Joe Biden is sending some ominous signals

It is astounding that Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden will still not answer questions on whether or not he’ll pack the Supreme Court if he is elected president.

On Sept. 29, in the first presidential debate in Cleveland, Ohio, the question was put directly to him by moderator, Chris Wallace.

“You have refused in the past to talk about it,” Wallace said to Biden in front of a national television audience. “Are you willing to tell the American people tonight whether or not you will support either ending the filibuster or packing the court?”

“Whatever position I take on that,” Biden explained. “That’ll become the issue. The issue is the American people should speak. You should go out and vote. You’re voting now. Vote and let your Senators know strongly how you feel.”

Biden’s opponent, President Donald Trump, redirected him back to the question.

“Are you going to pack the court?”

Biden refused to answer and instead instructed Americans to go out and vote.

Trump continued to put the question to Biden with no effect until finally the Democratic nominee blurted, “Will you shut up, man?”

Thursday, the press once again pressed the issue of court packing to Biden.

“You’ll know my opinion on court packing when the election is over,” Biden told reporters in Arizona.

Similarly, Biden’s running mate, Kamala Harris has dodged the question, insisting that the man at the top of the ticket had already answered it adequately. Of course he hadn’t.

Court packing is something that until just recently had been considered a pernicious and divisive concept. One that would weaken the judiciary and set a precedent for executive overreach that would serve to undermine the balance of our democratic system.

When FDR undertook to pack the court both Democrats and Republicans intervened to stop him. They knew the damage would be far and wide and would ultimately harm both parties and the entire process.

In 1983, at a congressional hearing, then-Senator Joe Biden was full-throated in his condemnation of FDR’s maneuvers to facilitate court expansion:

“It was a bonehead idea,” Biden told the committee. “It was a terrible, terrible mistake to make and it put in question for an entire decade, the independence of the most significant body — including the Congress, in my view — the most significant body in this country. The Supreme Court of the United States of America.”

It is very possible that by keeping the possibility of increasing the number of justices on the Supreme Court open, candidate Biden is fostering support with the more radical elements of his party who are loud proponents of court packing.

Perhaps, if he is elected he will dismiss the notion and send the court-packers packing themselves, having benefited from their electoral assistance.

However, they may not so easily be dismissed and what is now an empty promise may be an actual debt come due if the passion in the Democratic party converges with the most powerful in the party.

The true-believer progressives, from AOC to Bernie Sanders, have thrown in with Joe Biden and they will expect payment for services rendered.

That could be disastrous. That is why Joe Biden must begin answering the question of whether he will pack the Supreme Court, definitively, with a loud, resounding, “No.”