She was some five weeks away from even being sworn in, and he was a 20-year Senate veteran—but as Biden and Moseley Braun sat on unpacked boxes, he made a pitch over slices of cherry pie that she figured was coming as soon as he’d walked through the door.

Biden’s pitch, said Moseley Braun, was threefold: “The Judiciary Committee needed my voice and my perspective and that I knew these issues,” “he wanted to have some women on the committee,” and “he would personally appreciate it.”

But Moseley Braun wanted no part of being on the Judiciary Committee.

Even though it had been the “horrible” images of “all these old, white men” grilling Hill that had driven her to run for the Senate in the first place, Biden’s committee was not on her list of preferred posts.

But he didn’t take no for an answer, and ultimately Moseley Braun said yes, and so did Dianne Feinstein, who was one of the other three female senators-elect who had been swept into Washington on the strength of women’s outrage about Thomas and Hill.