There is a lot of discussion about how Joe Biden can’t really be a Trojan horse for the progressives in his party or how Biden is a true centrist who can hold the party in line. But neither of these things are true, and Biden is showcasing it with this new Supreme Court vacancy.
In both July and October 2019, Biden rejected the idea of packing the Supreme Court, saying in an October Democratic debate, “I would not get into court-packing. We add three justices — next time around, we lose control, they add three justices. We begin to lose any credibility the court has at all.”
What does Biden think now? Well, he can’t rule it out. “Let’s say I answer that question. Then, the whole debate’s going to be about what Biden said or didn’t say, Biden said he would or wouldn’t,” he said Monday.
It’s telling that Biden thinks it would be a story if he ruled out court-packing. After all, that’s what his progressive base and leading progressive supporters in the Democratic Party want to do, whether Republicans fill the seat or not. Biden’s own running mate, Kamala Harris, was one of the 11 Democrats in the presidential primary to remain open to packing the court.
Biden is not a bulwark against the progressive wing of the party; he’s a weather vane. That’s why he allowed himself to be bullied out of his decadeslong support for the Hyde Amendment. Biden has changed his tune on the Senate filibuster, telling the New York Times in January that he opposed ending it before saying in July that it depends on how much Republicans push back on his agenda.
Biden is not a socialist, but he’s also not going to put up much of a fight if they lean on him. He has been moving leftward since the start of the Democratic primary, earning the centrist label by being compared to Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. Biden still hasn’t made up his mind on whether he wants to ban fracking because he’s stuck in a tug-of-war between the progressive wing and the state of Pennsylvania.
Biden is supposed to be the candidate who cares about our institutions. Yet, he can no longer rule out flooding the Supreme Court with liberal justices because Democrats can’t handle the fact they haven’t held the Senate for five years. It’s far less likely that Biden restrains his progressive wing than his progressive wing drags him further to the Left.
