It is worth diving into the conservative reactions to Biden’s pledge to nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court. They reveal a lot about the conservative psyche – and why the announcement is important even though, as @ElieNYC notes, the Right will still control the Court: 1/
https://twitter.com/ElieNYC/status/1486704401851035655
Conservative politicians, intellectuals, and activists certainly didn’t try to hide their disdain. Even though it’s unclear who the candidate will be, they already know they won’t support this “beneficiary of affirmative action” and fight against this “lesser Black woman.” 2/ 
If you bemoan “exclusionary criteria of race and sex” only if and when they result in the selection of someone who is *not* a white man, you’re telling on yourself. 115 people appointed to the Court in 232 years – 7 have not been white men. Seven. 3/
We need to start by acknowledging how flat-out racist and sexist these reactions are - so revealing precisely because they were so immediate, so reflexive. Misogynoir is the best term to capture the core of what is happening here. 4/
But on top of that, these reactions reveal something else too: They are evidence of how impactful Biden’s decision is – and why it was important to openly state the intention of nominating a Black woman instead of opting for the non-committal “someone qualified” version. 5/
It won’t change the arithmetic of the Court. But conservatives feel threatened by Biden’s pledge because they understand it acknowledges that having white men dominate the elite institutions of American life is a problem – and that rectifying this situation is a crucial task. 6/
Conservatives fear the acknowledgment that the country’s institutions should reflect the composition of the people; they understand that representation matters, that a Black woman ascending to a position like this is also an acknowledgment of past injustice. 7/
Conservatives see Biden’s announcement as evidence of how powerful the forces of liberalism, wokeism, and multiculturalism – these radically “Un-American” ideas that are threatening “real” (read: white Christian patriarchal) America – have already become. 8/
In this way, Biden’s pledge to nominate a Black woman is seen as yet more evidence that conservatives are losing, that conservative ideals are on the retreat. It is impossible to understand conservative politics in general without grappling with this pervasive siege mentality. 9/
The fact that a reactionary majority will dominate the Supreme Court for a generation doesn’t really alleviate those fears. Because the Right doesn’t look at the Court in isolation, but considers the judiciary as part of an all-encompassing conflict over the fate of America. 10/
Conservatives understand more clearly than many people on the Left do that this conflict isn’t confined to the political sphere, but plays out in all areas of American life: it defines politics, society, culture – and in some of these spheres, conservatives are indeed losing. 11/
The Right is reacting to something real: Due to political, cultural, and most importantly demographic changes, the country has indeed become less white, less conservative, less Christian, more diverse, more multicultural, more liberal. 12/
https://twitter.com/ronbrownstein/status/1425885973804589061
They are not just imagining the “threat” to their version of “real America.” The balance of political power doesn’t (yet) necessarily reflect that – even in well-functioning representative systems, power relations will lag behind cultural and demographic change. 13/
This lag or gap is very pronounced in the American context, as the U.S. system has many undemocratic distortions and is deliberately set up in a way that disconnects these changing demographic and cultural realities from political power. 14/
But conservatives understand better than anyone else that even with all these undemocratic distortions and the system’s pro-white-conservative bias in place, their vision of what “real” America is and should remain has come under pressure. 15/
Nothing symbolized this threat to white dominance like Barack Obama’s presidency - an outrageous subversion of what reactionaries understand as America’s natural order, made worse by the fact that he managed to get re-elected with less than 40 percent of the white vote. 16/
The Republican attempts to subvert democracy and erect one-party-rule systems on the state level are a direct reaction to this “threat.” Republicans are under no illusion about the lack of majority support for their preferred version of “real America.” 17/
The fact remains that they have secured a stable conservative majority on the Supreme Court, thereby guaranteeing that the Court will support the reactionary political project. But it is not just political power they seek, but cultural domination and affirmation. 18/
In the cultural sphere, the shift in power away from white conservatives has been more direct and more pronounced. The recurring rightwing moral panics of the past few years are evidence of precisely that shift, and how it terrifies white conservatives. 19/
The freak-outs over #MeToo, “cancel culture,” “wokeism” – they are reactions to the fact that traditionally marginalized groups have indeed gained enough political and cultural influence to make their claims heard and demand a modicum of respect. 20/
These are conflicts over who gets to determine what is and what is not accepted and acceptable in U.S. society, which has traditionally been the prerogative of a white male elite. That prerogative has come under fire, and it’s not something the judiciary can fully restore. 21/
It’s important to note that it’s really more the *threat* of losing privilege, the *potential* of being held to account that is animating these reactionary panics. In practice, the power structures that have traditionally defined American life have unfortunately held up fine. 22/
But still, it’s true that the position of white men at the top has never been questioned more, their privileged status has never been under more scrutiny. Put simply, being a member of the white male elite is slightly less comfortable today than it used to be. 23/
Against this broader background, conservatives understand Biden’s pledge to nominate a Black woman as evidence that the same dreaded forces responsible for the general assault on white male privilege are on the march and keep rising within America’s institutions. 24/
Whether or not that has any immediate effect on the Supreme Court’s decisions, for a movement centered around the idea that America is a white Christian patriarchal nation, a place where white Christian men have a right to dominate, a Black woman rising remains a threat. 25/
The Right is actually correct about one thing: Biden’s public pledge to nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court represents an affirmation of multiracial pluralism – a counter to the reactionary white patriarchal vision of the nation. That’s why it matters. 26/
It matters because it is an acknowledgment that the traditional dominance of white men was never the result of meritocratic structures, but of a discriminatory system, and that active measures are needed to dismantle that system. 27/
It will help redefine what the American political, social, and cultural elite looks like, it will necessarily reshape the ideas of who gets to be at the top in the collective imaginary of the nation. As multiracial, pluralistic democracy is under assault, that matters a lot. /end
Addendum: You wanted more evidence for the type of white male anxiety that I have tried to dissect in this thread? Fear not, Ted Cruz has got you covered.
https://twitter.com/noliewithbtc/status/1488201038544973832
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