Democrats aren’t shying away from the radical idea to expand the number of justices on the Supreme Court in order to ‘take it back’ from these constitutional justices that Trump has put on the court.
In fact several Democratic candidates for president have said that they are open to the idea of such an expansion if they win the presidency:
POLITICO – After watching Mitch McConnell transform the judiciary over the past four years, liberals are demanding a bold response. And Democrats are listening.
Sens. Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand told POLITICO they would not rule out expanding the Supreme Court if elected president, showcasing a new level of interest in the Democratic field on an issue that has until recently remained on the fringes of debate.
The surprising openness from White House hopefuls along with other prominent Senate Democrats to making sweeping changes — from adding seats to the high court to imposing term limits on judges and more — comes as the party is eager to chip away at the GOP’s growing advantage in the courts.
“We are on the verge of a crisis of confidence in the Supreme Court,” said Harris (D-Calif.). “We have to take this challenge head on, and everything is on the table to do that.”
Expanding the Supreme Court would amount to a historic power play by the next Democratic president and Congress, requiring an intense legislative fight and the abandonment of many judicial and congressional norms.
Of course we know from past comments that both presidential candidates Beto O’Rourke and Pete Buttigieg are also in favor of this radical move.
Again with Merrick Garland…
But Democrats say that after Republicans blocked Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland and other lower court judges during President Barack Obama’s final term only to quickly fill those vacancies, the party needs an equally bruising response.
They keep throwing this in our faces as if it was some illegal travesty or something. But Joe Biden, when he was head of the judiciary committee back in 1992 actually said…
On June 25, 1992, he said that if a Supreme Court vacancy happened that year, the president should not nominate anyone and, if he did, the Judiciary Committee should not hold a hearing “until after the political campaign season is over.”
And Schumer said in 2007 that all Bush nominations should be blocked for the rest of his term.
Democrats only love election year SCOTUS nominations when they are from Democrats. Anyway, just setting the record straight on that again.
Not all presidential candidates are hot on this idea yet:
Others aren’t willing to go there just yet. Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), a liberal running for president, seemed cool to the idea.
“I’m open to these kind of conversations, but I really caution people about doing things that become a tit for tat throughout history,” Booker said in an interview. “So when the Democrats expand it to 11, 12 judges, when Republicans have it, they expand it to 15 judges.”
And 2020 candidate Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) was equally cautious: “You always want to look at all ideas, but I think right now the most reasonable thing is to win the elections and to try to stop the bad judges.”
I think Booker and Klobuchar both know that this is a radical move and don’t want it to put their candidacies in jeopardy. But I have no doubt that they’d be willing to go this route once the election is over.