Joe Biden worries that the “extreme” US supreme court, dominated by rightwing justices, cannot be relied upon to uphold the rule of law.
“I worry,” the president told ProPublica in interview published on Sunday. “Because I know that if the other team, the Maga Republicans, win, they don’t want to uphold the rule of law.”
“Maga” is shorthand for “Make America great again”, Donald Trump’s campaign slogan. Trump faces 91 criminal charges and assorted civil threats but nonetheless dominates Republican polling for the nomination to face Biden in a presidential rematch next year.
In four years in the White House, Trump nominated and saw installed three conservative justices, tilting the court 6-3 to the right. That court has delivered significant victories for conservatives, including the removal of the right to abortion and major rulings on gun control, affirmative action and other issues.
The new court term, which starts on Tuesday, could see further such rulings on matters including government environmental and financial regulation.
I too would wish he’d expand the court as he suggested he would on the campaign trail, but unfortunately the game of politics is such that actually doing it would become the biggest topic ever, and not in a good way. It would be super unpopular with the moderates, and it would allow republicans the perfect opportunity to accuse Biden of being anti-democracy, which of course they would love an excuse to do because it would distract from the fact that they actually want to destroy democracy. Maybe, and this is a big maybe, he’ll consider it in a second term when he no longer has to worry about re-election, but that hope always seems to be a pipe dream.
Gay marriage was super unpopular with moderates, until people made efforts to change that. No one in the country cared about drag queens until the conservatives made a concerted effort to make it a political issue. The political whims of the country are changeable, if you’re willing to try to change them.
Too many people look at politics as the job of reading an opinion poll and then staying within a rigid bound of the status quo rather than as leaders who should be influencing the public to adopt better policies. This continual worry about moderates’ beliefs as if they’re not the least ideological people in the nation is a flawed approach to politics that just puts up barriers and excuses for doing anything.