This week, the Democratic-controlled Senate refused to confirm President Obama’s nominee for head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division, and already the history is being rewritten.
Debo Adegbile’s nomination failed to go forward when Majority Leader Harry Reid couldn’t muster the votes he needed on a procedural motion. Seven Democrats — most, but not all, up for reelection — ensured the defeat.
Reid has hinted that the vote was based on racism, and President Obama suggests Adegbile was being unfairly punished for having represented an unpopular client: Mumia Abu-Jamal, convicted of murdering Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner.
Nonsense. As The Post pointed out on these pages before the vote, the concern about Adegbile was not because of any legal counsel provided Abu-Jamal. The concern was how the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, under Adegbile’s direction, turned this case into a circus of rallies and protests, all designed to fan the flames and impugn the entire justice system as racist.
No doubt some electorally vulnerable Democrats who voted “nay” were not only looking to the past. Perhaps they were also looking forward to the upcoming elections, and the prospect of ads featuring the slain officer’s widow, Maureen Faulkner. As one Democratic aide told The Washington Post, “It’s a 30-second ad that writes itself.”
The point is, a significant number of Democrats this week recognized something the president refuses to: By his judgment and actions, Debo Adegbile has proved himself unfit for such a high position in law enforcement.