Judge Jackson with President Joe Biden on the South Lawn of the White House on Friday, April 8, 2022: NAJ screen shot

The Big Picture –
By Glynn Wilson –

WASHINGTON, D.C. — If the long arc of history bends towards justice, it just took a major turn this week.

If Barack Obama was America’s political Jackie Robinson, the first African American president just as Robinson was the first Black player to make the major leagues in professional baseball, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is the Supreme Court’s Serena Williams, the first African American woman to serve on the court just as Williams was the first Black woman to win major titles in professional tennis.

Success in sports tends to precede success in politics and government.

“It has taken 232 years and 115 prior appointments for a Black woman to be selected to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States,” Jackson said in a celebratory address at the White House on Friday after the Senate voted 53-47 on Thursday to confirm President Joe Biden’s nomination to the high court. “But we’ve made it.”

“We’ve made it,” she said. “All of us.”

“In my family, it took just one generation to go from segregation to the Supreme Court of the United States. And it is an honor — the honor of a lifetime — for me to have this chance to join the Court, to promote the rule of law at the highest level, and to do my part to carry our shared project of democracy and equal justice under law forward, into the future.”

Vice President Kamala Harris, the first woman and African American Vice President, was absolutely beaming when she spoke just before Biden, a day after presiding over Jackson’s Senate confirmation vote. Harris said Jackson “will inspire generations of leaders.”

“Today is a good day, a day that history is going to remember,” President Biden said. “And in the years to come, they’re going to be proud of what we did.”

“This is going to let so much sun shine on so many young women, so many young Black women, so many minorities,” he added.

Former Senator Doug Jones, a Democrat from Birmingham, Alabama, who acted as sherpa to shepherd Jackson’s nomination through the labyrinth of the Senate confirmation process, was at the White House and had a chance to talk with President Biden, he told me in a text interview on Saturday.

“I was fortunate to have been in discussions with the President and others on the staff during the vetting process,” Jones said. “Once he, and he alone, made the selection, my focus was working with Judge Jackson and the confirmation team.”

“We met with the President again (Friday) following the ceremony,” he said. “He’s been a little busy” what with the war in Ukraine and other major matters of state.

Jones addressed the harsh opposition from many Senate Republicans on CNN.

“I think what you saw here was really a stretch by a number of folks to try to find something that they could hang their hat on to oppose this incredible, amazing jurist,” Jones said. “I think it was a missed opportunity by a lot of people on that Senate floor yesterday … to be on the right side of history.”

In the text interview, Jones said the nomination and confirmation of Justice Jackson “was more than a historical nomination. It was inspirational, and more so because she is inspirational,” he said. “Never underestimate what it means to so many that the American dream, that Dr. King’s dream, can in fact be realized.”

Being his usual canny self, choosing his words carefully, Jones did not want to speculate about the possibility that Biden could have an opportunity to appoint more members of the Supreme Court, say if the conservative Clarence Thomas were to die from health problems (he was recently released from the hospital after being treated with antibiotics for an infection they say was not Covid), or resign due to the highly unethical if not illegal political activity of his wife in advocating for Trump’s insurrection and against the peaceful transfer of power to President Biden.

And Jones said it may be “too early to translate this moment into political implications, but it should be a huge positive. She enjoys about a 66 percent approval rating and I hope that will be a major positive going into the midterms.”

“I believe she can have an impact with her presence and the force of her personality,” Jones added. “She has a history of finding consensus and I strongly believe that more consensus opinions will restore confidence in the Court.”

Jackson’s nomination back in March did result in a 12 point bump in support for Biden among African American voters, according to surveys.

Related: Voter Enthusiasm for Democrats Surges After Biden Appoints First Black Woman to Supreme Court

And within hours of the White House event celebrating her confirmation, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee announced it had purchased digital ads in local media outlets in five battleground states — Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — where increased African American turnout could benefit Democrats in November.

Two years after winning control of the White House and both chambers of Congress, the Democratic Party could face a “tough road” in this year’s midterm elections, according to just about every media outfit in the land. They continue to tout his below 50 percent approval ratings, driven by some legislative failures and inflation, especially high gas prices, which do not appear to be coming down anytime soon even with massive releases from the nation’s strategic oil and gas reserves.

While the major economic numbers are looking good, many Americans are still feeling the pain from the economic stall due to the pandemic.

But the nomination and confirmation of Jackson gives Democrats something to brag about on the campaign trail, especially with Black and liberal voters.

The DSCC’s ads are a prelude to what’s expected to be a months-long effort by Democrats to use Jackson’s confirmation to their electoral benefit, as The Washington Post put it.

One digital ad features photos of Jackson and warns, “Senate Republicans tried to stop her. We must defend the Democratic Senate.”

From the South Lawn of the White House on Friday, Biden blasted some Republican senators for making the “most vile, baseless assertions and accusations.”

Biden also called out the three Republicans who voted to confirm Jackson — Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Mitt Romney of Utah — crediting them for “setting aside partisanship and making a carefully considered judgment based on the judge’s character, qualifications, and independence.”

“I hope I don’t get them in trouble” with his across-the-aisle praise, he also joked.

As for the kind of justice Jackson will be, the president said, “We all saw the kind of justice she’ll be: fair and impartial, thoughtful, careful, precise, brilliant, a brilliant legal mind with deep knowledge of the law and a judicial temperament, which is equally important.” The attacks, he added, were familiar to “women and women of color who have had to run the gantlet in their own lives … you stood up for them as well. They know it — everybody out there, every woman out there.”

The Role and Future of Doug Jones

It has not been reported exactly how Jones was chosen to play this role in the Biden administration at this time. He remains a popular figure in Alabama. He was considered for Attorney General, but passed over for Merrick Garland, who some media critics and Democrats have blasted for moving too slow in the investigation and prosecution of higher ups involved in the Capitol insurrection, including the former President himself.

Of course Jones has a long record of being on the right side of history on civil rights and racial matters, having prosecuted members of the KKK for the 1963 Birmingham church bombing as a U.S. attorney 20 years ago.

There has been insider political speculation that Jones may have been brought in to negotiate specifically to secure the early endorsement of Jackson from moderate Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia. They became friends when Jones was in the Senate, and were known to hang out on Manchin’s yacht or “houseboat” as he calls it, and Manchin was such a close childhood friend of Alabama football coach Nick Saban.

Jones also built a record of sponsoring legislation by working across the political aisle with Republicans in his three year, half-term in the Senate.

“I don’t know where the idea of my assistance originated,” Jones said when I asked about whose idea it was. “But it was an honor to be a part of this historic and inspirational process. One of my responsibilities was making sure that every Senator had whatever they needed to make their decision. I talked to and appealed to a number of Senators, but at the end of the day, it was up to each of them.”

When I asked if it might lead to more of a political role for him in this administration or elected office in the future, he said: “None of this was done for personal political reasons. I answered a call and was honored to be part of the team.”

He declined to run for the Senate seat up for grabs now of retiring Senator Richard Shelby of Tuscaloosa, a seat now being fought over by Congressman Mo Brooks and other Republicans in a primary election. There is no viable candidate in the race for the Democratic Party.

It seems Alabama has been given up on as undeniably red.

Martin Luther King, Jr., once reminded us that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

Using that quote in speeches, President Obama liked to say: “Change takes a long time, but it does happen.”

Maybe one of these days in my home state. But for now, I’m out.

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