I&I Editorial
Joe Biden has so far refused to answer the question of whether he’d pack the Supreme Court with leftist justices. But he hasn’t even been asked about a more worrisome scheme he and his party are cooking up to ensure Democrats’ election victories well into the future.
So far, Biden has inartfully dodged the question of whether he would support adding justices to the Supreme Court. All he would say in the debate was “Whatever the position I take, that will be the issue” and in Arizona, he said, “You’ll know my opinion on court-packing when the election is over.”
Biden knows court-packing doesn’t poll well, and so with the help of the press, he is avoiding the topic. But Senate Democrats have already made it clear that they will take that route should President Donald Trump get Judge Amy Coney Barrett on the bench.
What hasn’t received nearly enough attention, however, is the other plan Democrats are hatching to take seize control of the Senate, and make winning the presidency easier, by granting statehood to Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico.
As the Washington Examiner reported: “Key Democratic leaders, already mulling adding more justices to the Supreme Court if they take the White House and Senate, are also eager to add two more states, a move that could shift the Electoral College permanently to liberals.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said recently that: “Believe me. On D.C. and Puerto Rico, particularly if Puerto Rico votes for it — D.C. already has voted for it and wants it — I’d love to make them states.”
Biden has long supported D.C. statehood, and during remarks at a Hispanic Heritage Month kickoff event in Kissimmee, Florida, he said that Puerto Rican statehood “would be the most effective means of ensuring that residents of Puerto Rico are treated equally.”
“Electorally speaking, it would be an earth-changing event,” Tampa Bay political consultant Anthony Pedicini told Newsmax.
But wait, you say, couldn’t Republicans in the Senate stop these plans, even if they lose the Senate majority?
Under normal circumstances, yes. But Democrats have made it clear that they are tired of having to deal with Republicans. Should they win the Senate, the first order of business will be to eliminate the filibuster.
As NBC News reported in early September:
Democratic insiders are assembling a coalition behind the scenes to wage an all-out war on the Senate filibuster in bullish anticipation of sweeping the 2020 election and passing an ambitious progressive agenda.
Veteran party operatives, activist groups and supportive senators are coordinating message and strategy to dial up the pressure to quickly end the 60-vote threshold early next year, fearing that preservation of the rule will enable Republicans to kill Joe Biden’s legislative agenda in its cradle.
They’re consolidating that effort under a coalition called Fix Our Senate run by Eli Zupnick, a former communications director for No. 3 Democratic Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash.
So, should Biden win and Democrats take control of the Senate, here’s the game plan:
1) Eliminate the filibuster so Democrats can pass whatever they want with a simple majority.
2) Pack the Supreme Court with far-left liberals to overwhelm any conservative majority.
3) Add four more Democratic Senate seats and 10 more Electoral College votes by making D.C. and Puerto Rico states.
And voilà, Democrats will have cleared the way for them to get their Green New Deal, Medicare for All, minimum-wage raising, pro-union, open-borders, tax-the-“rich” agenda enacted. They will have jammed the court with justices who won’t bat an eye at any Constitution-bending laws Democrats pass. And they will have made it far more difficult for Republicans to win the presidency or a Senate majority in the future.
And as icing on the cake, Democrats will also be able to enact the “For the People Act,” which was the first bill they introduced when they took control of the House last year. This legislation would dramatically expand government regulation of political speech (making it harder for Republicans to raise money), and it would federalize the election process, forcing states to adopt early voting, automatic voter registration, same-day registration, online voter registration, and no-fault absentee balloting (making it easier for Democrats to cheat).
In short, if Biden wins and Democrats gain control of the Senate, they will be in a position to turn us into a California-style single-party nation.
If you think this is being too conspiratorial, consider the fact that Democrats have openly announced their plans to do each of these things.
So, to all those independents and never-Trumpers who think this election is just about presidential character, don’t say you weren’t warned.
— Written by the I&I Editorial Board
So obviously true. Thank you I&I Editorial folks! Pelosi’ January 2019 House-passed Bill would have guaranteed the demise of Repub Party. Too bad the MSM didn’t care.
