Biden addresses idea of high court packing: 'I'm not a fan'

Joe Biden says he is “not a fan” of adding seats to the Supreme Court, after weeks of avoiding questions about the idea that’s been pushed by progressives and used by Republicans to attack him.

“I’ve already spoken on — I’m not a fan of court packing, but I don’t want to get off on that whole issue. I want to keep focused,” the Democratic presidential nominee said in an interview Monday with Cincinnati’s WKRC.

Biden argued that the focus should remain on President Donald Trump and Republicans’ efforts to push through Amy Coney Barrett as a replacement for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg before the Nov. 3 election.

“That’s the court-packing the public should be focused on,” he said.

Biden has expressed opposition to the idea of expanding the Supreme Court before, but in recent weeks notably dodged multiple questions from the media about the proposal, insisting he would answer the question after the election. Pressure on Biden to respond intensified after his running mate, California Sen. Kamala Harris, refused to answer the question during her debate with Vice President Mike Pence last week.

Harris, however, expressed support for court-packing during her primary bid for president, along with a number of other progressive candidates. Faced with the prospect of a decades-long conservative majority on the court following Ginsburg’s death, the idea of adding seats to the nine-person court has gained renewed traction among Democrats.

That has Biden caught between the conflicting pressures of appeasing his progressive base and appealing to more moderate and conservative voters that may be open to voting for Biden but reluctant to support such sweeping structural reforms to the court. Biden, who spent years as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, expressed opposition to court-packing throughout the Democratic primary.