Carville: Democrats Have to Add States, Expand Supreme Court to Save Democracy
The beginning of 2021 seems like such a long, long time ago. Emerging from the fog of pandemic, the results of a sitting President being booted from office by voters, which included a seditious attack on Congress, prompted by this same President in order to avoid being forced to leave office, were just settling in. Personally, I thought this would be the end of Trump, but then, I thought when he insulted the disabled reporter, in front of cameras that have replayed the incident thousands of times, that would be the end.
I thought that conservative Evangelicals, who were just then coalescing around the adulterous, worldly, lying, deposed President would never put up with the kind of inhumane behavior, immoral lifestyle and complete lack of any kind of dignity or manners expected in a President, would abandon him in droves. I was sure wrong about their bottomless naivete and the greed and power-hungry lust of most of their leaders in continuing to support him.
But, as a Democrat, I was celebrating the fact that we had majorities in both houses of Congress and we had the White House. It was time to use the power we had to prevent Trump, whom party leadership correctly identified as being a danger to American democracy and a potential destroyer of the Constitution. And I thought they really believed that, and really meant that they were going to take deliberate steps to stop this demagogue from getting back into public office, and in fact, to have him indicted, tried, found guilty and arrested for his crimes.
I missed my guess on that, too.
We Didn't Have the Court
The biggest obstacle to preventing Trump from putting himself in position to destroy the constitution and dismantle American democracy is the Supreme Court. His three appointees, the most unqualified justices ever appointed, and the most ideologically unsuited to serve on a court as a judge, were the major obstacle to stopping the dismantling of American democracy. And it seemed that most Democrats knew this, and accepted it.
So there are limited solutions to making changes here. One is to wait it out, and hope some of the older Republican appointees drop dead while Biden is in office and has a favorable senate. The other is to take advantage of the interesting constitutional provision regarding how many judges can sit on the court, and amend the Judiciary Act to create several new seats, so that Biden could appoint the most liberal judges he could find, to neutralize the incompetence and make progress toward reform necessary to keep Trump from destroying the country.
Doing so would have been a matter of making sure the justices that were appointed, along with the current Democratic appointed minority, would take several steps. One would be to overturn the Citizens United decision. Another would be to overturn the ridiculous Presidential immunity ruling pushed by John Roberts, which puts the President above the law. A third action would have been to take the pending court cases for which Trump was under indictment, namely the incitement of the attack on the Capitol and the stolen documents case, out of the hands of Eileen Cannon, and into the chambers of one of the liberal justices to strike down the motions and expidite the trials to verdict and ultimate disqualification of Trump's ability to run for public office.
And of course, they could have saved Roe.
To do so would have required breaking the notoriously undemocratic senate filibuster. There were a lot of voices rising up from Democrats in Congress to move this forward and get this done. The President was aware of it, because he commented on it more than once. He and some of the old heads among the Democratic party leadership were not in favor of it, for whatever reason. I think they were just flat out short-sighted in their approach, unable to see how dangerous things would get and unwilling to take the bold risks that would have been required.
And yet, at a time like this, bold risk taking by those in leadership is exactly what we need. That's what I vote for.
And so here we are.
Carville is Now Suggesting That We Pack the Court, Without Acknowledging Democrats' Failure to do so in 2021
James, my friend, you are late to the table.
Where were you when those of us who saw what needed to be done were advocating for it back in 2021? We needed shrill voices to convince party leadership, especially the President, the Senate Majority Leader and some of the reluctant old-school old heads, who think the filibuster is the best thing since sliced bread.
So the pathway has been unnecessarily made so much more difficult, and perhaps nearly impossible, in that we must now place our faith and hope in restoring our democracy in a midterm election victory in which the other side is going to try to rig, and then, in whatever can be done by that Congress until we manage to win the Presidency back in 2028. And there will be court rulings that will be issued to knock down whatever progress we might make, because these incompetent judges are still on the bench.
This must also take place with the realization that somewhere north of 70 million Americans, 70 million, are so ignorant, hoodwinked and deceived that they do not see anything this lying demagogue does as wrong. Their values have been skewed by the justified selfishness that right wing Christianity has introduced into their minds.
We also have to convince a segment of the Democratic party, mainly some of its leaders already in Congress, that Trump is an existential threat to American democracy. Not all Democrats believe that, either. Some of them are opportunists, seeing that they have managed to get themselves elected and that now guarantees them some personal power, prestige and income stream that they would rather protect than try and restore democracy in America. That's a fact that we must recognize and with which we must come to grips.
We have to win enought of these elections to get back into Congress as a majority and to get the Presidency. And I'm not voting for any candidate for office who is not committed to breaking the filibuster in order to pack the court. That is what we need to do, and those are the kind of people we need to elect. We don't have the time to wait for these Republican appointed judges to kick the bucket. We need to make sure they are not a majority at the first opportunity we have to do so.
So while I'm disappointed that Carville didn't use the voice he had when this came up in 2021, at least he sees what is necessary. I'm glad he is using it now, and adding it to those of Bernie Sanders, AOC, Gene Green, and others. We need to get this done. We have wasted enough time.
It's not going to be easy. We need leaders committed to the people, and to preserving and protecting the Constitution, not to protecting their turf and their own interests.
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