You missed one: Biden is also promising to naturalize all the illegal aliens. That’s pretty big, would be enough to tip a number of ‘red’ states ‘blue’ by itself.
No, Joe Biden has absolutely not promised to naturalize all illegal aliens. He has said he supports a pathway to naturalization for the “DREAMers” (aka, members of the existing DACA program) who were brought to the United States as children, and who grew up here, and have no criminal record.
No, he has actually stated that he supports a pathway to citizenship/amnesty for 11 million illegals (actually at least 30 million). HRC was going to do it in her first one hundred days. It’s a Democrat thing.
Not all of them were brought as “children.” Some were as old as 18 when they came here (many on their own) and that’s only if we take them at their word, since there are no independent records whatsoever for most. The Democrats want you to think of a baby carried over the border by her mother, but they’re just s likely to be MS-13 gangbangers… and here just as illegally.
Democrats simply can’t win based on their hate-America platform of tyranny, racism and threats of violence. Brownshirts in the streets don’t win any votes. As a result, they plan to cheat until they have perpetual rule.
There seems a meme among conservative writers that Biden must tell the public whether he would pack the court or not. Why would he answer in advance when (1) we do not yet have a new Justice in place (2) we have not yet had the election. Has Trump made his taxes public despite telling us over and over he would do that?
If the GOP can and does pack the court, as has been done, so the Dems will similarly have the right to do so
I’m just amused that you’re redefining the word court packing to justify you all being a bunch of starkly authoritarian identity politics nutters trying to shovel your ideological stupidity down everyone’s throats.
Filling a vacancy is not court packing. Adding justice seats to ensure a rubber stamp for your policies is court packing, and it is what third world pits the world over do to enforce their policies. You all complain when your similarities to Venezuela and Chavez are pointed out as you do the exact same things Chavez (and now Maduro) did.
Sorry but you can’t get away with that here. Whether you agree with it or not, filling an open Supreme Court seat to get to 9 justices, a number we have had for 150 years is not “packing”, it’s replacing. Expanding the court to more than 9 to get the ideological majority you desire is “packing” and is wrong. That is why the Democratic presidential candidates refuse to discuss it. You want to change the makeup of the court – win the presidency and the majority in the Senate. Several justices including some conservatives are elderly and may well leave (one way or the other) over the next four years anyway.
Mr. Biden, would you raise taxes by 50 percent? Biden – why in the world would I tell you that? If I told you that then that would be all over the news.
Mr. Biden, would support reparations to the tune of 30 trillion dollars to the descendants of slaves? Biden- why would I tell you that?
Do you see how absurd his refusal to this question is?
“[T]he GOP can and does pack the court…”
I can’t tell if you’re woefully ignorant, or too amoral to mind parroting the Left’s blatant lies. But either one fully qualifies you for membership in the Democrat Party.
Donald Trump is the most transparent presidential candidate we have seen and his honesty on the hustings is good for the American people; bully for him. The Democratic ticket, however, is opaque, giving short shrift to voters on issues of surpassing importance, such as packing the Supreme Court to provide a liberal majority, eliminating the legislative filibuster to facilitate a progressive agenda, abolishing the Electoral College to ease the way for liberal presidents, and adding two states to the fifty we now have to add four liberal senators who will advance the progressive cause. Opaqueness is the face of the Big Blue Machine.
Isn’t a 2/3 vote of both the House and the Senate required to admit new states? I suppose it could happen; the GOP is so stupid that they might think making Puerto Rico a state will help them win Mexican American votes in Texas.
By the same token, IIRC to make DC a state would require an amendment to the constitution, and I don’t see 2/3 of Congress and 3/4 of the states going along. Unless the plan is to just ignore, you know, the thing.
as california goes so goes the nation.. it’s coming and there is nothing you can do about it.. dc wants statehood and there is no reason why they shouldn’t get it. i would love to see puerto rico as a state if the good people there want it. nothing like a little more color to that melting pot.. sorry guys.. you had your turn at the helm and got too greedy… time for a significant change.
