The Democrats are talking it up again, on Meet The Press (via NBC News):
KRISTEN WELKER:
Okay, well, since we are on the topic of the court, let’s speak more broadly about it. Former Vice President Kamala Harris shares some of your criticisms, clearly. She’s called for expanding the Supreme Court from nine justices to 13. Do you support adding four more seats to the Supreme Court, Congressman?
REP. JAMES CLYBURN:
Yes, I do. I think that we are in a position now that calls from some significant actions taken by the Congress, and we ought to expand — and 13 is a pretty good number. A baker’s dozen would be a good number to have on the court. And I would hope we would get people on the court who will follow the constitutional underpinnings of this great nation of ours. The 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments have been interpreted different ways over the years. And we had in the Warren Court an interpretation of those amendments that I thought would be set for the future of the country. We have now a Supreme Court that has decided to reverse course, and take this country back, I say, to those rulings of Justice Taney, that said that no Black man has any rights that the white man must respect. That was the Supreme Court that made that decision. I had hoped that Clarence Thomas would follow the mordant underpinnings of that constitution of ours, but he has not done so. In fact, he’s decided to go all the way from an angry leftist to a very angry rightist.
The last time the Democrats brought this up, I cautioned that plunging ahead might alienate a significant portion of the independents because it would appear to be cheating by the Democrats. Indeed, this talk may have been a factor in the 2024 loss to the Republicans.
How about now?
Source: Pew Research Center [h/t Steve Benen].
But it’s not hard to see why Democrats feel this way, as the dominant conservative wing of the Court has been coming to conclusions that sometimes seem a bit nuts. Will this issue become a significant part of the campaign? I haven’t seen anything, yet, but there’s still time to deploy it. Or do Democrats see this as difficult to achieve with current likely outcomes of the midterms? I presume this is a legislative issue that must be signed by the President, or ignored, in order to become law.
