Which is what the obvious implication of what he was saying was from the beginning.
Why Doesn't Biden Just Answer The Question?
- Thread starter The Oracle
- Start date
So...if McConnell moves forward with confirming ACB before the election then that means Biden will announce his position on whether to “stack” the court? Why would Biden do that? Refusing to answer has been working well for him thus far...why change course days before the election?
I’m assuming that it’s a done deal that ACB will be confirmed...unless Biden and the Dems are hoping they can stare down McConnell into postponing the vote until after the election. The GOP may have candidates in close races who would prefer not to have to vote on this before the election?
He sounded to me that he was signaling to McConnel that it is possible to head this showdown off. I doubt he is going to announce specifically what he will do unless McConnel backs off Bunny Barrett completely. If it move forward he will say something about how reluctantly he has to consider what options they have to redress the situation. What the press wants is for him to denounce it so they can portray it as a " rejection of the radical left wing position". (The GOP will attack him either way, so they are fine with whatever he says, of course.) If he leaves it open but doesn't specify what form the retaliation will take, he can keep them on their toes. The only really important bit is that he is making clear that he is responding to the GOP's actions.
I think that's dangerous because the court system needs reform anyway, but I think a lot of Biden's team figures they can only count on the press attacking them for it, so they need to give the press the "GOP provoked it" storyline to head off the "this is a left-wing radical idea" framing. If the GOP was patient and smart, they would drop Barrett, keep things 5-4 and still win 95% of their cases just not the big show piece culture war ones. There are probably a lot of people on Biden's team who just figure there is no way the GOP can play things that long game. (They could in the past, but they have too many nutjobs in power now.)
I would not be surprised if no matter what the GOP does, the next Democratic congress (assuming it has both houses) does a lot of work on expanding and reorganizing lower courts, leaving the high profile supreme court fight off the table so long as the GOP behaves itself.
