Democracy keeps on dying in darkness at the Washington Post whose editorial board decided to issue a rant falsely claiming that the problematic records of Vanita Gupta and Kirsten Clarke are “baseless smears”.

That’s quite a claim and it’s backed up by the finest journalism this side of Pravda. 

In Ms. Clarke’s case, the allegations concern antisemitism — so what if the evidence is tissue-thin and there is no record she has ever uttered an antisemitic remark?

In another era, we might have opted not to dignify these attacks with a rebuttal. But in a time when elected officials have been known to embrace lies and conspiracy theories, it’s worth stating sooner rather than later: Both these nominees have serious, distinguished track records as champions of civil rights. For their opponents, that is the real rub.

It’s a good thing that the Washington Post’s editorial board decided not to “dignify these attacks with a rebuttal” Just some arm-waving. And the insistence that Clarke didn’t say anything antisemitic… on the record.

During her time as the head of Harvard’s Black Students Association, Clarke invited Tony Martin as a guest lecturer. A staunch anti-Semite and Holocaust denier, Martin had written a book called The Jewish Onslaught in which he attacked Judaism and the Jewish people. Clarke supported Martin’s Jew-hatred, writing in the student newspaper, “Professor Martin is an intelligent, well-versed black intellectual who bases his information [anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial] on indisputable fact.”

In 2019, Clarke signed a petition in support of liberal anti-Semite Tamika Mallory. The former co-chairwoman of the Women’s March, Mallory has praised Louis Farrakhan, refusing to condemn that notorious anti-Semite’s legacy of Jew-hatred. Mallory has referred to “white Jews” as white supremacists.

This wasn’t an issue that emerged with Biden’s nomination. Here’s a 1994 letter from The Crimson.

Last week, Wellesley Professor Tony Martin spoke at Harvard at the invitation of the Black Students Association (BSA). Martin, the author of an anti-Semitic tract entitled The Jewish Onslaught, used his Harvard forum to denounce the Jewish tradition and the Jewish people for holding a “monopoly” on centuries-worth of the notion of divinely ordained African inferiority. Repeating his belief that the “so-called Sages” of the Babylonian Talmud were the earliest racists of recorded history, Martin urged Harvard students to consider The Bell Curve, a controversial new book linking race and intelligence, as only the latest manifestation of a racist tradition spawned by Jews.

Sitting in Boylston Auditorium, listening to my heritage be defamed and lied about, my thoughts turned away from the anti-Semite at the lectern and to the young woman who had introduced him. In fact, immediately after the introduction, Martin lavished praise on Kristen M. Clarke ’97, the BSA president, who, he said, had courageously invited him “in the face of enormous pressure from the forces of reaction.”

But I’m sure that the Washington Post would be okay with a Trump admin nominee who invited a violently racist speaker, listened to him spew racist garbage, but didn’t personally say anything racist on the record? Or, the paper could just run nonsense about the CPAC podium being a swastika.

Inviting a racist to say racist things is, according to the Washington Post, a “tissue-thin” case, when the racist and his enabler are lefties.