Why Biden decided to take a Supreme gamble

Joe Biden decides this is the right time to float the idea of Supreme Court “Reform”?

As recently as last year, he opposed trying to reform the court, including by expanding the court’s membership.

Now, he’s contemplating establishing term limits, an enforceable ethics code, plus some other changes, most of which would require approval by congress. Now, as he is in a major political sandstorm?

Notably, he sent up this trial balloon in a Saturday Zoom meeting with the Congressional Progressive Caucus, the segment of the Democratic Party that has given him the most support during the “dump Biden” movement that followed his disastrous debate with Donald J. Trump. “I need your help,” he told the Caucus. “We’re in this together.”

It’s not hard to see what is happening here.

Biden is taking another step to the Left.

Bidenomics didn’t work, he can’t convince the electorate that the economy is strong (it is, but the price of necessities remains high), while illegal activity at the border has dropped, it came far too late, his “threat to democracy” attack line isn’t working outside blue precincts, so the Dems major issue is abortion, now joined by Supreme Court “reform,” which is as nakedly political as his tuition forgiveness plan which, amazingly, did not result in strong support among the young.

To me, the “reform” is a Hail Mary pass deep in the fourth quarter.

Yes, some reform might be needed. 

But from a potential lame duck? Now? 

This idea is intended to energize the Democratic base that does not like a conservative-majority Supreme Court, after 70 years of a liberal-majority Supreme Court. But how will it play with independents?

Biden is rolling the dice that moving left will be a winning strategy.

I didn’t think it would work for Bernie Sanders, and I don’t think it will work for Joe Biden, who won last time by running as a moderate. The hard Left candidates, like Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Beto O’Rourke, went down to defeat.

The U.S. is mostly centrist, sometimes moving Left or Right, but rarely chooses an extremist. (I understand some of you believe Trump is an extremist.)

But the center is where victory is found, and Biden must feel like he’s losing to justify taking this Supreme gamble.