There is a fair concern about the failure of the president, any president, to consider judicial nominations because of race, ethnicity, religion or sex. This would deprive the American people of a potential pool of qualified judges. If we want the best possible judges, then the broadest possible pool would best enable us to get them. This, it should be noted, is true of all endeavors. Pick based on merit, not on irrelevant characteristics. And if you refuse to consider people based on irrelevant characteristics, then you’ve deprived a nation of worthy judges.

The arguments in favor of this expansive pool from which to draw our judiciary is often presented in nonsensical terms: that their diversity would bring differing views to the bench. It’s never been a sound idea that the luck of the wheel, the judge drawn, should result in wildly disparate outcomes based on their personal idiosyncrasies.

The assumptions based on stereotypes, such as women and minorities would be more empathetic to certain litigants or hold different priorities of constitutional rights, are curious. Having come before female judges and minority judges, there is one thing that they tend to share. They are judges first and foremost. The people who are on the judicial radar, regardless of irrelevant characteristics, come from the “establishment,” whether biglaw or the United States Attorneys’ office. Their view of the law tends to be remarkably narrow, and their concern for, for example, the rights of criminal defendants is niggardly at best.

So what then is to be made of Mark Joseph Stern’s calling out conservatives “lame” excuses for Trump’s failure to nominate what he believes to be the “right” number of women to the bench?

Donald Trump has appointed a record-breaking number of judges, the overwhelming majority of which are white men. While the president has had plenty of time to course-correct after getting criticized for this practice, he has not done so; in wave after wave of nominations, he has provided mostly male candidates for the Senate’s approval.

The numbers alone tell a damning story. Trump has nominated 101 people to federal district courts, only 29 of them women.

If the “numbers alone” told any story, it would be that Trump’s nominations being nearly 30% female is shocking. I would have expected three, not 29 out of 101. The numbers are far higher than I would have anticipated. But the “numbers alone” tell no story, except how easily bias is confirmed by the vacuous.

Ed Whelan, who has played a behind-the-scenes role in Trump’s judicial selections, has asserted that well-qualified conservative attorneys are more likely to be male than female, shrinking the pool from which Trump could draw. There’s some truth to that: According to the American Bar Association, 64 percent of active attorneys are men, and 36 percent are women.

So even if raw numbers told a story, the story is surprisingly good? Sure, 30% isn’t 36%, but it’s not far off either. And it’s not much different than that great lover of women, Bill Clinton, managed to accomplish. But raw numbers do little to inform of the pool of candidates for the federal bench under Trump. There is a laundry list of additional factors, from experience to judicial philosophy, as well. Or does Stern suggest that the only criterion for nomination is genitalia?

Whelan sees things differently. He wrote that the relatively small “percentage of women in the hypothetical candidate pool does not speak meaningfully, if at all, to the percentage of highly educated women lawyers.” Many female attorneys, he wrote, may “take time off” from their careers “to raise their kids,” “pursue fields with predictable or flexible hours,” or “face discrimination from legal academia.” These roadblocks and setbacks prevent them from attaining the level of success required for a judicial nomination.

This almost certainly fails to comport with Stern’s radical progressive denial of reality, but in the real world, Ed Whelan makes some good points. Stern may not like them, and may have a litany of excuses for why they happen, but that doesn’t make them untrue. Excuses aren’t a substitute for accomplishments or experience. So the post pretty much disproves its subtitle:

All the lame excuses conservatives are making to explain why the president isn’t nominating female judges.

Not only aren’t the “excuses” lame, but it seems Trump is doing far, far better at nominating women than many of us would have ever expected. So what’s the beef?

Trump’s allies dismiss this disparity by insisting that, as Whelan argued, the percentage of women nominated by Trump roughly mirrors the percentage of qualified female candidates. Carissa Byrne Hessick, a law professor at University of North Carolina School of Law who has praised many of Trump’s nominees, vigorously contested that premise. “Having not been involved in the judicial nomination process, I don’t know why the president has nominated only six women to be appellate judges,” Hessick told us. “But the suggestion that there are only six conservative women in this country who are qualified to sit on the federal courts of appeals is incorrect and offensive.”

What part of “I don’t know nothing about birthin’ no babies” gives rise to teaching a master’s class in obstetrics? “Only six women” would be terrible if it was out of, say 100. Except it’s out of 23 circuit court nominees confirmed. How did Stern manage to omit that part, the part that makes the numbers even remotely informative?

And then, the question that remains ignored is “so what?” No defendant ever felt better about being sentenced to life plus cancer by a woman than a man. That Trump is unlikely to nominate the progressive bench of dreams may shock Stern, but it’s unlikely to mildly surprise anyone who isn’t blinded by their ideology. And for those of us who actually spend our time standing before federal judges, the irrelevant characteristics upon which people like Stern obsess don’t come close to mattering as much as whether they possess the intelligence, integrity and temperament to do the job.

That Trump won’t nominate the next Thurgood Marshall shouldn’t surprise anyone. But whether our clients’ lives are ruined by a female judge, or a black judge, rather than a white male changes nothing.