And the media, of course, is an even bigger problem in adopting Republican phrasing of almost every issue.
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Where was it I read that there are 13 Federal districts and that expanding the court to 13 justices would align with the district construction?
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Yep, you just won me over. I’m voting for Trump! And not just once, but many, many times, in more than one state! Go MAGA!
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Don’t get me started on the complicit media.
I won’t be responsible for my actions…
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A day at a time. Biden, right now, doesn’t need to experiment with fancy terms - semantics, really - about what to call “packing the court”. Josh has a great point in his comment about that, but right now is not the time to go into it. What most people understand, right now, is that “court packing” means adding more seats to the court. And Biden knows that as well as anyone. He also knows it’s a political hot potato that serves no useful purpose right now, except for Republicans. So he’s not biting.
What’s useful here, however, is that he takes the term and applies it also to what the Republicans are doing right now, stretching the definition a little bit, in a way that should add to people’s thinking. Rushing the Barrett confirmation is already seen as highly hypocritical and unnecessary by most. Calling it court packing adds more meaning.
We should just let that sink in for awhile longer. There’s time enough to look at enlarging the SC down the road. For instance, when it’s become obvious to all that, by its actions, the court has a reactionary conservative political agenda.
Then the justification for expanding the court can be about more than just tit-for-tat retribution. It can be more real than that. It would be about saving the court from itself. About saving the constitution. About justice.
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Could have been one of my comments. I’ve been saying this for some time.
Also, court UN-packing. But I probably got it from actual experts.
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While I agree 100% with Josh’s post about not using the term, that term has been drilled into the minds of Indies and Trumpers. By saying, “We’re not going to pack the courts. Oh and by the way, Repubs are packing the courts right now,” he uses familiar terminology to turn the Repubs argument back on themselves. Probably not the best way to go about it, in my opinion. But Biden has a lot of very smart people with access to internal polling helping him craft his message. I hope they’re right.
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Or ‘and what do you think the GOP are doing right now with rushing this confirmation inside of a month before an election?’.
Point out the hypocrisy at the same time.
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For Dog’s sake don’t vote for Joe, cuz he’s going to try to correct the abuses tRump and McTurtle have been piling up over the last four plus years.
I think it’s good framing when referring to what the republicans are doing right now. Josh is referring to what the democrats would do remedy it.
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Exactly!!! Every time the media brings that up Biden and others should ask the question why are they so interested in a future hypothetical by the Democrats but not interested in the actually doing it by today’s Republicans.
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Bernie lost. Twice. Get over it.
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There are a thousand issues, Trump is number one.
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Righteous brother! I think we should dump this Biden fool and start looking for someone else to carry the torch into November 3rd. Clearly, he hasn’t got what it takes. I feel like such a fool for not seeing it before now. Maybe we can still ask Bernie the Messiah to step up and rescue us?
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Hard times for a Bro. 
With friends like that, who needs Republicans?
(To be clear, his comment, not yours.)
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Say “Amen,” somebody! /sn
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He can leave out the first part, denying what everyone says and knows Dems have to do as well as not validating the term, and only say the second part, as in “It’s the other side that’s been packing the courts”.
If they insist on addressing what they might do in response, they could add “We’re just looking to level the playing field by unpacking the courts, by expanding them to account for natural growth, increased case loads and 4 new appellate circuits”.
If they lose the the 50 cent mind crowd with so many words, that’s ok because they never had them and likely never will.
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Absolutely, the Merrick Garland theft should be the main talking point during the hearings for ACB. Democrats should be bringing this up at every opportunity during the hearing and each time they are on camera . Most people can understand the hypocrisy on what Republicans are doing.
She’s qualified and will get seated regardless. Rub the Garland seat theft in their face at every opportunity and how hypocritical they are being with ACB’s nomination
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Also sprach Ronna McDaniel, nee Romney:
“He’s refusing to answer about whether he’s going to pack the Supreme Court, upending 150 years of our judicial standards,” [said] Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel.
Oh, Ronna, Ronna, Ronna,
D-d-d-Donnie’s Ronna.
A woman who denied her family to suck-up to Trump…
Read some fucking US History and retain it, instead of making shit up (or pulling it out of your ass, which I guess amounts to the same thing). US History did not begin with your birth in 1973. The size of the Court has varied over the 230 odd years of government under the US Constitution. The Constitution is silent on the size of the Court, except that there must a Chief Justice. The Court has been at nine Justices since 1869, so you’re right about the 150 years. But what about the 80 years preceding that?
Courts with fewer than 9 Justices have made some fucking awful decisions, like Dred Scott. It looks to me like this is a situation where, “more is mo’ bettah” as we said when I was a kid in Hilo. More is certainly “mo’ bettah” when one party has had a nearly 50 year program of packing (or attempting to pack) a small court with reactionary Justices. (I’d start it with the 1972 nomination and confirmation of Rehnquist, but I think a fair argument could be made for going back to the start of Nixon’s term in 1968.) GOP nominees are getting progressively worse: Rehnquist, Clarence Thomas, Scalia, Kennedy, Roberts, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanope, and now, Amy Coney Barrett. Don’t let’s forget that Bush fils tried to give us Harriett Meyers, but she could not pass the giggle test even in an era when most of the Senate was like Senator Susan (I’m Concerned) Collins and would vote for any candidate with a body temperature well above room temperature deemed qualified by the ABA.
So, Ronna McDaniel (nee Romney), don’t pretend that the number “Nine” was brought down on golden plates from a hill named Cumorah. It’s a number we made up, and it’s a number we can fix with some judicious judicial reform.
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