The real battle over the confirmation of Clarence Thomas was joined many years ago with the nomination of Robert Bork , but the roots of the struggle go back even farther to the election of Ronald Reagan as president in 1980 . The voters gave him a mandate but the losers overturned the results of the election by engineering Bork 's rejection . This time Washington 's Democrats tried to arrange a national referendum on sexual harassment thinking this would defeat Thomas . But by every measure available the voters gave Thomas landslide support and Thomas is the first Justice to sit on the Supreme Court with a popular mandate .
The real battle over the confirmation of Clarence Thomas was joined four years ago with the nomination of Robert Bork, but the roots of the struggle go back even farther to the election of Ronald Reagan as president in 1980. The voters gave Reagan a mandate but the losers overturned the results of the election by engineering Bork's rejection. This time Washington's reporters tried to arrange a national referendum on sexual harassment thinking this would defeat Thomas. But by every measure available the public gave Thomas landslide support and Thomas is the first Justice to sit on the Supreme Court with a popular mandate.