Joe Biden, Kamala Harris dodge questions about Supreme Court expansion
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Image via AP.

Biden Harris campaign Phoenix
Republicans have pushed the campaign to address calls for court packing from the left.

There are few topics that Joe Biden isn’t willing to opine on — except the Supreme Court.

The Democratic presidential nominee and his running mate, Kamala Harris, are refusing demands from Republicans — and some fellow Democrats — to say whether they would seek to expand the number of justices on the Supreme Court.

Harris dodged persistent questioning about the issue on Wednesday during her debate against Vice President Mike Pence. And facing pressure to take a stance during a campaign swing through Phoenix on Thursday, Biden offered a particularly terse response.

“They’ll know my position on court packing when the election is over,” he said.

In the final weeks of the campaign, Biden is in a bind when it comes to the future of the judiciary. Republicans, increasingly fearful of losing both the presidency and the Senate, are seizing on the issue to make a last-minute argument to voters that a Biden administration would upend norms and install liberals on an expanding Supreme Court. Some progressive Democrats are pressing Biden to embrace all means possible to counter Republican power plays that have pushed the court to the right.

The debate is likely to intensify next week when Senate Republicans start confirmation hearings for Amy Coney Barrett. She would cement a 6-3 conservative majority on the court, the balance already tilted by Republicans’ holding open a vacancy in the 2016 election year by refusing to consider President Barack Obama’s nominee.

Biden and Harris have said the Senate should wait until after the election to fill the seat. Biden has pledged to select the first Black female justice if given a chance. But he and Harris are otherwise taking pains to avoid talking about their vision for the Supreme Court’s future.

Tad Devine, a former top adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign, said that Trump and his allies are pushing the issue to undercut Biden’s opening with moderate Republicans and that the ticket is wise to dodge the question for now.

“When you choose to engage on any issue like this, you’re going to create news coverage, awareness and back and forth,” Devine said. “And when you refuse to engage, you make it really hard for the side that’s trying to create the engagement.”

Republicans face political vulnerabilities related to the Supreme Court as well. In the aftermath of President Donald Trump’s coronavirus infection, Barrett’s nomination hasn’t become the rallying cry the party hoped for.

Democrats also are trying to shore up any advantage by emphasizing that a conservative court could finally overturn the 2010 Affordable Care Act, which has grown in popularity over time but faces its latest challenge in oral arguments slated for Nov. 10, a week after Election Day.

Polling suggests most Americans want the Senate to wait on confirming a new justice until after the election.

Indeed, the Constitution says nothing about the number of Supreme Court justices or lower court judges, only that the president nominates federal jurists and the Senate confirms them. The high court, in fact, has had as many as 10 justices since Congress set the original roster of six in 1789.

There are no formal proposals to add justices, and the court wasn’t a topline issue in the presidential campaign before Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death last month. But since then, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has said “nothing is off the table” if Republicans rush Barrett’s confirmation.

The matter presents Biden with uncomfortable realities. A former vice president and six-term senator, he venerates the Senate and a bygone era of deal-making that he insists is possible again. But the current confirmation politics don’t easily fit that vision.

Further, Biden’s reluctance to disclose a position on court expansion stands out from his willingness to engage on other divides within the broad coalition he’s trying to marshal against Trump. The progressive movement clamoring for a larger Supreme Court also wants a single-payer health insurance system, tuition-free college for all Americans and a complete phase-out of fossil fuels. Anti-Trump Republicans considering Biden still prefer the president’s tax and regulatory policies to Biden’s.

The Democratic nominee has told them all no — unlike his sidestepping on court expansion.

“The moment I answer that question, the headline in every one of your papers will be about that, other than focusing on what’s happening now,” Biden told reporters, referring to Barrett’s fast-paced confirmation process after millions of voters are already casting early ballots. “They’re denying the American people the one shot they have, under constitutional law, to be able have their input” by electing a president, Biden said.

His predicament is an outgrowth of years of gamesmanship across both parties.

Republicans’ push for Barrett is at odds with the reasoning they used to ignore Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland after Justice Antonin Scalia died nine months before the 2016 election. Democrats in 2016, including Biden, made an argument Trump makes now: A president’s power lasts a full four years.

Republicans abolished the filibuster for Supreme Court confirmations in 2017 to fill the seat they’d held open, ending the long-standing practice of effectively requiring 60 senators to confirm a justice.

In 2013, Senate Democrats abolished filibusters for regional appeals court posts like the one Barrett now holds on a Chicago-based bench. They cited Republicans’ blocking of Obama appellate nominees and GOP calls to reduce the size of the appeals courts by eliminating some seats they were ensuring remained empty, a kind of reverse “court packing.”

Before that, it was Senate Democrats — including Biden — opposing conservative nominees from President George W. Bush and Republicans dragging their heels on many of President Bill Clinton’s second-term nominees.

So it goes back to a titanic fight in which Biden played a starring role. As Judiciary chair in 1987, he presided over a hearing and vote that ended with conservative luminary Robert Bork being denied a Supreme Court seat.

