Vote against Judge Michelle Childs shows why it's always foolish to make a deal with Mitch McConnell

In January, when President Joe Biden made it clear he intended to nominate a Black woman for the seat of retiring Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell delivered what The New York Times called a “stern warning” to Biden against making a radical choice. Instead, declared McConnell, Biden needed to look for someone who would “govern from the middle, steward our institutions and unite America.”

The Supreme Court seat would eventually be filled by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, but there was one name that even Republicans seemed to believe would have satisfied the need for a consensus candidate. Someone who reportedly had the backing of the two Republican senators in her home state of South Carolina: Judge J. Michelle Childs. When the vote came down on Justice Jackson, McConnell dismissed her as exactly the wrong sort of choice. However, he also said, ”I could have supported [Judge Childs], a highly qualified, sensible, commonsense person" to be an associate justice of the Supreme Court.

And then, when Judge Childs was actually up for appointment to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday, McConnell did exactly what you’d expect of someone who approved of Childs for a seat on the nation’s highest court: He voted against her.