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| Judge Gonzalo Curiel |
The latest Rasmussen poll shows
Hillary Clinton with a one-point lead (39-38) over Donald Trump among the
Nation’s electorate. At this still early stage in the campaign national poll
numbers do not mean that much although it is interesting that about 20% of
those polled are undecided as yet. I suspect that the numbers might change if
Clinton is upset by Bernie Sanders in today’s California primary. They will
probably split the California delegates but a loss to Sanders might further
tarnish Clinton’s image.
However, Clinton strategists seem
to believe that it will do her no good to attack Sanders or his proposed
policies. More and more, she is focusing her attacks on Trump. She read a
carefully crafted speech last week that was supposed to lay out her views on
foreign policy but was in reality just an opportunity to attack Trump. I was in
the gym when she delivered it and watched a good deal while on the treadmill.
Donald Trump later characterized her speech as boring and I would have to
agree. She shows no passion or conviction when speaking and the teleprompter
just makes her delivery more stilted. Even the fans in the audience could
hardly bring themselves to applaud at the appropriate moments.
It’s no wonder that Trump’s
remarks this week about the judge trying the Trump University suit caused more
interest on the news than Clinton’s major foreign policy speech. Trump complained that the judge was
treating him unfairly in the case and attributed the judge’s conduct to the
fact that he was a “Mexican.” Actually, Judge Gonzalo Curiel’s ancestry is
Mexican but he was born in the USA to parents who were born in Mexico.
Trump’s remark sent shock waves
through the media and the political class. Charges of racism were leveled
against Trump but rather than apologizing he doubled down on his initial
remark. Trump claimed that the many irregularities in the case could only be
explained by the judge’s prejudice against him for his proposals on Mexican
immigration.
It is not impossible for a judge
to be biased. Judge Gonzalo Curiel was an Obama appointee in 2014. It is hard
for me to imagine that Judge Curiel’s Mexican and Hispanic ancestry was not a
factor in his appointment to the Federal bench. It is also hard for me to
imagine that when newly elected President Barack Obama appointed Sonia
Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, her Hispanic ancestry was not a factor. It is
true that she is a member of the Democrat party but why appoint her unless it
was believed that someone on the bench would need to be sympathic to Hispanics?
In his seven years in office how
many Republicans has President Obama appointed to the bench? Isn’t it expected
that these appointments will show some bias? When the Trump University class
action lawsuit came into his jurisdiction, Judge Curiel appointed a prominent
law firm that had donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Democrat
politicians to represent the plaintiffs. Moreover, it is a common practice for
lawyers in big money cases to search around for friendly venues and judges.
Does an accusation of bias in one
judge constitute racism? Those who like to level charges of racism are often
guilty of a kind of reverse racism. How often do we hear that it was the race
of a white policeman that led him to shoot a black suspect? How often do we
hear that a white teacher cannot teach Black History? Should Asian applicants
to prestigious universities like Harvard and Stanford complain that they have
been rejected solely because of their race.
Finally, Mexicans do not
constitute a race at all. Nor do Hispanics all of whom can trace their ancestry
back to European Spain. When Trump says that he is as proud of his heritage as
Judge Curiel, he may not realize it but they both belong to the same race
despite differences in their ethnicity. On the other hand, maybe Trump does
know what he is doing and is using a little Machiavellian ploy to make the
judge bend over backward to avoid any appearance of bias in the future.
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