Biden Attempts to Divert ‘Court-Packing’ Question with ‘Commission’ Answer

With a pivotal final debate set for Thursday night between incumbent President Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden, there are still some major policy questions that deserve answering by each candidate.

For Trump, much of the uncertainty lies with his health care plan and his coronavirus response – subjects that he is sure to get hammered on by debate moderators on Thursday night.

For Joe Biden, the big policy question will revolve around the possibility that his presidency could bring with it an attempt to “pack” the Supreme Court in order to restore some of its liberal leanings.  During the first debate between Trump and Biden, the former Vice President danced around the issue clumsily, and when his running mate, Senator Kamala Harris was asked about it during her debate with VP Mike Pence, her canned response provided no further clarity at all.

Now, knowing full well that he’s going to get torched on the subject if he continues with the vagaries, Joe Biden has come up with a non-answer that he hopes will absolve him of controversy.

From an upcoming interview with 60 Minutes:

“If elected, what I will do is I’ll put together a national commission, a bipartisan commission of scholars, constitutional scholars, Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives,” Biden said in a clip released on Thursday. “I will ask them to, over 180 days, come back to me with recommendations as to how to reform the court system because it’s getting out of whack.”

Then, in a statement that attempts to obliterate the issue of court-packing in general…

“It’s not about court packing,” he continued. “There’s a number of other things that our constitutional scholars have debated, and I’ve looked to see what recommendations that commission might make. … There’s a number of alternatives that go well beyond packing.”

Biden claimed that “a lot of conservative constitutional scholars” agree that this issue needs to be revisited.

We’ll have to just wait and see if this argument holds up on Thursday night.