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CINCINNATI, Ohio: Joe Biden says he is “not a fan” of adding seats to the US Supreme Court, after weeks of avoiding questions about the proposal that has been pushed by progressives and used by Republicans to attack him.
“I’ve already spoken, I’m not a fan of packing on the court, but I don’t want to get off that topic. I want to stay focused, ”the Democratic presidential candidate said in an interview Monday (October 12) with the Cincinnati television station WKRC.
Biden argued that the focus should remain on the efforts of President Donald Trump and Republicans to push Amy Coney Barrett as a replacement for Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg ahead of the Nov.3 election.
“That’s the court packaging that the public should focus on,” he said.
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Biden has voiced his opposition to the idea of expanding the Supreme Court before, but in recent weeks notably dodged multiple questions from the media about the proposal, insisting that he would answer the question after the election.
Pressure on Biden to respond intensified after his running mate, California Sen. Kamala Harris, refused to answer the question during her debate with Vice President Mike Pence last week.
Harris, however, voiced support for the court packing during his Democratic primary campaign, along with several other progressive candidates.
Faced with the prospect of a decades-long conservative majority in court after Ginsburg’s death, the idea of adding nine-person court seats has gained renewed momentum among Democrats.
That has Biden caught between conflicting pressures to appease his progressive base and appeal to more moderate and conservative voters who may be open to voting for Biden but reluctant to support such radical structural reforms in court.
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Biden, who spent years as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, voiced his opposition to the court packing during the Democratic primary.
“No, I’m not ready to go ahead and try to fill the field, because we will live to regret that day,” he warned in an interview with a political blogger in Iowa last summer.
In dodging the question in recent weeks, Biden has argued that the proposal is a distraction from the GOP’s efforts to push for Ginsburg’s replacement.
But Republicans have seized on Biden’s refusal to respond as evidence that he is being false and that he would be indebted to the left on the issue if elected.
President Trump tweeted on the subject on Sunday.
“Biden evades the question of ‘Court packing.’ @FoxNews Because its puppeteers are ready to destroy the Supreme Court of the United States. Don’t let this and so many other really bad things happen. VOTE! “He wrote.
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