You may or may not already be familiar with Demand Justice, a so-called “action network” set up by some former Clinton staffers. It was one of the groups leading the charge to stop the confirmation of Supreme Court Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh, organizing protests and text message alerts to get activists in front of cable news cameras. (How’d that Kavanaugh thing work out for out for you guys, anyway?)
Just because Kavanaugh is now set up in his new job for life, that doesn’t mean that Demand Justice is done. They’re still out there raising money for Democrats, raising awareness or whatever else it is they do in their free time. This weekend they were hosting an event that drew the attention of DNC Chair Tom Perez. He showed up to address the very motivated masses but was left in a rather awkward position when their speaker began pitching some seriously far-left ideas and expected Perez to go along with them. Chief among these was the Democratic base’s dream of packing the Supreme Court with more justices if they take back the White House in 2020. (Free Beacon)
Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez delivered remarks during a Demand Justice event where liberal activists pushed radical proposals such as packing the Supreme Court with additional justices if Democrats regain power.
Demand Justice, a group run by former Hillary Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon that took a leading role in the fight against Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation, hosted a Wednesday night discussion on solutions to fix a “court in crisis” now that Donald Trump has gotten two justices confirmed in his first two years in office.
Fallon introduced Perez with a speech on how proposals to “meaningfully reform the Supreme Court” need to be part of the Democratic presidential primary discussion.
The speaker made it very clear that putting additional justices on the SCOTUS bench was a priority for their group and liberals in general. So was Perez going along with the idea? Well… he didn’t say so explicitly. Instead, he sort of dodged the question without denying it in any way.
“What I’m not going to do tonight, because there’s a panel of remarkable experts to do it, is get into the critical minutia of what we do from here,” Perez said to the crowd of liberal activists.
“I’m confident you’ll come away from here with a blueprint of practical suggestions,” Perez added.
Can we take this to mean that the head of the DNC thinks packing the Supreme Court is a “practical suggestion?” It certainly sounds like it. Sadly, the establishment Democrats currently holding office aren’t quite so enthusiastic.
The reality is that such a proposal actually is practical, at least in theory. You’d need to get a lot of people in Congress on board with the plan, but it could be done. Then, however, comes the question of if you should do it even if you could. The Democrats are going to need another serious flood of victories before the votes will exist to make this sort of change. And if they do manage to pull it off, the precedent will be set for the GOP to add more seats to the court next time they take the White House. (And they will eventually.)
We can play that game out over the next twenty or thirty years and before you know it we’ll need a bigger building to hold all the justices. Is that really what these activists want? Or are they still just smarting over the results of the 2016 election and looking for a way to lash out? We can probably guess the answer to that one. Perez won’t bring this idea forward for the DNC platform unless he knows a vast majority of his major players are onboard.
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