Originally posted March 6, 2020.

After Chuck Schumer’s hate-filled speech on the steps of the SCOTUS, Kimberley A. Strassel argues in the WSJ that the attacks and threats on individual judicial appointees that thrill the Democrats’ progressive base are about as politically wise as, say, Trump’s impeachment charade was.

Progressive Proposals Attacking Normal Order of Our Republic

• Packing the Supreme Court by increasing its size
• Creating new vacancies for a Democratic president and Senate to fill
• Term limits (would require a constitutional amendment)
• Curtailing the judicial Branch’s authority to review entire swaths of legislation
• Transferring the high court’s conservatives to a different court and replacing them with his own picks (from Bernie Sanders)

Strassel writes that the most important step President Trump took on his way to the White House was releasing his list of proposed judges to replace late Justice Antonin Scalia’s seat.

That inventory of impressive jurists not only reassured conservatives, but motivated them to vote.

Mr. Trump will make sure his court successes are at the center of his re-election campaign. He will again highlight the stakes, especially for the Supreme Court. And here are Democrats making his case more powerful by promising not only to put an end to Trump picks, but to undo his court victories to date. Talk about a Republican turnout motivator.

A Rebuke of Sander’s Burn It Down Politics

This week saw Super Tuesday voters offer a stark rebuke to Bernie Sanders’s burn-it-down politics. (Mr. Sanders’s proposal is to transfer the high court’s conservatives to a different court and replace them with his own picks.) A 2019 Rasmussen poll found only 27% of Americans open to court packing.

Court Radicalism Could Turn Off Centrist Voters

Even as American faith plummets in most government institutions, the public retains broad support for the Supreme Court. They don’t appreciate the attacks.

Instead of trashing the court, maybe Democrats could make their own lists of Supreme Court picks. They’ll need to do something, because the court issue is coming at them like a freight train. And all they’ve got is venom.