Packing the courts is better for the Dems, even if the Republicans pack back

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

This ain't it chief.
If gutting checks and balances means more successful policymaking for 2 years I'd rather go without them.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

This ain't it chief.
If gutting checks and balances means more successful policymaking for 2 years I'd rather go without them.

It is not just 2 years though. This kind of aggressive approach essentially ties the SC to the political parties which both increases the number of years the Ds control the courts than the status quo, also makes the party controlling the SC pay a political price when SC makes an unpopular decision. I know Republicans won't like it, this post is not for them. It provides a way for the Ds to enact and maintain policy and completely politicizing the courts and making them an extension of the political parties is key to that objective.

If to get to a good end point in regards to policy we destroyed the court system's independence from strict partisanship and destroyed its ability to act with any autonomy, we will have made the nation poorer. It'd be an act worse than the destructions of the library of Alexandria.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

You want politics that are even more personality-centric, even more unstable? Do this. I know for sure you have good intentions. But all this would do is help make us closer to Russia in terms of governance style. No thanks.
A RW president and right-leaning legislature would have a rubber-stamp in the courts, and we'd have no one to blame but ourselves.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

This ain't it chief.
If gutting checks and balances means more successful policymaking for 2 years I'd rather go without them.

It is not just 2 years though. This kind of aggressive approach essentially ties the SC to the political parties which both increases the number of years the Ds control the courts than the status quo, also makes the party controlling the SC pay a political price when SC makes an unpopular decision. I know Republicans won't like it, this post is not for them. It provides a way for the Ds to enact and maintain policy and completely politicizing the courts and making them an extension of the political parties is key to that objective.

If to get to a good end point in regards to policy we destroyed the court system's independence from strict partisanship and destroyed its ability to act with any autonomy, we will have made the nation poorer. It'd be an act worse than the destructions of the library of Alexandria.

Unfortunately, that has already happened.

All that's left is trying to find the best way to move forward from the smoking ruins.

Wrong.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

The courts are already packed. Trump and McConnell openly brag about it.

You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

The courts are already packed. Trump and McConnell openly brag about it.

You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.

Republicans replacing Scalia and Ginsburg in a single term is packing, period.

No one is truly against packing if they don't consider that as at least equally bad as Biden adding 2 more justices, and they really should consider it worse, as Biden is only doing it in response.

This is rank inability to define "packing" properly. It is one of two things: expanding the size of the court and filling all or most of the new seats with people sympathetic to you, or impeaching some or all of the justices sympathetic to your opponents and filling the vacancies with a group that is mostly favorable to you instead, in an effort to change its alliegence.
Rs have done neither. They haven't packed the courts.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

This is rank inability to define "packing" properly. It is one of two things: expanding the size of the court and filling all or most of the new seats with people sympathetic to you, or impeaching some or all of the justices sympathetic to your opponents and filling the vacancies with a group that is mostly favorable to you instead, in an effort to change its alliegence.
Rs have done neither. They haven't packed the courts.

What?

They literally blockaded Obama's judicial nominations for the last 2 years of his presidency, creating a large backlog of open judicial seats that they then spent Trump's entire term filling with young ideologues, some of whom better fit the description of a political operative than a qualified judge. That's not packing by expanding the court, that's packing by stealing a huge number of seats to fill, which is basically the same result.

My gosh. Nothing is normal or ethical about what they did with Obama or under Trump. Arguing semantics about the word 'packing' misses the issue here.

In the context of court packing as it is generally understood to refer to in this month of Anno Domini 2020, SCOTUS is the beginning and the end. Nothing in my post pertains to the lower courts, only to SCOTUS.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

It's beyond laughable to claim that Gorsuch being placed on SCOTUS and Kav being placed on SCOTUS is court-packing, unless you happen to be a particular kind of Democratic partisan. Words have meaning.
This sort of behavior from Dems, if repeated regularly, would ruin America even more than Mitch could hope to do, which is a tall order that somehow is surpassed by this sort of stuff.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

It's beyond laughable to claim that Gorsuch being placed on SCOTUS and Kav being placed on SCOTUS is court-packing, unless you happen to be a particular kind of Democratic partisan. Words have meaning.

Gorsuch was filling a seat blockaded by the GOP under Obama. If they are going to make this a thing, then Democrats very well ought to escalate. Or, you know, just continue letting Republicans play by a whole different set of rules while we do nothing.

Kavanaugh was just a flawed nominee for a seat that Trump was entitled to. The only issue I ever had with that situation was the idea of politicians thinking their SCOTUS picks are beyond reproach every single time, and never responding to ethical/moral concerns, because god forbid they just pick someone else. Nowadays it seems that no matter what the issue is, the response is to dig in harder and never budge.

You're free to favor the high ground approach, though. I'm simply saying that if Democrats stick to that failed approach, they'll just end up buried under a mountain of GOP shenanigans and deceitful power-grabs. Because if you think it ends with things like the Garland situation, I've got a bridge to sell you. Republicans have already packed courts, tried to pack them, or otherwise tampered with judiciaries at the state level. You think that behavior is not moving up the chain?

My view is that we ought to leave open the possibility of going as far as the GOP has gone, but go no farther. It is the obligation of the left-of-center to care about functional government and destroying functionality in Washington only helps Republicans argue the government doesn't work. Regardless of the short-term wins we notch, we'd be doing the GOP's dirty work for them, whether we realize it or not.

