Joe Biden is running away with the Democratic nomination thanks to a full-court press by the party establishment. But he understands who really runs the party.
During the Sunday night’s sleepy (and perhaps final) Democratic primary debate, Biden pledged both to nominate a black woman to the Supreme Court and to pick a woman (race not specified) as his running mate.
A lot of normal people watching likely thought to themselves something like, Ah, there’s that political correctness thing again, or, Ah, there’s Biden pandering again.
But both of those statements get it wrong. This isn’t just some trend toward the politically correct, or toward sensitivity and inclusion. This is the new prevailing ideology, and it’s called social justice. It’s being taught in schools, on college campuses, in Hollywood, and in the news media.
Biden’s foremost concern in picking a Supreme Court justice or a vice president will not be her job qualifications, but her claim to grievance, oppression, and victimhood.
Why a black woman for the Supreme Court? She will undoubtedly be selected based on having attended Yale or Harvard, just like every other justice. So what would differentiate her?
For the same reason that Justice Sonia Sotomayor said that “our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging” and that she believed “a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not [will] reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”
They would have you believe that there’s a unique, unobtainable lens through which they see the world and that by nature of it belonging to a marginalized (oppressed) person, it is therefore given extra moral authority.
Bernie Sanders understands the ideology just as well. It’s why he declared at a separate debate earlier this month (back when he was performing much stronger) that the United States is “a racist society from top to bottom.”
Most of the Democratic Party’s base is infected with this same type of thinking. The only thing that matters is elevating those who claim to have been oppressed, aggrieved, and victimized on account of their gender, race, or sexuality.
Biden’s resurrection is framed as though it’s some triumph for the centrists in the party. It’s not. He has since proven that he’s governed by the same social justice rules as the rest.
