Should a Democratic President add 2 more Justices on the Supreme Court?

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I can at least understand the Republican partisans who say Dems shouldn't do this. They're about their own political power, and even if they're lying about their motivations, at least I get it.

The centrist concern trolls who say that Democrats should unilaterally disarm in these fights because they need to be the adults in the room? That Democrats have to abide by one-sided norms that Republicans have abandoned or else democracy is dead? Those people baffle me.

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The centrist concern trolls who say that Democrats should unilaterally disarm in these fights because they need to be the adults in the room?

There's a middle path between disarming and escalation. Democrats should block Republicans from appointing Supreme Court nominees, but they shouldn't expand the size of the Supreme Court.

If Democrats simply react to Republican perfidy about these norms, they lose forever.

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If you are willing to go as far as adding two, you may as well remove all nine.

This is the kind of wildly implausible measure that appeals to those who are living in a fantasy world. But it says something when so many people cannot imagine a politically favorable outcome short of court-stacking.

You can't advocate for something like this without at least tacitly supporting replacing the US Constitution with an entirely new frame of government. The only reason that stacking the court has any kind of support is because the federal government looks increasingly like something that simply no longer functions. But that problem goes much deeper than Supreme Court shenanigans.

Liberals and other resistance types prefer not to admit this. Those who do tend to be on the political fringes, but they tend to have wild and conspiratorial ideas about how it might happen and are rarely worth any attention.

Why is *this* the unacceptable step, and not the series of events that has led people to be contemplating it as a possibility?

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How to lose the 2022 midterms and make America a third world hellhole 101!

If Dems win the 2020 Presidential election, they automatically lose the 2022 midterms. That is simply how midterm elections work in our current political age.

Packing the Supreme Court or not packing the Supreme Court (and also any policies that Democrats do or do not attempt to implement) would only make a marginal difference in the size of the Republican gains. It might (though even this is actually questionable, I would say) add a percentage point or two to the size of their lead in the generic congressional ballot.

There are reasons that one can reasonably oppose packing the Supreme court, but the idea that it should be opposed because Democrats will they lose the 2022 midterm elections is just delusional.

The only reason millions of Republicans voted for Trump was because they were terrified of having someone not-conservative in Scalia's seat. It's the only reason Trump's president. Imagine the absolute uproar there would be if President Kamala Harris added two more seats. The Democrats would lose every election for the rest of the first half of the 21st century. It would confirm every (currently) unfounded suspicion Republicans have about Democrats.

Just because our opponents do something horrible doesn't mean we should stoop to their level. I don't want to vote for a party as corrupt, undemocratic, and underhanded as the Republicans! Instead, we should mimic the Republicans in a much less destructive way: use vacancies on the Court (and really, lower courts as well) to teach our voters about the importance of judicial appointments and to galvanize our base.

Adding seats to the court is explicitly allowed by the Constitution. It's a maximal use of the rules, but it's certainly within them. You might say ok, then so was what McConnell did. Which, sure. But what are rules if they only bind one side? If Democrats can't come up with some more forceful responses to Republican perfidy on stuff like this, then they'll just lose forever.

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Imagine the absolute uproar there would be if President Kamala Harris added two more seats. The Democrats would lose every election for the rest of the first half of the 21st century.

No. At most, it would have an impact on the next election (and even that isn't guaranteed.) After that, Americans will have long forgotten and started prioritizing other things again.

Yup. This just doesn't matter to most people as much as it matters to political junkies. Ask even most Republican voters if they even know who Robert Bork is, let alone why they're still supposed to be incensed at his treatment.

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What the Republicans did to Judge Garland was immoral and indefensible. It’s only happened once so far, but it should not have happened even once. It should not be repeated or emulated.

Uh, what's going to stop them? It worked out great for them the first time, and the voters certainly didn't/won't hold them accountable.

Yeah. Precedent they’ve learned is that they can deny a democratic president a seat if they control the senate.

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What the Republicans did to Judge Garland was immoral and indefensible. It’s only happened once so far, but it should not have happened even once. It should not be repeated or emulated.

Uh, what's going to stop them? It worked out great for them the first time, and the voters certainly didn't/won't hold them accountable.

By "them" you pretty clearly mean Republicans, and I'll concede your point that all those Republican senators who helped to bury the Garland nomination will probably do it again if similar circumstances ever arise. My point was not that the Republicans will probably never do it again. My point was and is that two wrong do not make a right. I was trying to explain to Zaybay that the wrong thing that Republicans did to Judge Garland should not be taken as evidence that it is perfectly okay to treat the Court as a "political tool."

Yeah, but it *is* a political tool. Republicans didn’t make it that, but they certainly laid it bare, and they’ll be happy to do it again. Democrats can take the high road straight to losing forever, or they can play the hand they’ve been dealt.

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This I’d absurd. You’re asking Democrats to hold to a standard that Republicans refuse to, and that imbalance means Republicans keep making disporportionate gains in the judiciary at Democrats’ expense. Period. This situation doesn’t get solved by Democrats unilaterally disarming. They’re not going to magically get more votes by being “better,” because being “worse” won republicans the election in 2016.

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This I’d absurd. You’re asking Democrats to hold to a standard that Republicans refuse to, and that imbalance means Republicans keep making disporportionate gains in the judiciary at Democrats’ expense. Period. This situation doesn’t get solved by Democrats unilaterally disarming. They’re not going to magically get more votes by being “better,” because being “worse” won republicans the election in 2016.

