If the Democrats take control of both the House and the Senate in the midterm elections, Kamala Harris has called for expanding the Supreme Court. “We need more justices on the Supreme Court so that we can have a court that actually reinforces the spirit and principles behind the Constitution of the United States,” she told podcaster Keke Palmer last week.
The only spirit behind this proposal, a favorite among Democrats ever since President Donald Trump put three new justices on the top court during his first term, is a partisan and unprincipled power play, reminiscent of Franklin Roosevelt’s court-packing scheme in 1937. The number of justices on the high court changed a few times in the 19th century, hitting ten in 1863, reduced to seven in 1866, and popped back up to nine in 1869, where it has remained ever since. In other words, very close to settled law both liberal and conservative legal minds so adore, as long as it is settled in accord with their partisan belief.
The former vice president remains undecided about a presidential run, but in addition to court packing, she has checked many other progressive boxes to stay on the right path, among them statehood for Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, and lowering the voting age to 16. Nonetheless, many Democratic advisers and strategists remain skeptical about her chance a second time around given her disastrous performance against Trump in 2024. Her critics add she has not come up with any fresh proposals for a “New Kamala” on the ’28 campaign trail.
One of her advisers, Maria Cardona, told Politico the Harris critics among the Democrats are off base. “How can you state that she hasn’t done anything new or groundbreaking or talked about new initiatives or policies and then lay out exactly those policies — like proposing an expanded Supreme Court, lowering the voting age to 16, making D.C. and Puerto Rico states? Those are pretty groundbreaking policies.”
Setting aside whether groundbreaking or nothing more than a sure-fire way of benefiting Democrats at election time, there is no difference between the New and Old Harris. For example, in her 2020 primary race for the Democratic presidential nomination, then-California Senator Harris supported decriminalizing illegal immigration, defunding the police, and gender transitioning for those behind bars at the taxpayers’ expense. She compared the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to the Ku Klux Klan. In her 2024 campaign, the vice president, despite losing in a very close race, did her best to somewhat successfully restate, redo, refine, reexamine, rewrite, and revise her views. However, the toughest nut to crack would not give way — the simple, clear, direct statement: “No boys on the girls’ team.”
A Gallup poll in 2023 showed 93% of Republicans, 48% of Democrats, and 67% of independents opposed transgender athletes playing on a team that matches their current gender choice. The Democratic response was even higher — 67% — in a New York Times/Ipsos poll in January 2025. Progressives see only cruelty among those who mock the they/them pronoun, which they view as a perfectly normal everyday expression. Actually, the whole pronoun business, along with expanding the Supreme Court and making Washington, D.C., a state, is weird.
I choose the word “weird” because during the 2024 campaign, Harris and her VP choice, Minnesota governor Tim Walz, did get a poll bump over several weeks during the summer when the mainstream media and Democratic activists jumped with joy when Walz described Trump and his VP pick, JD Vance, as “creepy and yes, just weird as hell.”
Headline in the Los Angeles Times: “With a single word — ‘weird’ — Democrats may have found Republicans’ kryptonite.” “Weird,” announced Vogue magazine, “has become a Democratic rallying cry” and is “refreshing in its bluntness.” Phil McCausland from BBC News: “With that simple diss,” Harris had shifted the conversation off former President Joe Biden’s weaknesses and “shown a spotlight on her opponent, Donald Trump.” On Aug. 7 the high-minded New York Times columnist, Charles M. Blow, declared, “Walz made ‘weird’ happen.’ He distilled “the current conservative movement into a single word, ‘weird,’ that has been a surprising effective attack line.”
Not for long. Weirdness backfired. Three months after Blow’s glowing endorsement of the “surprising effective attack line,” Trump walked back into the White House.
KAMALA HARRIS DIDN’T MISSPEAK — SHE JUST SENT A DEI WARNING TO AMERICA
Still, Republicans, and Trump even more so, are by no means exempt from the weirdness charge, so the attack line cuts both ways and thus is pretty much a wash. For her part, new or old, Harris, with about two years out before the next presidential election, remains a strong candidate. Several polls have her leading other potential candidates, including her California colleague, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA). He has said he will not enter the race in ’28 if Harris chooses to run. Both are vulnerable to the effective Republican attack line; the last thing most Americans want is a “San Francisco Democrat” in the White House.
That would be weird, but it can’t be ruled out.
Bob Armstrong’s memoir, No Exit from Vietnam, was recently published by Pen & Sword Books. He is a contributing writer to Thursday Review, an online magazine.
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[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
