By MICHAEL BRENDAN DOUGHERTY
Although Joe Biden campaigned against packing the Supreme Court in the Democratic primary, writers on the left have been arguing that he ought to do it as a simple matter of revenge. Or, short of that, they argue that at least he cannot continue dodging the question.
Writing in The Atlantic, Emma Green predicts “if Democrats win big in November, court packing will be an urgent and live question that Biden and Harris will have to take on within their coalition. Evasion isn’t a good enough answer.”
A few hours later, members of the press pressed Biden again. Will he expand the Supreme Court? His response was hilarious.
“You’ll know my opinion of court-packing when the election is over,” Biden said. “Now look, I know — it’s a great question, and I don’t blame you all for asking. But you know the moment I answer that question, the headline in every one of your papers will be about that.”
It’s comical that he says this as if he’s defending a high principle. Joe Biden is very likely to be president of the United States next January. What he says about the relationship of the presidency to the judiciary is newsworthy. And that’s why he won’t tell us, he explains! Is this like Nixon’s secret plan for winning Vietnam? Will he bomb the Chevy Chase Club and then replace Brett Kavanaugh and John Roberts while their charred bodies are still giving off smoke? And would that satisfy the Left?
What we are witnessing right now is a preview of the Biden administration and the impossible psychodrama it will face immediately upon its birth. Political actors — very much including the progressives on Twitter — have already priced in a Biden victory. They are trying to sneak in their demands before the votes are counted.
They should know that administrations face real peril when they try to launch an initiative that they didn’t campaign on. George W. Bush ran in 2004 as a war president, as a defender of traditional values, and as a provider of prescription drugs to seniors. After he won rather narrowly, he claimed to have a mandate and then tried to reform Social Security, an issue he had highlighted rarely during the campaign. It was a political disaster.
In the primaries, Biden ran against constitutional extremism. During the debates, Kamala Harris laughed in his face when he cited the constitutional limits on the executive branch. He said during the primary that Democrats would “rue the day” they packed the Supreme Court.
Ever since he secured an insurmountable lead among Democrats, Biden has been running on nothing in particular. He has loads of policies and frameworks on his website, but his campaign has highlighted his biography, his character traits, even the ability of Americans to forget about him for a few minutes. If he mentions policy at all, it is the most milquetoast stuff: reversing a series of Trump executive orders, restoring SALT deductions for affluent liberal wage-earners, modestly expanding Obamacare, and rejoining the toothless Paris Climate accords.
If the Democrats take the Senate, the Left isn’t much interested in a timid Biden agenda. They view Biden in perhaps the same way Obama did in 2008: He’s just an old gasbag to make the Democrats feel safe for the suburban wine moms.
