ABC News’ Poll on Biden’s Pledge to Nominate First Black Woman to Supreme Court is Disgusting and Here’s Why

ABC News generated lots of headlines with a deplorable push-poll about President Joe Biden’s pledge to nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court to replace retiring Justice Stephen Breyer.

In fact, ABC News White House correspondent Mary Bruce even asked Psaki about her network’s poll at Monday’s White House briefing. Here’s what she asked White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki:

Our latest poll shows that just over three quarters of Americans, 76 percent, want the President to consider all possible nominees, not only Black women, as he pledged on the campaign trail. What do you make of this? And why do you think that a majority of Americans want the President to take a different approach here?

I guess Psaki’s answer didn’t rate, because ABC hasn’t used it yet, but aside from telling Bruce that President Biden “will choose and nominate someone who has impeccable credentials and is eminently qualified to serve as a Supreme Court justice and someone who is eminently qualified to serve in a lifetime appointment,” she cited similar — yet slightly different — pledges from former Presidents Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump.

Reagan nominated Sandra Day O’Connor to be the first woman to sit on the Supreme Court, but he announced his intention to make such a historic pick during his presidential campaign.

And Trump told a rally crowd, the day after Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg died, this about his next pick: “It will be a woman.”

That is the context in which ABC News decided to poll this issue. But here’s how they decided to ask about it.

Respondents to the poll were asked “To fill the opening on the U.S. Supreme Court, do you think Joe Biden should Consider all possible nominees” or “Consider only nominees who are Black women, as he has pledged?”

And in case the dismissive tone of that question is lost on you, here’s how ABC put it in there write-up of the poll (emphasis mine):

During the spring 2020 presidential primaries, days before his set of big wins on Super Tuesday, Biden pledged to nominate the first Black woman to the Supreme Court, if elected. Now, with the chance to do so, just over three-quarters of Americans (76%) want Biden to consider “all possible nominees.” Just 23% want him to automatically follow through on his history-making commitment that the White House seems keen on seeing through.

This is a straight-up push poll that frames the question in the most biased fashion imaginable, which is the first problem the poll, if not the biggest problem.

It’s not possible to know for sure if this poll’s result — 76 percent to 23 against the president’s promise — would have been different if the question had been asked fairly, or literally in any way other than this.

But we can make a pretty decent guess based on the results of another poll that did just that. Public Policy Polling found that more people supported Biden’s promise than not — by 17 points! — when they framed it in terms of keeping a promise:

During his presidential campaign, President Biden promised to nominate the first Black woman to the Supreme Court, and voters think he should keep this promise by a 17-point margin (48-31). This is a key issue for both women (50-28) and Black voters (92-4), and earns support across all age groups: voters over 65 (54-32), voters between the ages of 46 and 65 (50-30), and voters between the ages of 18 and 45 (43-30).

Now it’s true that PPP is a Democratic-leaning firm, but they’re also known for their accuracy and have a higher pollster rating from FiveThirtyEight than ABC’s pollster, Ipsos.

So what’s so bad about it? I will leave motive to others, but the effect is to appeal to resentful Whites who are offended that White people are being reverse-racismed or something. That’s why I find it so much more objectionable than a normal push poll.

What else is so biased about this? Well, how about the fact that when Trump pledged to select a woman for the Supreme Court, ABC News ran a poll a couple of days later that did not even ask about the nominee being a woman in any way shape form or fashion at all whatsoever.

How about this: ABC News’ poll question in the year 2021 somehow managed to be more biased and regressive than one that was asked in 1981 when Reagan made his promise. Anoa Changa at NewsOne notes:

(I)n June 1981, CBS and The New York Times conducted a national survey. The poll asked respondents about their position on then-President Ronald Reagan nominating a woman to the Supreme Court. Reagan promised to nominate the first woman to the Supreme Court on the campaign trail.

Respondents were not asked about “all possible nominees” vs. the first woman. The polling question read:

Ronald Reagan will appoint someone to the Supreme very soon. Do you think he should choose a woman for this position, or choose a man, or doesn’t it make any difference what the sex of the person he nominates is?

The majority of respondents said it didn’t matter. He nominated Sandra Day O’Connor to the bench less than a month later. After Reagan announced O’Connor as his choice, an Associated Press and NBC poll found that 65% of respondents supported her nomination.

As Ms. Changa charitably notes, “polls can contain built-in limitations in the way questions are framed, particularly when it comes to complex topics such as racial or gender equity.”

Here’s another disgusting thing: did you notice another difference between that PPP poll and the ABC News poll? The part where PPP says “This is a key issue for … Black voters (92-4).”

There’s no part like that in the ABC poll. Unless you count the part where they explain that “the poll’s sample size was not large enough to break out results for Black people.”

That’s right, ABC News commissioned a poll about the first Black woman to be nominated to the Supreme Court, and did not ask enough Black people to achieve a reportable sample.

But perhaps the most disappointing thing about this poll is the result. Even with PPP’s more generous wording, a majority of Americans still can’t see that nominating a Black woman to the Supreme Court is the right thing for the president to do. They were fine with Reagan and Trump nominating women, they were fine with tens of other presidents nominating men, but for some reason this is different.

Changa said it better than I could:

The standard of “all possible nominees” is suddenly a concern when the person under consideration is a Black woman. Over 100 white men have been nominated and confirmed without concern for considering “all possible nominees.” Also, the conversation around Supreme Court diversity is part of a broader issue with the American judiciary.

Biden’s pledge to nominate a Black woman as a Supreme Court justice continues his pledge to remake the federal judiciary in the image of America. Making a point to rectify historical inequities in what is often the final arbiter of rights and equal access in society shouldn’t fall to the wayside because Americans do not understand the necessity.

Watch Psaki’s response above via NBC News and Fox News.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.