Biden’s hope in 2020 is that enough voters can take the same philosophical view that his Republican colleague and fellow future presidential nominee Bob Dole took 33 years ago.

“He’s very fair to me in there,” Dole, then the Senate Republican leader, said of Biden during a break in Bork’s hearings. But, Dole added: “The big test is coming. It’ll test not only the chairman, who I think’s a good chairman, but everybody else. … The people are going to find out who’s playing politics and which ones are asking reasonable but tough questions.”

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Reprinted with permission from The Associated Press.

Associated Press


3 comments

  • jonzahn

    October 10, 2020 at 10:42 pm

    How do you like Democrat-Socialism so far?

    If Joe Biden is elected President America will be on fire by the leftist terrorists only Biden won’t send federal officers to help. Biden/Harris will support the rioters as they, and the Democrat party have through out.

    Here are the Socialists and far left Democrats who are supporting & fundraising for Biden. Maxine Waters, Nancy Pelosi, Bernie Sanders, Karen Bass (Leader Congressional Black Caucus), llhan Omar, Elizabeth Warren, Val Demings, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Valerie Jarrett,. Rashida Talib, Stacy Abrams, Ayanna Pressley, Sheila Jackson Lee, Pramila Jayapal, Chuck Schumer.

    (Listed here are some of the socialists and far-left radicals who have infiltrated congress, senate, governors, and even mayors.)

    Republican / Democrat Positions: Still Undecided???

    1. Free Healthcare for Illegal aliens, DACA, TPS recipients & their families. Taxpayer-funded with one estimate at $52 trillion.
    Democrats Yes.
    Republicans No.

    2. Citizenship for 30 to 50 million illegal aliens, DACA, TPS recipients, and their families with a cost of billions to taxpayers.
    Democrats Yes.
    Republicans No.

    3. De-fund Police. Biden is doing his best to walk this back. In the Senate (so there’s a record), Kamala Harris called it “re-imagine law enforcement.” Biden recently stated he was in favor, quote “redirecting law enforcement funds.” If Biden/Harris is elected, you know what will happen.
    Democrats Yes.
    Republicans No.

    4. Taxes. Biden has stated he will raise taxes to over 4 trillion. With this Democrat platform, he will have to.
    Democrats Yes.
    Republicans NO TAX INCREASES / TAX CUTS.

    5. Sanctuary Cities & States. Biden & Harris supports sanctuary cities.
    Democrats Yes.
    Republicans No.

    6. Immediately end all deportations of illegal aliens, Bernie’s website calls it a “moratorium” on deportations.
    Democrats Yes.
    Republicans No.

    7. Reparations for the race’s harmed by Caucasians (already starting in California) Biden & Kamala Harris committed to Al Sharpton to support Sheila Jackson Lee’s reparations bill in the House. Basically, a tax will be levied on all people of Caucasian descent in America. The funds distributed to African Americans.
    Democrats Yes.
    Republicans No.

    8. Coal / Fracking: I don’t understand how voters in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Illinois, West Virginia can even consider voting for Biden? You do realize that as soon as Biden/Harris takes office. Fracking, Coal Mining jobs are long gone You’re voting for your own unemployment in these states people. The Democrat Governors in these states know this and still support Biden. Sacrifice jobs of their citizens for a Biden Presidency.
    Democrats Yes.
    Republicans No.

    9. The 2nd Amendment will be under attack even more under Biden. Biden stated, “Beto O’Rourke will be his gun Czar,” “Hel yeah I’m coming for your guns.”
    Democrats Yes.
    Republicans No.

    10. Medicare for all: Ending of all private / employer-based health care Feds run everything. This is Kamala Harris’s baby. Kiss goodbye to your healthcare plan if Biden/Harris is elected. Taxpayer-funded at a cost of trillions.
    Democrats Yes.
    Republicans No.

    11. Free college for all, including illegal aliens & non-citizens Bernie Sanders’s plan adopted. (taxpayer-funded with estimates in the billions).
    Democrats Yes.
    Republicans No.

    12. Immediately decriminalize all illegal entry into our country. So no need for the Border Patrol.
    Democrats Yes.
    Republicans No.

    13. Open Borders.
    Democrats Yes.
    Republicans No.

    14. De-fund & terminate border patrol & ICE. Funds redistributed to other programs.
    Democrats Yes.
    Republicans No.

    Democrats want to sell us that Biden is a “centrists.” Joe’s “centrist” policies include free health care for illegal aliens, trillions in taxes on the middle class, and once again, like his hero Obama, ship our jobs overseas and flooding our country with illegal aliens. Sounds pretty liberal to me? Bidens’ policies almost mirror that of socialist Bernie Sanders’s platform.

    Thank you for reading.

    VOTE TRUMP TODAY!

  • tjb

    October 11, 2020 at 9:17 am

    Not voting for a serial killer. Trump’s failed policies and actions to protect American citizens from Covid-19 has caused too many American to needlessly died. He kills Americans for his own gain.

  • Se

    October 11, 2020 at 9:32 am

    You mean like Andrew Cuomo who pushed coronavirus victims in nursing homes while Ron DeSantis save lives by blocking the sick you leftist activist.

Comments are closed.


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