The left knows there is virtually nothing Democrats can do to prevent Trump from carrying out his second appointment to the Supreme Court, so they’re thinking outside the box.
How can they retake the majority? Just change the rules once they’re back in power.
Harry Cheadle writes at Vice:
The ‘Neutron Option’ Democrats Could Use to Retake the Supreme CourtA political scientist has a radical proposal to pack the court and create a new majority of liberal justices.David Faris has a way to cheer frustrated liberals up—and maybe scare the hell out of everyone else. The Chicago-based political science professor came out with a book this spring called It’s Time to Fight Dirty that imagines a variety of extreme hardball tactics Democrats can employ if they gain power in 2020 to ensure Republicans won’t be able to stop their agenda. For Faris, getting rid of the filibuster that allows a Senate minority to block most legislation (a.k.a. the “nuclear option”) is just the start: He’s talking about shit like breaking up California into seven states and doubling the size of the House of Representatives. But he told me that the section of the book he “had a sleepless night over” was a chapter about what he called the “neutron option for the Supreme Court.”That would involve first proposing a constitutional amendment to end lifetime tenure on the court and pushing a proposal to let each president pick two justices per term, a compromise that Faris hopes would “end the court wars.” He suspects Republicans wouldn’t go for that, however, so he’d advise the next Democratic president to just “pack” the court as FDR tried to do in 1937 before Congress rose up against him and prevented it. That would involve passing a bill to expand the size of the court and allowing the president to appoint however many justices would be needed to create a new liberal majority, with the friendly Senate signing off on any appointee. (This would be legal, Faris points out, because there’s nothing in the Constitution stipulating the size of the court, which has in fact fluctuated in the past.)
Sounds crazy, right? Not to this member of the faculty at Harvard Law:
Or this member of the faculty at Fordham Law:
Allahpundit of Hot Air, to whom I owe a hat tip for this story, makes this point:
Calling for Court-packing when it’s *the other party* that’s momentarily in position to follow through — and that’s favored to build on its Senate majority this fall — is a strange impulse. It’s understandable as a tantrum borne of frustration that the Court’s about to swing further right but bananas as a semi-serious idea, especially with a loose cannon like Trump in charge. A President Romney or McCain wouldn’t have entertained the idea of Court-packing for an instant. President Trump, though? All McConnell would need to tell him is that Democrats don’t think he has the balls to do it. He’ll be tweeting about it tomorrow.
The always level-headed Ed Morrissey provides a fix for all this:
If you think the left looks crazier by the day, you’re not alone, just remember much of this lunacy is being driven by desperation.
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