.

Don't fall for the stuff that doesn't really matter again, like "her e-mails" "her speeches to Wall Street" "support for her husband's crime bill." It's all about where we are now and who can best win to save the nation.

[LongtimeAZDem]

2. Biden had to make a call; there had been witnesses on both sides, and there were credibility

questions on some of them. The longer Biden kept it going, the more it looked like a partisan prosecution of an African American. He brought it to a close, and voted against Thomas.

I'm glad he reached out to Hill to express sympathy for what she went through, but I have never believed that he owed her a personal apology.

[underthematrix]

4. Thank you. But I would discourage white Democrats from trying to use

African Americans to make the case against Joe Biden. Black women love love love love love love love love love Joe Biden. He was Obama's wingman which means he has earned our trust. I respect every candidate but my heart and vote belongs to, as my older says, Uncle Joe and Auntie Dr. Jill.

[LongtimeAZDem]

5. You really should say all of this in a new thread; I think you bring an important perspective

[UniteFightBack]

11. Well all the black folks I know do...just today my boss was like NO we need some experience in

there and fast and she does not talk politics much but she said she is just so disgusted she had to bring it up.

[underthematrix]

15. Yes Biden is gonna have to put our government back together and that will require a team

of experts with impeccable ethics and credentials.

[mcar]

14. Thank you for this perspective

[BlueFlorida]

19. +1000 nt

[Skya Rhen]

21. I am another, among millions of black women, that loves Joe Biden too - this will not put a dent in

our longstanding support for him. Rest assured about that!

[underthematrix]

22. And there it is.

[watoos]

3. Well said,

I watched the hearings and I believed Anita Hill, she was a good witness. Clarence Thomas was a lying piece of shit. He doesn't get as much notice on the SC because he doesn't do oral arguments, but he is as far right as it gets. His wife was a big Tea Party organizer, she is still involved.

[yaesu]

6. Clarence Thomas was a YUGE mistake & the all male committee backed a dud. nt

[oldsoftie]

7. I doubt Thomas will retire before trump is long gone. nt

[Haggis for Breakfast]

10. Has Thomas said anything about retirement ?

[oldsoftie]

20. Not that i've heard; the OP says "we cant let trump pick thomas replacement"

[BlueMTexpat]

8. I remember these hearings well.

The thing was that the ABA did not consider Thomas to be "well qualified" for the US Supreme Court. https://www.nytimes.com/1991/08/28/us/bar-association-splits-on-fitness-of-thomas-for-the-supreme-court.html

The NAACP also opposed the nomination of Thomas. https://www.jstor.org/stable/41067770?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

When one considers the lion of civil rights, Thurgood Marshall, that Thomas was named to replace, his appointment was literally a slap in the face of the AA community.

Considering the ABA ruling, the NAACP opposition, and the patently ridiculous appointment of Thomas to Marshall's post (as callous a selection by Bush I as that of the idiot Dan Quayle as Veep), Biden should have been treading a LOT more carefully and paying a lot more attention. The fact that he didn't - and that he literally "dissed" Anita Hill - STILL rankles with me. As it does with her. And I, like the Guardian, do not understand why he still has not given her a real apology. This same article also mentions other troubling characteristics of Biden's role in the Senate, which some seem to have airbrushed from their consciousness. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/26/anita-hill-apology-joe-biden

“America’s coming back like we used to be,” Biden said of his run. “Ethical, straight, tell ’em the truth. Supporting our allies, all those good things.” It was Make America Great Again, delivered from a different old white man, with a slightly more patrician east coast accent – harking back to a past that never was, and ignoring or, perhaps, tacitly embracing the injustices that the real past contained.

Several of those injustices have been perpetrated by Biden himself, or exacerbated by his career in the Senate, in which he worked steadily to push the Democratic party to the right, championed the 1994 crime bill that needlessly and sadistically accelerated mass incarceration, and cultivated a chummy, shoulder-clapping consensus with Republicans.

Among those injustices were the 1991 confirmation hearings of Clarence Thomas, now one of the most fiercely conservative justices on the supreme court. As chair of the Senate judiciary committee, Biden led the hearings into accusations of gross sexual harassment by Thomas that had been unearthed from Anita Hill, a lawyer who had once been Thomas’ employee at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). Under Biden’s leadership, the committee subjected Hill to a humiliating public ordeal in which she was belittled, condescended to, smeared and disbelieved.

It was a spectacle of cruelty in which Biden and his all-male committee colleagues confirmed the dark suspicions of many American woman, on live TV: that men could harass and humiliate them with impunity. Hill was harangued in the press, which concocted a bizarre and evidence-free theory, encouraged by Republicans, that she had invented her accusations against Thomas because she was sexually obsessed with him. Biden and his cohort confirmed Thomas anyway.

The Kavanaugh spectacle that we witnessed more recently where another strong and beautiful woman was publicly disrespected and hounded and still literally has to fear for her life STILL did not seem to make a meaningful impression on Joe.

