White House backtracks on Sotomayor quote.

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White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said today that the president would say that Sotomayor's word choice in her suddenly-infamous Berkeley speech was "poor." It's maddening that the White House is now taking this line. Maybe they mean to take the air out of it, but I bet it will accomplish the opposite, and give everyone license to talk about it again all weekend. This was a published speech, after all, not an off-the-cuff remark, and presumably the Berkeley La Raza Law Journal allows authors to edit copy, like everyone else.

It wasn't the best choice of words, but I would downgrade that to "poor" only because it is likely to be taken out of context when, eight years later, she is nominated for the Supreme Court. As we have hashed out here and here, Sotomayor was talking about sex discrimination cases, in which there is actual evidence that having a woman on a panel of judges actually does make a difference. Her speech was actually much more nuanced than the right made it out to be, which Gibbs got to in the second half of his speech:

She was simply making the point that experiences are relevant to the process of judging. Your personal experiences have a tendency to make you more aware of certain facts and certain cases, that your experiences impact your understanding.

But I'm betting all we're going to hear from that speech is that word "poor."

Tags: robert gobbs backtrack, white house on sonia sotomayor

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Comments

What is the definition of

By: mmarketting | Mon, 12/07/2009 - 02:27

What is the definition of judging others?

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President Obama sought today

By: yuridebura | Tue, 09/29/2009 - 05:17

President Obama sought today to defuse some of the tension surrounding Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor's much-discussed 2001 remark that a Latina judge might arrive at a better decision than a white male one, saying in an interview, "I'm sure she would have restated it cheap travel insurance."

"But if you look in the entire sweep of the [speech] that she wrote," Obama went on to say in the interview with NBC News, "what's clear is that she was simply saying that her life experiences will give her information about the struggles and hardships that people are going through that will make her a good judge mortgage payment calculator."

NBC News posted an excerpt from the interview online this afternoon, shortly after Obama's press secretary, Robert Gibbs, said of Sotomayor in the daily press briefing, "I think she'd say that her word choice in 2001 was poor."

Neither Obama nor Gibbs said how they knew that she would say this, and Gibbs acknowledged short term health insurance, "I have not talked specifically with her about this."

Rather, he said, he had had "discussions with people" that led him to believe that "if she had the speech to do all over again, I think she'd change that word."

Sotomayor's remarks, part of a longer speech meditating on the law and Latina identity, have touched off a firestorm among conservative commentators that Republican officials are now trying to rein in.

It was her opinion and i feel

By: Kate123 | Mon, 09/28/2009 - 04:16

It was her opinion and i feel words were not so bad so Mr. President should also give it a second thought.

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By: beckham_250 | Sun, 09/20/2009 - 07:15

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In case you haven't noticed

By: phpeter | Sun, 05/31/2009 - 08:05

In case you haven't noticed, Obama has not stood up for anybody at anytime and this is par for the course. For all the "Change" talk, Obama is just a politician, maybe the best we have seen, but that is all he is and all he has ever done. He has not proven to be principled, but rather he will say anything that anybody wants to hear at any given time. Sorry, there will be more to come I am afraid.

Her Word Choice Was Not That Poor

Comments

What is the definition of

By: mmarketting | Mon, 12/07/2009 - 02:27

President Obama sought today

By: yuridebura | Tue, 09/29/2009 - 05:17

It was her opinion and i feel

By: Kate123 | Mon, 09/28/2009 - 04:16

تحميل برامج تحميل برنامج

By: beckham_250 | Sun, 09/20/2009 - 07:15

the most awarded in the

By: Markweee | Wed, 07/29/2009 - 04:12

Minneapolis journalist and

By: Markweee | Wed, 07/29/2009 - 04:12

In case you haven't noticed

By: phpeter | Sun, 05/31/2009 - 08:05

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