Democrats are shooting themselves in the foot by threatening to stack the Supreme Court with sympathetic justices and raising the specter of impeachment, according to Republican strategists who see an opportunity to paint Joe Biden as intent on upending constitutional norms.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has declined to rule out impeaching President Trump if he races to fill Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat, while the party’s Senate leader, Chuck Schumer, hinted to allies that he would be open to increasing the size of the bench in order to overwhelm a conservative majority.
Those messages are a gilt-edged way to mobilize the Trump base on Nov. 3, according to a former White House official.
“The court-packing stuff is a gift wrapped in a big red bow,” he said.
Trump is preparing to announce his third Supreme Court nomination on Saturday.
Opponents see it as an eleventh-hour power grab that smacks of hypocrisy, after Republicans in 2016 refused to vote on Barack Obama’s nominee Merrick Garland, saying it was too close to an election.
The result is rising tensions and pressure for Biden to hit back by abolishing the Senate filibuster and packing the court if he won election. At the same time, Pelosi faces calls to launch a second impeachment as a way to delay nomination hearings.
The Trump campaign moved to cash in this week, raising the threats in fundraising emails.
One from the president said: “Nancy and her corrupt party have proven that there is no line they won’t cross to obstruct our nation’s incredible progress.”
“They’re threatening to impeach me again because I’m doing my job as your president by filling the vacancy on the Supreme Court.”
A second message from his eldest son, Don Jr., arrived not long after.
A source close to the campaign said Democrats had offered an easy target. For years, they had accused Trump of subverting constitutional norms, and now, they had given up any claim to the moral high ground.
“I was shocked when I started seeing leading — not just AOC, but actual Democrats in power positions like Chuck Schumer — float packing courts. I thought we were going to have to bait them into doing it because it was so clearly stupid politically,” he said.
“They have turned something that could have just been about Republicans replacing RBG into a much bigger thing.”
America First Action, the biggest pro-Trump Super PAC, is collecting results from questionnaires as it plots how best to use airtime and digital ads to respond to the Supreme Court controversy.
“We are hitting Joe Biden’s economic failures, tax increases, as well as his weakness on law and order and the rioting,” said Kelly Sadler, communications director at America First Action.
“If this turns into more protests that evolve into rioting from the Left over this vacancy, that strengthens our law and order narrative.”