So we who remember and are also still unhappy about the terrible misogyny that Hillary underwent in 2016 and that which other women candidates are undergoing RIGHT NOW will continue to rank Biden WAY down in our preferences.

[DURHAM D]

9. Thank you. nt

[loves_da_dems]

12. Well put

Why is it so hard to believe the women, they never lie about such things. So now we have a sexual harasser and a serial rapist on the SC. Why can't we impeach Thomas, and Kavanaugh?

[BlueMTexpat]

13. It is basically not an easy

thing to do. It is certainly impossible considering the current composition of the Senate.

Here is one overview: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impeachment_investigations_of_United_States_federal_judges

[loves_da_dems]

16. I'm confused

Why is the Senate involved?

No mention of the Senate in the link? Sorry, I guess I just don't get it.


Usually, misbehavior is brought to the attention of a legislator, who may call upon the House Judiciary Committee to investigate. After a review of the Committee's findings, the Committee acts as a sheriff or prosecutor and may bring charges against the individual. In which case, the entire House takes on the roll of jury and votes as to his guilt or innocence of "high crimes and misdemeanors". If found guilty by a majority vote of the legislature, the individual is removed from office. That does not make him guilty of a crime, he merely loses his job. The individual may or may not then stand trial in a civil court as well, before a jury of his peers. Often the two procedures occur together. In the civil trial he may be punished with fines and/or incarceration.

[DesertRat]

17. Did you try Ctrl-F?

I searched and found "Senate" mentioned 57 times in that wiki link. Welcome to DU, loves_da_dems.

[BlueMTexpat]

23. A federal impeachment process always begins

in the US House of Representatives.

But the actual trial is held in the Senate. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impeachment#Process

At the federal level, the impeachment process is a two-step procedure. The House of Representatives must first pass, by a simple majority of those present and voting, articles of impeachment, which constitute the formal allegation or allegations. Upon passage, the defendant has been "impeached". Next, the Senate tries the accused. In the case of the impeachment of a president, the Chief Justice of the United States presides over the proceedings. For the impeachment of any other official, the Constitution is silent on who shall preside, suggesting that this role falls to the Senate's usual presiding officer, the President of the Senate who is also the Vice President of the United States.

In theory at least, as President of the Senate, the Vice President of the United States could preside over their own impeachment, although legal theories suggest that allowing a defendant to be the judge in their own case would be a blatant conflict of interest. If the Vice President did not preside over an impeachment (of anyone besides the President), the duties would fall to the President pro tempore of the Senate.

To convict an accused, "the concurrence of two thirds of the members present" is required. Conviction removes the defendant from office. Following conviction, the Senate may vote to further punish the individual by barring him or her from holding future federal office, elected or appointed. Conviction by the Senate does not bar criminal prosecution. Even after an accused has left office, it is possible to disqualify the person from future office or from certain emoluments of his prior office (such as a pension). If there is no charge for which a two-thirds majority of the senators present vote "guilty", the defendant is acquitted and no punishment is imposed.

Can you actually believe that the current GOP Senate, especially with Pence as presiding officer, would vote to impeach ANY Republican?

[loves_da_dems]

27. Thanks, that clears it up

[shanny]

18. Well said. Thank you.

[robbedvoter]

25. Biden was to Thomas what Lindsay Graham was to Kavanaugh

but from the other party. As long as Thomas is there, the issue is painfully relevant.

[Kahuna7]

26. That hearing was brutal. Nobody could control those gop questioners...

They can't be controlled then. They can't be controlled now. And we're talking Snarlin' Arlen, Hatch and Grassely who were all totally vicious towards Hill and would have been equally if not more vicious towards her witnesses. Nothing but more outlandish abuse would have occurred.

[Skya Rhen]

28. And no one, who watched the hearing, can say that Biden was nasty towards her -

He was the only one that spoke to her decently - which is very important when it comes to humanity.

[honest.abe]

29. Also public opinion was strongly in favor of Thomas according to polling at the time.

After three days of televised inquiry into an accusation that Clarence Thomas had sexually harassed an aide, Americans still favor the judge's confirmation to the Supreme Court by a ratio of 2 to 1, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll.

The poll, taken Sunday night, shows that a majority of Americans remain skeptical of the accusations made against Judge Thomas by his former aide, Anita F. Hill. More than half of those surveyed said they believed that the account of sexual harassment offered by Ms. Hill, now a law professor at the University of Oklahoma, was "probably not true." The poll was taken after the Sunday afternoon testimony of four witnesses who said Professor Hill had spoken to them about her experiences with Judge Thomas.

Asked whose account they believed more, twice as many of those who were polled said Judge Thomas's as said Professor Hill's. There was little difference in response between men and women, or between blacks and whites. But Republicans were more inclined to believe Judge Thomas than were Democrats. An Embarrassing Spectacle

https://www.nytimes.com/1991/10/15/us/the-thomas-nomination-most-in-national-survey-say-judge-is-the-more-believable.html

This must have made Biden's situation even more difficult. I think its very unfair to bash him now for what happened back then. Clearly it was a complicated messy situation.