I remember when Joe Biden ran for office how he promised the 'adults' would be back in charge, decency would be restored to the White House, and he'd 'turn down the temperature' in a nation fraught with racial tensions and civil unrest (both fomented and encouraged by the Left, but I digress).
Oh, and something about 'norms.'
The last several days, Biden has been on a push to 'reform' the Supreme Court.
Why?
'To save democracy', apparently.
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But this is nothing more than the final temper tantrum of a failed presidency. One that fails to see the unintentional consequences of this action.
Jonathan Turley brings up a good point:
If we had Biden's term limits, many iconic decisions would have been lost. Liberal Justice Williams Douglas’s 36 years on the Court would have literally been cut in half. He would never have written Griswold (1965), striking down bans on contraceptives.https://t.co/E9GY6kT7XB
— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) July 30, 2024
Not only would such term limits have hampered Douglas' ruling on Griswold, it would have scuppered other rulings as well:
...Likewise, Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s tenure would have ended before she wrote her famous dissent Shelby County v. Holder (2013), defending voting rights. Anthony Kennedy’s term would have ended before he wrote opinions such as Windsor, striking down the Defense of Marriage Act.
— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) July 30, 2024
Huh.
For a very, very long time -- in fact -- the entire time Biden was in political office, the Supreme Court wasn't an issue. Turley notes Biden was adamantly opposed to packing the court, and refused to play politics with SCOTUS.
Why?
Because SCOTUS didn't have a conservative majority back then. But it does now.
And that is the problem.
Joe Biden didn't wake up yesterday and decided that SCOTUS was a problem all these years. He didn't have an epiphany that maybe term limits are a good idea, not when he's been in office longer than I've been alive.
I disagree with Turley that Biden is doing this to save his nomination. That ship has sailed. Biden is doing this to burn it all down on his way out or -- at the very least -- pave the way for a radical Leftist like Kamala to make (at least some of) these reforms a reality.
It is a childish temper tantrum.
What it ignores, unsurprisingly, is the fact this court isn't really all that partisan -- many rulings have been 9-0, 6-3, or 7-2, with liberal and conservative justices siding with one another on hot button issues. But after they lost Dobbs, the Left decided the problem here was not the overreach of Roe v. Wade (something even liberal justice RBG decried as bad case law), but it was the Supreme Court itself.
He -- and the Democratic Party -- are simply mad SCOTUS isn't an arm of their party, one that can legislate from the bench when they fail to do their jobs as legislators. You need look no further than this: when the Supreme Court ruled against Biden's student loan forgiveness scheme, Biden openly bragged about defying them. But when a jury found Trump guilty, the Biden-Harris campaign issued a statement that no one was 'above the law' (a blatant lie), and to respect the jury's decision.
It is lawfare, full stop. And they want SCOTUS to be able to do the same with the highest court in the land.
Much like the Left melted down when Elon Musk bought Twitter, they cannot fathom a world in which they don't have a stranglehold on every institution, media outlet, form of entertainment, and social media platform. Remember Parler? The conservative, Twitter-like social media app that was pulled from app stores and servers after January 6.
Except the Supreme Court isn't a social media app. It is one of the co-equal branches of government, and one that has worked quite well -- for those of us who 1) know history and 2) understand the role of the Court -- since its inception. It is far too important an institution to be remade at the whim of a bitter, demented, lame duck president and his Leftist radical friends.
The entire call for reform is nothing more than spoiled, overgrown children taking their ball and going home because they're losing the game.
