OPINION:
Back in 1937, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was riding higher than almost any other politician in American history. He had just won a landslide reelection and commanded massive congressional majorities. And he had a big idea, a big socialist idea: the New Deal.
But when he tried to pack the Supreme Court with up to 15 justices to bulldoze conservative opposition to his liberal programs, he was handed a humiliating political defeat. Even his fellow Democrats recognized that his scheme would fatally undermine the independence of the judiciary. Congress, which rammed a lot of his ideas through, flatly refused to pass the bill.
It was a spectacularly bad idea 89 years ago, championed by a phenomenally popular president. Fast-forward to today, and former Vice President Kamala Harris apparently skipped that day in AP History. She wants to resurrect this structural arson.
To put it into perspective, Ms. Harris is famously a two-time loser for the presidency (she was polling in single digits when she dropped out in 2020). She ran a 107-day, billion-dollar campaign in 2024 in which she lost all seven swing states to Donald Trump, after spending the first third of her run actively hiding from the media.
Yet, despite being thoroughly rejected by the electorate, her grand solution for the Democratic Party’s woes isn’t introspection or policy shifts (the Democratic leadership is actively hiding its postmortem of the 2024 election, mostly to protect her shabby campaign). It’s to blow up the rules of the game entirely.
Speaking on a call with the left-wing nonprofit Emerge, Ms. Harris decided to launch what amounts to a “no bad ideas” brainstorm for fundamentally altering the American republic.
“Let’s invite ideas, for example, that are about Supreme Court reform, including the notion of expanding the court,” Ms. Harris said. But she didn’t stop at just packing the highest court in the land. “Let’s invite a discussion about how do we push for statehood for Puerto Rico and D.C., how are we thinking about the Electoral College.”
Why the sudden urge to rewrite the Constitution? Because Democrats are losing the redistricting wars. Following a Supreme Court decision to curb the use of race in drawing electoral districts, Republicans have been picking up seats in states such as Tennessee, Louisiana and South Carolina.
Meanwhile, Democratic gerrymandering efforts have hit roadblocks, especially in Virginia.
Ms. Harris’ response to these legal and electoral setbacks is to simply accuse the other side of rigging the system. “What they have done with this decision, by saying that the politics of redistricting is OK, is they are back-dooring racism through politics,” Ms. Harris complained on the call. “What they are doing is intentionally about trying to suppress the voice of the people.”
She then laid out her justification for an institutional overhaul: “We’ve got to neutralize this red-state cheating. There’s a brutality at play on the other side and a ruthlessness. And we need to play to win.”
There is a rich irony in accusing your opponents of “cheating” while simultaneously proposing to pack the Supreme Court, gut the Electoral College and mint two new reliably blue states just so you can win future elections. Politicians generally avoid messing with these foundational institutions out of fear that those unchecked powers will eventually be used against them. But Ms. Harris seems oblivious to the fact that power inevitably changes hands.
Unsurprisingly, Republicans were quick to point out the absurdity of a defeated candidate demanding the system be dismantled. House Speaker Mike Johnson accurately labeled Democrats “institutional arsonists.”
“It’s a dangerous thing, a dangerous gambit,” Mr. Johnson said. “You don’t just blow up the system when you lose. For the former vice president of the United States and a candidate for president to suggest that you should pack the Supreme Court or destroy these institutions because they lost is I just think outrageous.”
Conservative Rep. Ralph Norman echoed that sentiment, calling her comments “totally insane” and noting, “That’s why we can’t let her become president. People … rejected her before; they’ll reject her again.”
Even her fellow Democrats aren’t exactly rushing to man the barricades for this constitutional crusade. Rep. Jason Crow effectively poured cold water on her grand schemes, noting that everyday Americans care about their wallets, not upending the republic.
“I think that’s putting the cart before the horse,” the Colorado Democrat said. “Right now, I’m focusing on lowering costs, healthcare, and ending a runaway war that’s costing Americans tens of billions of dollars. Those are the things that my constituents are talking to me about.”
If Ms. Harris is smart, she will quietly let this trial balloon pop. If FDR couldn’t pull off a Supreme Court packing scheme at the absolute zenith of his political power, a politician who couldn’t even manage to separate herself from Joe Biden’s basement campaign strategy certainly isn’t going to pull it off today.
• Joseph Curl covered the White House and politics for a decade for The Washington Times. He can be reached at josephcurl@gmail.com and on Twitter @josephcurl.
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