CROOKED -- Aaron Belkin is professor of Political Science at San Francisco State University and director of Pack the Courts, an initiative urging Democrats to expand federal courts. He wrote this opinion piece with Sean McElwee, co-founder of Data for Progress and director of research and polling for Pack the Courts.
“Dramatic steps such as modifying Senate rules and expanding courts may seem draconian or risky. They could escalate a dangerous upending of norms and come back to haunt Democrats when they’re out of power,“ they write. “But even if we set aside questions surrounding the legitimacy of the 2000 election, the GOP Senate’s refusal to give President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee so much as a hearing, and the fact that the current judiciary has been shaped by two presidents who lost the popular vote, one of whom engaged in criminal conspiracies to cheat in his own election, add up to unprecedented affronts to the democratic process.”