EDITORIAL: Biden flips off voters by running from court question

The confirmation hearings of Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett kicked off Monday, with Democrats threatening to walk out on a committee vote in order to deny Republicans a quorum. Expect the tone to get only worse, as liberals pore through the nominee’s high school yearbook and preschool finger-paintings in search of something — anything — that might be used to smear her reputation.

Curiously, though, as Senate Democrats impugn the process and prepare to grill Judge Barrett, expecting substantive answers to their questions, their presidential standardbearer astonishingly continues to duck and cover when it comes to whether he supports packing the Supreme Court.

On Friday, Joe Biden made a campaign stop in Las Vegas and told a local television reporter that voters “don’t deserve” to know his plans. The progressive court-packing scheme is the “No. 1 issue” voters have him asked about, Ross DiMattei of KTNV-TV, Channel 13 noted as he led into his question to the former vice president. “Sir don’t the voters deserve to know … ” Mr. Biden cut him off. “No, they don’t deserve … I’m not gonna play his game,” he said, referring to President Donald Trump. The president would “love that to be the discussion instead of what he’s doing now.”

Mr. DiMattei performed a valuable public service by getting Mr. Biden to admit his disdain for the very people he expects to support his candidacy.

It is the height of cynicism for Mr. Biden to condescendingly tell voters that they have no right to know his position on a relevant and controversial issue of the day — an issue, by the way, that has become a campaign focal point only because progressive Democrats have made clear that they expect their nominee to expand the high court with as many as six new left-wing justices in order to guarantee their preferred outcomes.

In fact, Mr. Biden during the Democratic primaries last year pronounced he was against adding more justices to the Supreme Court; his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, said she’d be open to the possibility. Today, however, neither will talk about the subject. But what has changed? If Democratic voters “deserved” to know the candidates’ position on this matter a year ago, why don’t all Americans “deserve” to know what they can expect from a Biden presidency?

Mr. Biden’s refusal to answer a basic question about an issue vital to the nation’s future is an act of abject political cowardice. We’ve been told time and again that “moderate” Joe Biden will, if elected, be willing to stand up to his party’s fast-ascending radical left. His decision to keep running from the court-packing question indicates otherwise.