When Joe Biden responds to inquiries about his position on the idea of the Democrats’ packing the Supreme Court when they get the power to do so by saying that the people “will know my opinion on court-packing when the election is over,” he hurts himself by seeming evasive.
That’s an unforced error. It makes a liability out of an opportunity.
While the press coverage of Biden’s responses to the court-packing question have been consistently negative, that question hands Biden a weapon to wield against the Republicans: as the GOP hypocrites rush toward completing the illegitimate “power grab” that Biden denounced weeks ago— rushing to seize another Supreme Court seat — Biden can turn that question around to put the spotlight on the need for the Republicans to back off from doing what most Americans regard as wrong.
Here’s what he might say:
“That’s a question this nation should not even have to face: If the Republicans will play by the rules, we will play by the rules.
”If the Republicans will play by the rules they themselves laid down, when they blocked a President with almost a full year left in his term from naming a Justice to fill a Supreme Court seat, then the nation can continue to deal with the Supreme Court in our customary fashion.
“The course the Republicans are on is wrong. It’s wrong of them to break the promises they themselves made four years ago. [cf. the Lindsey Graham tape] The American people think it’s wrong— agreeing as they do with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s dying “fervent” wish, that the President the people choose in the election merely a few weeks from now should be the one who then chooses the Justice to fill the seat her death has left vacant.
“(And it’s especially wrong to allow a President who daily menaces our constitutional order by trying to sabotage America’s free and fair election — telling lies to call the integrity of the process into question, refusing to affirm that he will abide by the results of that election and cooperate in a peaceful transfer of power if he loses — to make a lifetime appointment to that highest Court in the land, whose job it is to apply the Constitution justly.)
“If the Republicans persist in showing that they care nothing about justice, or the good order of our democracy, but only about their own power — as their naked hypocrisy of their complete about-face from 2016 to 2020 demonstrates — then we will have to consider what kinds of actions are required from our side to get justice done.
”The theft of power, and the lack of principle, should not be rewarded.
“If the Republicans will play by the rules they themselves laid down, then we shall play by the rules as well.
“Only if the Republicans continue to violate our established ways of doing things will we have to even consider whether it is better for America for us to make our own breaks with the established order or for us to allow an unprincipled political party to get away with their ill-gotten gains.”
Biden’s framing his response in this way would both: a) intensify the pressure on the Republicans to back off, or at least increase the costs to them if they don’t; and b) establish in the public mind a framework in which any future bold action by the Democrats will be understood as a necessary counter to the Republicans’ unprincipled theft of power in the Supreme Court.