RUTHFULLY YOURS

 I t is always better to be ahead than behind, so former vice president Joe Biden is no doubt relishing the solid lead he maintains in national polls. But we don’t have a national election; we have 50 state elections, and the race is still tight in the battleground states, where every vote continues to count.

Consequently, Biden cannot afford to ignore the radical Left, which doesn’t have much enthusiasm for him, but is enthusiastic about defeating President Trump.

That is the main reason why Biden is dodging questions about whether he favors court-packing, which would require eradicating the Senate filibuster, which, in turn, would open the floodgates for the enactment of other radical elements of the Left’s agenda: government-monopolized health care, statehood for Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico, the Green New Deal, Senator Elizabeth Warren’s Accountable Capitalism Act, etc.

When a politician is dodging a question, he is trying to fool somebody. On court-packing, it comes down to whether Biden is trying to string along his core left-wing supporters or dupe moderate voters (in particular, independents, centrist Democrats, and Republicans who have grown weary of the, shall we say, challenging Trump persona).

Moderates would be scared off were Biden to embrace packing the Supreme Court with left-wing judges who would pursue sweeping social and economic change that could not be won at the ballot box. Hence the concern that Biden is ducking the court-packing question because he secretly plans to pack the Court but knows that saying so would alienate the vast center.

That concern may be a valid one. But there is also mounting evidence that Biden is playing coy to avoid dispiriting his core left-wing supporters.

At the Washington Examiner, David Drucker reports that at least a half-dozen Democrats who are trying to win or hold Senate seats have come out against court-packing. Michigan incumbent senator Gary Peters (in a tight race against GOP challenger John James) is one, and he’s joined by a handful of challengers to Republican incumbents: Mark Kelly (facing Martha McSally in Arizona), Jon Ossoff (facing David Perdue in Georgia), Theresa Greenfield (facing Joni Ernst in Iowa), Sara Gideon (facing Susan Collins in Maine), and Cal Cunningham (facing Thom Tillis in North Carolina).

They are not alone among Democrats, either. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.), who is not up for reelection, angered progressives last week by appearing to dismiss the notion of cashiering the filibuster for court-packing or any other purpose. Two others not up for reelection this cycle, Senators Joe Manchin (D., W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D., Ariz.), have also signaled opposition to ending the filibuster.

Biden was in the Senate for 36 years. He knows how to count. Assuming that this array of Democrats is on the up and up, there is no way the Left has the votes it would need to pack the Court. So why not just oppose court-packing? Given that Democrats don’t have the numbers to make it happen, why would Biden risk the appearance that he is just a placeholder for the extreme Left — that he is remaining noncommittal to hoodwink voters into electing him, after which the true believers controlling him can push radical change?

Surely, Biden fears the wrath of the hard left. He doesn’t want to put up with what his old pal Feinstein has had to endure recently, or, even worse, end up feeling the heat that has been turned up on Democratic mayors who have strayed even an iota from the Change! line in places such as Portland, Seattle, and Minneapolis.

But even more, Biden is worried about losing the energy of his base. It is still a tight race in the states where the election will be decided. The last thing Biden can afford is a revolt from the Bernie Bros. and AOC’s “squad.” He knows Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election in its last couple of weeks, mainly by taking the Democratic base for granted. He is not going to repeat that mistake. (And, of course, no FBI director is going to announce the reopening of a criminal investigation against him just days before voters go to the polls — so he’s got that going for him.)

Beyond that, Biden realizes that Republicans have the votes to confirm Judge Amy Coney Barrett, President Trump’s impressive Supreme Court nominee. She is apt to keep her cool and perform well through what promise to be contentious confirmation hearings. Biden and other party leaders have calculated that keeping alive the threat that Democrats may retaliate by packing the Court is their sole thin hope of peeling off enough Republicans to stop Barrett’s appointment. Of course, it would be foolish for Republicans to cave: They know Democrats were threatening to pack the Court long before there was a vacancy for Barrett to fill — it was all the rage during Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation debacle — and, like Biden, they also know that Democrats will not have the votes to end the filibuster.

In the main, Biden has been refusing to answer the court-packing question because he is trying to keep his voters on-board and excited at the prospect of big changes. Of course, that means he’ll keep being asked the question. If he finally relents and says he is not in favor of ending the filibuster and packing the Supreme Court, you will know he thinks he has the election clinched.