President Joe Biden
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Carolyn Kaster/Associated Press
Democrats have spent six years warning about the threat to democratic norms and institutions, and sometimes they’re even right—the Jan. 6, 2021 riot being Exhibit A. But they’d have more credibility if they stopped undermining democratic institutions when it suits their political purposes.
President Biden is a leading offender on that score these days, and he did it again last week by attacking the Supreme Court at a Democratic fundraiser. “I view this off-year election as one of the most important elections that I’ve been engaged in because a lot can change because the institutions have changed. The Supreme Court is more of an advocacy group these days than it is a, even-handed about it,” the President said at an event for Delaware Rep.
Lisa Blunt Rochester.
This is a smear against the Court. It’s fair to criticize this or that opinion, or its broader legal philosophy. It’s also fair to say that the Supreme Court’s future is at stake depending on which party controls the Senate.
But calling the Court an “advocacy group” that disdains “even-handed” justice undermines confidence in the rule of law. It’s every bit as corrosive as Donald Trump’s attacks on judges as partisans. Probably more so because it’s an attack on the entire Court, which gets the last word on the law under the Constitution.
This is the same Court, by the way, that last week denied a request by Mr. Trump to intervene in his legal fight over the classified documents seized from his Mar-a-Lago home. Mr. Trump wanted the Court to overturn an 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that barred a special master from examining some of the classified records. The Biden Justice Department opposed the Trump request, and the High Court essentially agreed without dissent.
There have been many such Supreme Court rulings against what many Republicans think of as their partisan interests. One for which Mr. Biden in particular should be grateful was the Court’s refusal to second-guess lower-court rulings that found no fraud that would have overturned the 2020 election.
The reason millions of Americans don’t take Democratic fears about democracy seriously is because they can see that Democrats don’t really believe it. They watched the party spend money this year to boost Republican candidates who claim Mr. Trump won in 2020 because the Democrats figure they’ll be easier to beat. Now we see the President who claims to revere democratic norms trash the legitimacy of the institution that upholds the rule of law. It takes two to undermine democracy.
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Appeared in the October 17, 2022, print edition.
