Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse admitted to what has been plainly clear for some time: Democrats attack the Supreme Court in order to try to influence its decisions. And he’s not going to give it up anytime soon.
Whitehouse, a rambling conspiracy theorist, asked now-Justice Amy Coney Barrett no questions during her confirmation hearing last year. Instead, he ranted about dark money while taking the same line of attack that every other Democrat did: Barrett was going to gut the Affordable Care Act, making her and Republicans evil people who were going to steal healthcare from the public during a pandemic.
It was always a dubious line of attack, and, of course, now the Supreme Court did not do it at all. Barrett was among the 7-2 majority in the case Whitehouse had been referring to, which held that the plaintiffs didn’t have the standing to sue. Conservatives had said from the beginning that this lawsuit was a long shot and that the court wasn’t likely to go along with it. No matter, though — not for Whitehouse, at least. He took credit on behalf of the Democratic Party for intimidating the court into protecting Obamacare.
Whitehouse said he didn’t regret his hysterics “not for a minute” and that the Supreme Court might have killed the law if not for Democrats’ political crusading to corrupt a judicial decision.
“If we hadn’t done that, maybe they would have” killed the law, Whitehouse said. “It may be (saved) because we did so many warnings.”
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) June 17, 2021
Trying to intimidate the Supreme Court and influence its decisions has become a new calling card for the Democratic Party. Democrats have increasingly backed the idea of packing the Supreme Court in order to prevent their unconstitutional agenda from being struck down by justices who actually take their jobs seriously.
Whitehouse was also among the Democrats who threatened the Supreme Court in 2019, warning that “the Supreme Court is not well. And the people know it. Perhaps the court can heal itself before the public demands it be ‘restructured in order to reduce the influence of politics.’” That’s a very unsubtle threat.
And who can forget Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, apparently physically threatening justices by name last year over the issue of abortion? “I want to tell you, Gorsuch, I want to tell you, Kavanaugh: You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price,” Schumer said. “You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.”
Whitehouse seems to think this tactic works (and perhaps it does, at least with Chief Justice John Roberts). Democrats clearly are going to continue to try and intimidate justices going forward, as their agenda becomes more and more radical and continues to run up against the Constitution itself.
