Packing the court is unprecedented, and as soon as anyone did it, they would both do it continuously. It would also outrage the other party and make the first to do it more likely to lose the next election.
So you would get to pack the court for the rest of your current term before the other party gets back in and packs it the other way, and thereafter lose the courts as a check on the party in power forever because the first thing a party would do when they get into power is pack the courts.
As with partisan gerrymandering, packing the court cannot be the only step.
It would need to come with a commitment to a package of difficult to undo (i.e. amendments) reforms. SCOTUS term limits, preventing the Senate from refusing to even consider nominees, bans on justices receiving gifts (https://www.propublica.org/article/clarence-thomas-scotus-un...), revocation of Presidential immunity, etc. You pack the court with an explicit promise to largely return to the old status quo when it's fixed.
I think they were just overly confident that they would be re-elected. Why throw the baby out when the bathwater is still warm?
Packing the court just means passing legislation. It isn't some criminal thing.
The court is an expression of political power. Expressing political power through it is not stupid.
Packing the court is unprecedented, and as soon as anyone did it, they would both do it continuously. It would also outrage the other party and make the first to do it more likely to lose the next election.
So you would get to pack the court for the rest of your current term before the other party gets back in and packs it the other way, and thereafter lose the courts as a check on the party in power forever because the first thing a party would do when they get into power is pack the courts.
It's a monumentally stupid idea.
As with partisan gerrymandering, packing the court cannot be the only step.
It would need to come with a commitment to a package of difficult to undo (i.e. amendments) reforms. SCOTUS term limits, preventing the Senate from refusing to even consider nominees, bans on justices receiving gifts (https://www.propublica.org/article/clarence-thomas-scotus-un...), revocation of Presidential immunity, etc. You pack the court with an explicit promise to largely return to the old status quo when it's fixed.
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I see no reason we can't have hundreds of supreme court judges.
Biden shared a delusion with Schumer and first-term Obama, that the Republicans have a behavioral floor they won't gleefully take a jackhammer to.
Democrats are finally waking up to this, I think, given the recent retaliatory gerrymandering in CA and VA.
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> Both of which (especially Virginia) are much more egregious than what happened in Texas…
"Mom, he punched me back after I sucker-punched him!"
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How is the citizen-voted CA response - contingent entirely on Texas actually implementing - "much more egregious than what happened in Texas"?
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