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I think Reid was signaling the White House that the Senate Democrats aren't going to support Bush appointing Thomas Chief Justice of the Supreme Court when Rehnquist steps down.

Notice that Reid made good comments about Justice Scalia in the same interview. Reid was signaling the White House that the Senate Dems won't stop Scalia from being appointed to Chief Justice.

The majority of Senate Democrats won't vote for either Thomas or Scalia for Chief Justice, but the Dems won't use the filibuster to stop a vote on Scalia.

The reason that the Senate Democrats don't want Thomas as Chief Justice is because they don't want a Republican appointing a black man as Chief Justice. Democrats think of blacks as their constituency group and don't want Republicans to make inroads in the African American voting bloc.

The Democrats have used the racist label against Republicans in order to keep blacks voting Democrat. However, it's difficult to keep calling Republicans racist when Bush appoints blacks to positions of real power, Secretary of State, National Security adviser, etc.

The question is how long can the Democrats keep playing the race card in order to keep blacks voting Democratic? The current Democrat voting coalition is starting to show some cracks in that many blacks are conservative on social issues, such as abortion, gay rights and school vouchers. And Chief Thomas plays right into the African American conservative views. So Reid and his fellow Senate Dems are going to fight if Thomas is nominated for Chief Justice.

The Democrats have a tough balancing act. If the Democrats fight too much on Condi or Thomas, it will expose the cynical race game that they are playing. If Democrats fight too little, then the Republicans may start to make inroads in the African American community.

Tough to be a liberal nowadays isn't it, hee, hee, hee.

I think Reid was signaling the White House that the Senate Democrats aren't going to support Bush appointing Thomas Chief Justice of the Supreme Court when Rehnquist steps down.

There's really no reason for the President to elevate Justice Thomas. Why waste political capital on that? Justice Thomas already has a life seat thanks to George Herbert Walker Bush.

Instead, the President should appoint California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown. I want to see if DiFi and BaBo have the stones to filibuster a black woman from California who did better in her statewide election than either of them did. Somehow I don't think so.