Media ushered away as Biden trails off in answering question on court-packing

I’m skeptical that the “Biden has dementia” attack still has legs with undecideds after two debates and several townhalls.

But Sleepy Joe certainly is doing his part to supply Trump and the GOP with more material for it, isn’t he?

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They should include an extra question in exit polling this year: “Are you concerned that the brain of the candidate you voted for might be turning into oatmeal?”

https://twitter.com/FrancisBrennan/status/1320814970817433601

You can hear him answering at greater length as the media walks away, herded towards the bus, but I can’t make out the substance.

Although we already know the substance. He’s punting. He’s not going to deliver a straight answer on court-packing lest it piss off one part of his coalition or another.

John wrote earlier about the lengths to which the Washington Post’s fact-checker went this afternoon to try to cover for Biden when he said “George” instead of “Trump” during an interview. The AP did it too, even though it seems plain from the clip that he meant to say Trump and something else came out of his mouth instead.

“The character of the country in my view is literally on the ballot, what kind of country are we going to be,” he says. “Four more years of George uh…George, going to find ourselves in a position if Trump gets elected, we are going to be in a different world.”

Biden appears to stumble over his words before correcting himself. The clips online do not mention that Biden was being interviewed by [George] Lopez and instead contend that Biden was so confused that he mixed up President Trump with George W. Bush, who was president immediately before Barack Obama and Biden, his vice president, took office.

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The most charitable read is that Biden clearly was thinking of Trump even though he landed on “George.” The point he was making about choosing the character of the country is the Democrats’ core argument against the president. The less charitable read is that, uh, that’s the same argument Democrats always make against Republicans, although it’s on steroids this time against the MAGA crowd. Maybe Biden’s train of thought steered him back momentarily to the days of the 2004 campaign.

If he starts talking about the urgent need to elect John Kerry and undo our mistake in Iraq while on the trail this week, we’ll know that the oatmeal has finished cooking.

Here he is elsewhere today, sounding more coherent in answering other questions about the Court. He’s not in favor of ending lifetime appointments for justices, he says, although he might be okay with some scheme in which judges rotate onto and off of the Court. That’s an interesting proposal to dilute the influence of any single justice. And it might be constitutional so long as the people being rotated onto the court are already federal judges, confirmed by the Senate and entitled to hold their position for life to insulate them from partisan pressure. (If the Court can be expanded via simple statute, could its members also be made subject to a “rotation” scheme through simple statute?) The question is what sort of timetable a rotation “schedule” would be on — e.g., one member rotates out every year — and whether the Senate gets to advise and consent on judges rotating in. Does the upper chamber get veto power over the president’s choice of the new “rotation justice” or can he just fill that vacancy since that judge will have already been confirmed by the Senate at some point?

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David Strom 10:00 AM | April 16, 2024
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