Democrats’ efforts to expand Supreme Court and restrict filibuster would have backfired | Opinion
Democrats are lucky that they didn’t get what they wanted in Congress this year. If they had, Donald Trump’s threat to be a “dictator” on Day 1 of his new administration would be a lot closer to reality.
Democrats, including soon-to-be Sen. Adam Schiff, Sen. Ed Markey and Sen Elizabeth Warren tried to pass a law that would have expanded the Supreme Court. If they had succeeded Donald Trump would be guaranteed to be able to pick two new justices.
Dozens of Democratic senators, including Kirsten Gillibrand, Amy Klobuchar and independent Bernie Sanders, pushed for rules changes to restrict or abolish the Senate filibuster rule that allows a minority of senators to bring business to a standstill when their concerns are ignored. Success would have rendered the newly-minted minority of 47 Democrats powerless to stop now dominant Republicans from ramming through Trump’s agenda.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer introduced legislation to restrict the ability of the Supreme Court to overrule laws passed by Congress. If it had succeeded, it would have created a precedent in a disputed area of law that MAGA Republicans would love to have to stop the high court from blocking their agenda. While the Supreme Court is controlled by Republican nominees, the majority come from the legal wing of the party that has not been so heavily influenced by Trump’s rise.
In three moves espoused by leading lights of the Democrats’ centrist and progressive wings alike, the nation’s oldest political party would have found itself stripped of even more power than this month’s electoral shellacking already stripped away if it had succeeded with its plans in 2024.
There’s a reason that these moves would have been unwise and backfired on the Democrats. It is the same reason that our republic has endured for nearly 250 years — one Republicans and Democrats both used to understand.
In law school classrooms and Supreme Court briefs it is called “separation of powers,” an idea that can be extended to encompass the contrasting character of the House of Representatives and the Senate, which make up the legislative branch of government even as they are divided in two — one marked by the power of the majority and one marked by its longer terms and the influence of the minority.
The idea is simple: By dividing the legislative, executive and judicial branches of government, no single branch can run roughshod over the others or over the rights of the people. By setting each with its own rhythm of connection to democratic elections, the results of any single election are unable to send the whole system into a tailspin. It is why I still have hope that, for all his thrashing about and spouting off on Truth Social, Trump will still be held in check by our system of government. The first sign of that is the Senate’s defenestration of Matt Gaetz.
Over the last few years, a growing chorus of Democrats has been bent on undoing the balance between the branches of government and the two houses of the legislature. Abolishing the filibuster would make the Senate just like the House in that simple majorities would hold sway. Restricting the Supreme Court’s ability to review laws passed by Congress and allowing the executive to pack the court with partisans would upset the balance between the branches.
It is in just such an environment that Trump’s worst instincts could thrive and become government policy without deference to the views of the Senate minority or of the existing Supreme Court majority, the only remaining bulwarks against Trump’s power.
Now that Republicans have the majority in the House and Senate, you can expect them to follow the Democrats’ foolish example by trying to meddle in the careful balance of power set by the Constitution. Indeed, Trump and his backers could use the language of the Democrats’ own proposals to give theirs a patina of bipartisanship.
It is too bad that so many Democratic leaders will have no principled reason for resisting them. They should have known better.
This story was originally published November 22, 2024 at 6:06 AM with the headline "Democrats’ efforts to expand Supreme Court and restrict filibuster would have backfired | Opinion."
