Yes, Joe Biden is going to get behind expanding the Supreme Court
In the wake of the Supreme Court’s deranged and unconstitutional decision to strike down Roe v. Wade, the two potential paths to reinstating it are clear. They both involve expanding the Democratic Senate majority to 52 seats in the midterms, so corrupt Senators Manchin and Sinema will be made irrelevant. From there, the 50 legitimate Democrats can either exempt abortion rights from the filibuster, or expand the Supreme Court, or both.
On Saturday, the White House announced that President Biden does not support either of these ideas at this time. This has set off a whole lot of disappointment, lamenting, and rage-inducing narratives from opportunistic pundits. But in reality, saying something like this is simply how politics works.
Unlike most observers on social media, Joe Biden actually understands how politics works. He strategically starts off now by saying he doesn’t want to have to expand the Supreme Court, knowing the public will swiftly come to demand it, and when the time comes, he can say he’s reluctantly going to do it after all.
Doing it this way ensures that more moderates will get on board with Biden doing it once he announces he’s doing it, because they’re always more inclined to get on board when a politician is seen as only making a controversial move reluctantly out of necessity, not eagerness.
This is highly similar to Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s initial publicly stated hesitance to impeach Trump over Ukraine, even though she knew she’d end up doing it. It’s how you win these kinds of battles.
The reality is that with the Senate being what it currently is, there is unfortunately nothing that Biden can do about Roe v. Wade via the Senate at this time anyway. Literally nothing would be gained by Biden prematurely staking himself to the position right now that he wants to change the Senate rules, half a year before there will even be an opportunity to change those rules.
For now, Biden will surely take whatever action he can via executive order. Of course that action will end up being rather narrow, because contrary to public opinion, executive orders have a very narrow scope, and the Supreme Court tends to just strike down any executive orders it doesn’t like.
In the meantime, your best course of action is to apply as much public pressure to Manchin and Sinema as possible. Make clear to them that if they don’t cave on this, you will spend the next few years working full time to make sure they lose their next primary race. All these two scumbags care about is money and power, and if they conclude that they’re at risk of losing their seats over this, they may selfishly decide to take action in order to keep their seats. Let’s get to work.
