To defend Biden, media and Democrats simply redefine ‘court-packing’

Double-speak.

Related highlights:

• MSNBC still promoting Kamala Harris’s fabricated story about Abraham Lincoln and court-packing

• American Bar Association gives Amy Coney Barrett thumbs-up just before confirmation hearings

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Democratic nominee Joe Biden and his allies in Congress have hit on a new strategy to distract from the fact that he refuses to say whether he supports packing the Supreme Court.

Instead of simply stonewalling on the issue, they are now redefining the phrase, claiming incorrectly that filling existing court vacancies is itself an act of “packing the court” — which it isn’t.

That certain members of the press also have adopted this strategy — the one where the term “pack the court” can mean whatever they want it to mean — should not be lost on anyone.

Biden was pressed again this weekend to say whether he supports transforming one of the co-equal branches of the U.S. government (which he almost certainly does). The Democratic nominee did not just dodge the question. He turned it around, accusing Republicans of court-packing.

“The only court-packing going on right now is going on with Republicans,” said Biden, referring to the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. “It's not constitutional what they’re doing.”

He added, “We should be focused on what's happening right now; the only packing going on is this country is being packed now by the Republicans after the vote has already begun.”

Nothing Biden said is correct.

First, “packing the court” has a very specific meaning, and it is not the one Biden uses. The Republican-controlled Senate is not “packing” anything. It is not adding seats that it can then fill with judges of its liking. It is filling existing vacancies.

And, as noted here, there is nothing “unconstitutional” about Barrett’s nomination. The nomination and confirmation process is literally right there in the Constitution.

But you try telling that to certain members of the press, many of whom seem all too eager to debase themselves in service of the Biden campaign.

“The GOP is packing the Supreme Court in slow motion,” declares the headline to a Washington Post opinion article by columnist Ruth Marcus. The author asserts, “Republicans stole one seat when they refused to let President Barack Obama fill a vacancy created nine months before the 2016 election. Now they are poised to steal another, rushing through President Trump’s nominee with Election Day less than a month away.”

None of this is true. Marcus is smart enough to understand that the Senate need not consent to the president's judicial nominations. She is not acting in good faith but as a campaign operative.

Disgraced former newsman and frequent CNN guest Dan Rather said elsewhere this weekend, “Can we at least recognize that ‘Court Packing’ at all levels of the judiciary has been the Republican playbook for decades?” Again, this is not an accurate use of the phrase.

“One underlying problem with the recent Court coverage is it ignores that what Mitch McConnell did to Merrick Garland was unprecedented,” complained Hunter Walker, White House correspondent for Yahoo! News. “That's treated as business as usual now and any potential change is ‘packing.’ McConnell's moves on Garland were game-changing packing [.] about as much as [structural] changes from a future president would be,” he added. He even referred later to actual court-packing as “court reform” instead of what it is — "packing."

Humorously enough, after social media users criticized Walker’s particularly obsequious spin on behalf of Biden’s campaign, the Yahoo! correspondent alleged a conspiracy by GOP operatives and right-of-center news outlets to mock him: “I would personally be embarassed [sic] as a reporter if I was jumping in a pile up alongside partisans and operatives, but wtf do I know,” said Walker.

Self-awareness is hard. The simple meaning of a phrase like court-packing should not be.