Things the GOP has done:
1. block Obama's appointees to stack the courts with conservatives after Trump took over; I fully support Harry Reid having gotten rid of the 60 vote threshold for circuit court judges and then proceeding to confirm Obama nominees and I fully support a President Biden filling all vacancies still existing by the time he's sworn in, with the full backing of the new Dem-majority Senate.
2. block Obama's SCOTUS pick Merrick Garland, an act that I heavily disapprove of but live with. In the future, if we have the senate majority, we can simply tell a GOP president that their SCOTUS pick won't get a hearing in a presidential election year and it'll be determined by the election - exactly what McConnell did

Things the GOP didn't do:
1. increase the size of the court and fill all the new seats with hacks. That's a dangerous, stupid, and wrong idea that Biden is too much of an institutionalist to approve of, thank god
2. completely lose faith in institutions and insist on tearing down everything for the sake of partisan gain if they don't get their way. I'm glad the GOP has an element of constitutional conservativism on these sorts of things even if I know it comes from a highly self-interested and amoral, even immoral, POV

So how do we fight the GOP? We fight them with precedents they engineered being in our toolbox and being fair game. Go no further. People might raise harsh emergency doom-and-gloom scenarios. To that I say - let us get to that bridge when we come to it. But adding seats to the court? No way in hell.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

The courts are already packed. Trump and McConnell openly brag about it.

You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.

Republicans replacing Scalia and Ginsburg in a single term is packing, period.

No one is truly against packing if they don't consider that as at least equally bad as Biden adding 2 more justices, and they really should consider it worse, as Biden is only doing it in response.

This is rank inability to define "packing" properly. It is one of two things: expanding the size of the court and filling all or most of the new seats with people sympathetic to you, or impeaching some or all of the justices sympathetic to your opponents and filling the vacancies with a group that is mostly favorable to you instead, in an effort to change its alliegence.
Rs have done neither. They haven't packed the courts.

They refused to let Obama fill a seat with anyone, citing a phony precedent, then when they were in that situation, they did [or presumably will] fill the seat. That's a pack, and it takes a lot of spin and contriving to argue otherwise.

No, that is the Senate's constitutional role to advise and consent to the president's nominees.  Elections have consequences.  

And if those consequences include shrinking the court because you don’t like the President, they can include reforms that expand the size of the court.

It's dubious to compare leaving a seat vacant, and expanding the court's size.  The court's size was in fact still 9 throughout the entire time, it was just that one seat was unfilled.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

The courts are already packed. Trump and McConnell openly brag about it.

You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.

Republicans replacing Scalia and Ginsburg in a single term is packing, period.

No one is truly against packing if they don't consider that as at least equally bad as Biden adding 2 more justices, and they really should consider it worse, as Biden is only doing it in response.

This is rank inability to define "packing" properly. It is one of two things: expanding the size of the court and filling all or most of the new seats with people sympathetic to you, or impeaching some or all of the justices sympathetic to your opponents and filling the vacancies with a group that is mostly favorable to you instead, in an effort to change its alliegence.
Rs have done neither. They haven't packed the courts.

They refused to let Obama fill a seat with anyone, citing a phony precedent, then when they were in that situation, they did [or presumably will] fill the seat. That's a pack, and it takes a lot of spin and contriving to argue otherwise.

No, that is the Senate's constitutional role to advise and consent to the president's nominees.  Elections have consequences.  

And if those consequences include shrinking the court because you don’t like the President, they can include reforms that expand the size of the court.

It's dubious to compare leaving a seat vacant, and expanding the court's size.  The court's size was in fact still 9 throughout the entire time, it was just that one seat was unfilled.

Actually the size of the Court was 8. The Supreme Court had 8 justices for over a year and decided numerous high profile cases with 8 justices during that time, and the official position of the Republican Party was that that was totally fine. So for the GOP to now pretend as though the number 9 is somehow sacrosanct based on “muh 150 year tradition” is not particularly persuasive.

The legal size of the court was 9 seats, and in practice it was a split of 8 filled and 1 unfilled. It's obvious that is what I was referring to.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

The courts are already packed. Trump and McConnell openly brag about it.

You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.

Republicans replacing Scalia and Ginsburg in a single term is packing, period.

No one is truly against packing if they don't consider that as at least equally bad as Biden adding 2 more justices, and they really should consider it worse, as Biden is only doing it in response.

This is rank inability to define "packing" properly. It is one of two things: expanding the size of the court and filling all or most of the new seats with people sympathetic to you, or impeaching some or all of the justices sympathetic to your opponents and filling the vacancies with a group that is mostly favorable to you instead, in an effort to change its alliegence.
Rs have done neither. They haven't packed the courts.

They refused to let Obama fill a seat with anyone, citing a phony precedent, then when they were in that situation, they did [or presumably will] fill the seat. That's a pack, and it takes a lot of spin and contriving to argue otherwise.

No, that is the Senate's constitutional role to advise and consent to the president's nominees.  Elections have consequences.  

And if those consequences include shrinking the court because you don’t like the President, they can include reforms that expand the size of the court.

It's dubious to compare leaving a seat vacant, and expanding the court's size.  The court's size was in fact still 9 throughout the entire time, it was just that one seat was unfilled.

Actually the size of the Court was 8. The Supreme Court had 8 justices for over a year and decided numerous high profile cases with 8 justices during that time, and the official position of the Republican Party was that that was totally fine. So for the GOP to now pretend as though the number 9 is somehow sacrosanct based on “muh 150 year tradition” is not particularly persuasive.

The legal size of the court was 9 seats, and in practice it was a split of 8 filled and 1 unfilled. It's obvious that is what I was referring to.

And my point is that the GOP collectively said, “Let’s just let it be 8 for a while.” So why is 9 now an immutable magic number?

9 is only an immutable number because it's currently the number of seats, and adding more is a dicey proposition for reasons I've already outlined, as well as being plainly unnecessary (see my post about what we should do instead of court-packing). Democrats in good standing want to suddenly help GOP messaging become more credible - I am at loss for words.
Should there be substantial bipartisan agreement in increasing the court's size, the absolute necessity of 9 is thrown out the window.