The Supreme Court is poised to become a more prominent political foil for President Joe Biden and Democrats before next year's elections.
But Biden and his party, who have criticized Republicans for undercutting the country's democratic institutions, have to tread carefully to avoid being called hypocritical by the GOP.
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The Supreme Court's decisions this term, from dismantling race-based affirmative action college admissions programs to blocking Biden's student loan debt forgiveness proposal and siding with a Colorado wedding website designer in a gay rights case, are a reminder that elections matter, according to one Democratic strategist, who wished to remain anonymous.
"It's less than SCOTUS is the bogeyman and much more about reminding people of the stakes and electing more Democrats up and down the ballot to deliver important legislation," the person told the Washington Examiner.
Jim Manley, another Democratic strategist, was more direct, contending Republicans have taken the Supreme Court "more seriously" than Democrats "for years," and now the country is "beginning to pay the price for this neglect."
"If every Democrat, including the president and everyone else at the White House, doesn't aggressively highlight the rightward tilt of the Supreme Court in the upcoming elections, we as a party might as well give up and go home," he said. "The court is rapidly losing legitimacy because of their complete unwillingness to follow precedent — there is zero reason to give them the deference they have been given in the past."
For Paul Henderson, Vice President Kamala Harris's chief of administration when she was San Francisco's district attorney, Democrats expect Biden to counter the Supreme Court and its decisions, for instance, through reforms.
"Republican-appointed justices have made up the majority of Supreme Court for more than 50 consecutive years, imposing a right-wing agenda on America even as Democrats have won the popular vote in seven of the last eight presidential elections," he said. "The disconnect between the court and the communities it governs undermines the legitimacy of our government and that challenge must be addressed in the upcoming election."
Biden has been increasingly critical of the Supreme Court since last year's Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision, which overturned the landmark abortion case Roe v. Wade, a development that arguably helped Democrats outperform expectations during last year's midterm elections.
This term's decisions not only remind the public of Dobbs amid a Republican presidential primary where candidates are being pressured to take a position on a national abortion ban, but they are also providing Biden and Democrats with more fodder to describe the court as "extreme" or "MAGA Republican," again as GOP candidates are campaigning on social issues and against the president's federal spending, in addition to conservative-appointed Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas raising ethics concerns.
“After a multidecade special interest-funded effort to reshape the federal judiciary, the fanatical MAGA Right have captured the Supreme Court and achieved dangerous, regressive policies that they could never attain at the ballot box," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said Friday. "This MAGA-captured Supreme Court feels free to accept lavish gifts and vacations from their powerful, big-monied friends, all while they refuse to help everyday Americans."
"The ill-founded and disappointing decisions from the Supreme Court are a stark reminder that it will take a sustained effort to rebalance our federal courts and restore the values that have made the United States a beacon for freedom, democracy, equality, and opportunity," he added. "Senate Democrats will continue to approve fellow Americans for the federal courts who far better reflect the values, diversity, experiences, and perspectives of the American public.”
Although Republicans have historically been more motivated to vote because of the Supreme Court due to Roe, exit polls last cycle found abortion was the second priority after inflation, with 61% of respondents saying they were unhappy with the court's decision in Dobbs. Simultaneously, the Biden v. Nebraska student loan decision, scrutinized for being an overture to the Democratic-leaning younger, college-educated professionals, could incentivize them to support Biden and the party in 2024 as the president's average approval-disapproval rating hovers about 43%-54%, per RealClearPolitics.
After the Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College and University of North Carolina college admissions decision, Biden dismissed the Supreme Court as "not a normal court," adding later it has "done more to unravel basic rights and basic decisions than any court in recent history."
"I just find it — I don't know how to express it — find it just so out of sorts with the basic value system of the American people," he told MSNBC on Thursday. "And I think that, across the board, the vast majority of the American people don't agree with a lot of the decisions this court is making."
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Biden, too, repeated his opposition to Supreme Court reform, such as expanding the court, while underscoring his record number of judicial confirmations during his first live television interview.
"I think that some of the court are beginning to realize their legitimacy is being questioned in ways it hadn't been questioned in the past," he said.