PR has a poverty rate 5 times higher than Mississippi. That’s without paying income taxes. It’s a dung hole.
“dc wants statehood and there is no reason why they shouldn’t get it.”
I disagree. DC can be the federal capital, or a state, but not both. It already has too much influence as it is, and making it a state would amplify that. The governor of that state would be a national figure as powerful, if not more so than the Speaker of the House, the Senate majority, or the Chief Justice to say nothing of VPOTUS.
“i would love to see puerto rico as a state if the good people there want it.”
Taking Puerto Rico from Spain was a huge own goal, and we should have given them their independence the way we did the Philippines. 5 million Puerto Ricans may say they want something today, but there are 20 or 30 times that number of us who might not agree. Don’t those of us in the 50 actual states get a say so?
“5 million Puerto Ricans may say they want something today, but there are 20 or 30 times that number of us who might not agree. Don’t those of us in the 50 actual states get a say so?”
Of course that makes sense, but the “Democratic” Party isn’t so big on democracy when the unwashed masses don’t want what they’re supposed to want. They no more care what the current citizens think about inviting in Puerto Rico than they do what we think about letting in 20-30 million illegal aliens, or whether a majority of the population in own is in favor (or not) of keeping statue the Leftists don’t like. It’s ll “democracy, democracy, democracy”… until the citizens of a state vote against gay marriage, then it’s “where’s a judge who will impose this on them?”
Why do the heavy lifting of persuading people, reasoning with them, or changing their minds, when you can just make a mandate, and back it up with the power to bankrupt, jail, or even kill those who disagree?
And they call us fascists.
“Democrats will have cleared the way for them to get their Green New Deal, Medicare for All, minimum-wage raising, pro-union, open-borders, tax-the-“rich” agenda enacted. ”
I’m actually in favor of these agendas. . .
Why do you automatically assume that Puerto Rico would be “democratic” votes in the Senate? Currently, Puerto Rico’s (non-voting) representative to Congress is a Republican, not a Democrat. Further – if the Republican Party wants to appeal to voters in DC and Puerto Rico, maybe the party should try winning those voters over in the marketplace of ideas, rather than simply writing them off as a “lost cause” because they’re both largely people with brown skin. It’s that sort of defeatest mindset that is causing the GOP to lose national elections (in the popular vote, at least); politics is a game of addition, not subtraction, and Democrats have learned that. That’s why the governor of Kentucky is a Democrat, and the governor of Kansas, and it’s why Lindsey Graham is in a tight race, and all of those are red states.
If Democrats can win Senate races in Alabama (Doug Jones won in 2018, and he’s a Democrat), Arizona (about to elect a second Democratic senator), and even contest Texas, then why can’t Republicans compete in Puerto Rico?
I deny the very premise of this article.
Another tactic, or arrow in their quiver, is to keep importing a replacement populace of foreigners. Lowering the voting age (a Ted Kennedy project, as I remember) had the same objective.
Re the Electoral College, the best route is to just go around it. So far 15 states have signed onto the so-called Popular Vote compact, pledging to cast their states electoral votes for the winner of the national popular vote~ to take effect when states representing 270 or more electoral votes have joined in. A neat and totally legal and constitutional method of dealing with the Electoral College without the impossible job of amending the Constitution. Also no need to add states.
Most or all of the states in the “Popular Vote Compact” re run by Democrats, and have been for some time. I am really looking forward to seeing what line of bullshot they’ll use to sniggle out of it when their states vote for the Democrat candidate, but they’re required to give their delegates to a Republican who has won the national popular vote.
‘National Popular Vote’ (NPV) is surely unconstitutional. First, it depends on a contract among a group of states which is forbidden in the Constitution unless they get the permission of Congress which they have not done. Second, when put into effect it disenfranchises the majority of at least one state which would be challenged and likely stopped on 14th Amendment grounds. And finally it’s an attempt to end-around a specific Constitutional provision: It’s hard to see the Supreme Court agreeing than it’s okay to effectively undo the specified method for choosing a president as long as you go through the pro forma exercise.