For all the talk that President Trump’s reelection would destroy the country’s institutions, Joe Biden and Sen. Chuck Schumer are promising to do exactly that as Democrats cheer them on.
Biden has repeatedly said that he fended off the left wing of his party in the primary, but he has capitulated to them repeatedly since his victory. That includes his selection of Sen. Kamala Harris as his running mate. Harris promised throughout her own run that she would ignore Congress if it didn’t pass the legislation she wanted and that she would implement it herself. Now, she could be a heartbeat away from the presidency.
While Harris wants to tear down the power of the legislative branch, a President Biden will lead the charge against the judiciary. Although he denied it in the primary, it is now clear that Biden wants to pack the courts. Biden has said voters don’t deserve to know his answer or the list of judges he wants to pack the courts with, and he has even said that it was Republicans who packed the court by confirming Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
Schumer, meanwhile, thinks Democrats will be in the majority forever (they haven’t even won back the Senate yet). He wants to try and cement that by making Washington, D.C., a state, gifting himself two additional Democratic senators. To ensure those pesky Republicans stay quiet, Schumer wants to end the legislative filibuster, following up on Harry Reid’s hollowing out of the Senate rules for most nominations in 2013.
Meanwhile, Biden, the candidate of norms, is leading a ticket that promises to be the most anti-Second Amendment ticket in memory. Biden, supposedly the candidate of decency, wants to take nuns back to court once again and force them to violate their religious beliefs, all while forcing U.S. taxpayers to fund abortions at home and abroad.
Trump’s rhetoric has always gotten him in trouble, and on this issue, it’s no different. Trump has not challenged the independence of the judiciary in any way beyond a couple of angry tweets. Sen. Mitch McConnell has not let Trump browbeat him into abolishing the legislative filibuster, yet Biden and Schumer appear all too eager to go through with it.
Destroying norms is nothing new for Biden: After all, the escalations in Supreme Court confirmation battles started with Biden’s smearing of Robert Bork. Biden is the anti-institution leader of a party dedicated to uprooting the constitutional order and consolidating power in the federal government. Trump’s bad tweets won’t change that.