Who said anything about unilaterally disarming? Look, if Democrats get majority control of the Senate this year, and if there's a vacancy on the Supreme Court in 2020 (say, because Ruth B. Ginsburg dies), then if Trump nominates a conservative ideologue like Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, or Samuel Alito, then I have no objection to Democrats holding hearings to determine the qualities of the nominee, and confirming that the nominee is an ideologue, voting to deny confirmation. If you can block a Trump nominee for that reason, using that method, then do so.

The second sentence of your post has left me rather confused, but I'm not interested right now in trying to explore what you meant. The last sentence makes me shake my head and think to myself that you are unremittingly cynical.

Because you’re not offering a solution for how this situation gets better. Just saying that democrats should hold to a standard that republicans won’t. How do you make the republicans get better?

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The number of yes votes tells me this country is lost beyond any hope of recovery and at this point not even worth trying to save. Republicans would love nothing more than for Dems to set this precedent and abandon democracy and create an even larger chaotic mess, and nothing good would come from doing this as you'd just have every following president adding more and more, until the court becomes too bloated to function.

It's truly shocking how illiberal both sides of the political spectrum are in the US at this point.

Except that this has so far been a one-sided fight. We on the left have been defeated at ever level and every branch. I'm tired of standing by while one side takes power with impunity. The Democratic Party has won the popular vote in 6/7 of the last elections. Our democratic traditions in this country have already been tossed aside. If we have to make further changes to correct them, then so be it.

Exactly. If the desire is a more balanced politics, then letting one side run roughshod over norms without answer from the other is not a solution. It’s a capitulation.

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This proposal, and the fact that it has such substantial support in the poll, shows very clearly which side is truly authoritarian.

I voted and think that its a bad idea, but the Republicans are the one who first started playing this game. Hold your own accountable.

When exactly were Republicans the first ones to start "playing this game"?

When they refused to consider Obama's judicial appointees, forcing Schumer Reid to use the nuclear option to do regular business.

Not exactly. As per The Washington Post:

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LOL at “DataGuy” citing an opinion piece from Marc Thiessen as though it’s just a dispassionate recounting of facts.

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This proposal, and the fact that it has such substantial support in the poll, shows very clearly which side is truly authoritarian.

I voted and think that its a bad idea, but the Republicans are the one who first started playing this game. Hold your own accountable.

When exactly were Republicans the first ones to start "playing this game"?

When they refused to consider Obama's judicial appointees, forcing Schumer Reid to use the nuclear option to do regular business.

Not exactly. As per The Washington Post:

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LOL at “DataGuy” citing an opinion piece from Marc Thiessen as though it’s just a dispassionate recounting of facts.

Instead of fallaciously attacking the source, prove that Democrats didn't filibuster Bush's nominees. Prove that Estrada memo didn't exist.

Not claiming anything of the sort. It’s not worth arguing with someone who’s going to present an opinion column as a cold, dispassionate statement of all the relevant context and history.

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SCOTUS nominees used to be held to a different standard of decorum than the petty squabbles over lower court nominees. McConnell escalated those games to the level of the Supreme Court when he invented the Garland “precedent” out of thin air and decreed that it is perfectly fine to leave one branch of our country’s government crippled for over a year for blatantly partisan reasons.

Joe Biden in 1992:

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As noted by The New York Times: "Mr. Biden’s words ... are a direct contradiction to President Obama’s position in the battle over naming a successor to Justice Antonin Scalia."

Instead of fallaciously attacking the source, prove that Democrats didn't filibuster Bush's nominees. Prove that Estrada memo didn't exist.

Not claiming anything of the sort. It’s not worth arguing with someone who’s going to present an opinion column as a cold, dispassionate statement of all the relevant context and history.

You're bailing out. You still haven't proven me wrong. The fact is that Democrats filibustered ten Bush nominees, and the first filibuster was against a Honduran immigrant (and the first Hispanic that could have sat on D.C. Circuit) for racist and partisan reasons.

In 2007, Chuck Schumer said that Democrats should "reverse the presumption of confirmation" and also stated, "We should not confirm any Bush nominee to the Supreme Court, except in extraordinary circumstances."

Was filibustering a Court appointee something that was not allowed? Since when is the Republican Party against using the available rules maximally?

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Can we all take a step back to laugh at the absurdity of GOP partisans expecting us to believe that their tactical decisions are dictated by something one Democratic Senator said but didn’t do thirty years ago? At this rate if Democrats decide not to add seats to the court, in ten years the GOP is going to do it and point to the fact that people talked about it as justification. But really it’s that they wanted to do it anyway and we’re just looking for any justification, however flimsy.

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That’s a whole lot of words to try to argue why the behavior Republicans gleefully engage in is actually bad.

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Honestly I'm not going to keep arguing with someone who thinks the fact that a batsh**t crazy conservative nominee from the 80s was shot down is terrible and deserves a never-ending cycle of retribution (despite Reagan still getting to fill the seat). No one is really arguing that the Senate must confirm the president's first pick every time afaik. If the president's picks are never supposed to be rejected, what is the point of Senate confirmation? The unacceptable part is holding seats open until your party gets to fill them.

I'm not going to continue trading walls of text around this since there isn't much more to be discussed. Both sides have contributed to this fight, but Republicans have constantly escalated in dramatic fashions and used really poor excuses to justify it ("""Biden Rule"""? lol). End of story. I've had this argument enough that I don't care to continue. Believe whatever you want.

It’s really stunning how disingenuous it all is. It takes a special kind of cognitive dissonance to claim the other side is bad for flirting with, but not doing, the stuff that your side does gleefully.