Elon Green: One thing that makes me nervous about the resurgence of the court-packing talk is that it's not paired with "but first you absolutely must vote for Biden." Like, sorry, that's the literal bare minimum that is required if you want to have this conversation.

So as a general rule I agree with @hurricanexyz.bsky.social that we need a court to be able to rule on constitutionality, but I have no idea what we do when that very court is captured by people who disdain the constitution and those who are bound by it.

I don’t think it’s an exaggeration at all to say the decision threatens the Republic. I might not have said so in 2015, before I saw how triumphantly lawless and autocratic the President could be, and how so many people would applaud it or at least shrug.

You burn it to the ground (You don't salt the earth, though)

Like you have to, right? I don’t know where to get the fuel or how to strike the match, but at this point there’s no other sufficient recourse.

Yep. Court-packing offers the tantalizing promise of taking power away from the usurpers without ever exactly destroying the institution, but I dunno, I kind of suspect that's a fantasy

And it also invites tit for tat which leaves things maybe worse than before somehow. Like the fix has to be more fundamental than this.

One thing that makes me nervous about the resurgence of the court-packing talk is that it's not paired with "but first you absolutely must vote for Biden." Like, sorry, that's the literal bare minimum that is required if you want to have this conversation.

Biden and congressional Democrats, yeah Ideally this would become his platform now

Right, yes.

even with a substantial Democratic trifecta it's not gonna be easy

It doesn’t even have to specifically be court packing, just “you need to elect democrats to office to rein in the most corrupt Supreme Court in American history.”

In a sense, this is the inverse of '16. McConnell held the SCOTUS seat open & the party responded accordingly. Now we have a situation where we can keep a lawless nazi from using these new executive powers & greenlighting Project 2025. Our side ought to be just as eager, even excited, to fight this.

Wait sorry how do they do that without packing the Court?

Maybe that’s how they do it, all I mean is that I don’t know that campaign rhetoric has to specifically get into that.

Ah gotcha. I mean I do think that's already his message but I think for lots of us there's some skepticism that he'll actually do anything, even if he gets the chance. Seems pretty anti court reform.

I tend to think he’s not the prime mover, and if a Dem Congress sent him something he’d sign it. Maybe at the margins there’s some worry about whether his maybe hesitant stance could have us wind up with a weaker bill than otherwise because he wouldn’t push, but I don’t know.

Packing the court may be a tit for tat (an R trifecta might just do it back) but a) that’s better than the status quo still where Rs have power even we win elections and b) at least MAYBE at some point it will get absurd enough (someone has to expand it by 20) that we get a Constitutional amendment.

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