Reply #9: There was a lot of fault to go around there... [View All]

[JHB]

The Democratic leadership at the time wasn't exactly noted for strongly confronting things Republicans actively pushed, and they were eager to avoid another dust-up like with Robert Bork.

Also, in the early phases, Thomas had a sort of default support from black political circles, and other Democrats didn't want to have to go against that on top of the Republicans. It wasn't until Thurgood Marshal made his "black snake" comment that it sank in that Thomas was of a very different stripe and resistance started to gel.

By then things were pretty far along. Thomas had pretty much gotten a pass until the Anita Hill/sexual harassment issue came up. In other words, once something arose for which a major Democratic constituency would dig in its heels and make an issue of it (and which Democratic politicians could not ignore for the sake of expediency.

In my own opinion, the resulting hearings were more to make a show of "doing something" to Democratic women than a serious attempt to question Thomas' fitness for the Supreme Court. That's why Angela Wright and others didn't get to appear before the hearings and only had their written statements added to the record: they weren't on camera, so it wouldn't be in the news cycle, and that brought it down to he said/she said as far as the public was concerned. Republicans were willing to push HARD and the Democrats were not, so we wound up with Thomas (dis)gracing the SC.