By Hal Brown
Tomorrow’s story here
Unfortunately Kamala Harris didn’t have a good answer ready to the packing the court question in the debate. Instead her non-answer generated headlines and stories like this: “Harris dodges questions on support for Supreme Court packing at debate” (CBS News).
I bet that the next time the question about “packing the court” comes up — and it most likely will even if there are no more debates and Joe Biden does town halls alone — you will see a nuanced answer which includes noting that the term itself assumes a negative.
I think his answer should be along these lines:
Increasing the Court to 11 members is a process that isn’t done by executive order.
Assuming the Demorcats control all the other three branches we will consider the pros and cons with due diligence. This include public hearings in Congress.
Democrats, unlike Republicans, pay attention to public opinion and this will be taken into very serious consideration.
Noting this, Biden would be well advised to remind the audience that this supposedly alarming charge was mean as a shiny object the Republicans are using to distract from the most pressing issues of the time.
He can note that there are so many pressing matters that must be dealt with come Jan. 21st, thanks to the four years of destruction of both our cherished values and of the planet itself thanks to four years of Trumpism in the White House and the Senate, that the issue of the Supreme Court would be considered in due time.
I don’t think he should dwell on the unprecedented rush to fill the vacancy in the midst of an election because this is old news. Polls show that people have made up their minds on this mostly along party lines and their support of Trump. See: “Most Americans Want To Wait Until After The Election To Fill The Supreme Court Vacancy” from FiveThirtyEight.
If a far right majority of the Court makes decisions which a large majority of the American public strongly feels are wrong I think balancing the membership will be such a popular achievement in the first two years of the Biden/Harris administration that it will lead to huge victories in the Senate and House races in 2022.
Excerpts from Jamelle Boule NY Times column:
- ... there are actually several straightforward, nonpartisan reasons for increasing the entire federal judiciary and adding additional Supreme Court justices. The last major expansion was 30 years ago with the Judgeship Bill of 1990. Since then, the population of the United States has grown from roughly 249 million to just over 330 million. With ever more litigants and ever more cases, the country needs more judges.
- In addition, a growing and diversifying country should see itself reflected at every level of the federal judiciary.
- The only way to avert moral hazard and keep this from happening again is to make Republicans pay a price for the dangerous risk they took with the country. Expanding the courts is that price.
- Joe Biden and Kamala Harris seem aware of the need to take this step, or at least seriously consider it, which helps explain why they have refused to answer one way or the other lately.
- It is also not clear that an 11- or 17- or even 27-member Supreme Court is necessarily a bad thing. With more members, individual confirmation battles would be less heated and consequential. And tied even tighter to ordinary politics, the court might be more circumspect about striking down laws by duly elected lawmakers. The promise of tit-for-tat may actually be the thing that lowers the temperature of court battles, which might make it possible for both sides to find a new equilibrium.
- If Democrats make Republicans pay a political price in November for their rank and ruinous opportunism, then in January they should use their power to restore to the people what was taken from them.
Here’s a Day Kos diary with a contrary opinion.