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I don't see how a court packing does not signal the beginning of the end of the US - much like if Pence would have tried to appoint Trump president during the electors issue.
The Dems would have to lock out the Reps from power for at least a generation or face a retaliatory court pack the second the Reps return to power - and then we repeat the cycle until we all get bored of the 51% beating the 49% with sticks.
Each side packing the court each time they get power - SCOTUS rulings become meaningless. We become increasingly banana republic like.
Maybe I am dooming too hard though at the prospect?
Court-packing would spell the end of SCOTUS, but not the end of the US. Probably, in fact, just the end of Marbury v Madison.
SCOTUS ceases to exist as an independent Constitutional authority if it can be packed by the partisans at will. But there are still lots of constraints at play. Court-packing requires the President and Senate be of the same party, which is not a given at all. It also only erodes the Court's credibility on highly contentious political questions. There remain lots of boring technical matters that fall outside the purview of party politics, even if everything today is a political issue. That work will remain even if the Court's ability to declare laws Constitutional and Unconstitutional is practically ceded to the other two branches. This is probably more in line with how the Founders envisioned the court in the first place. SCOTUS reduced to a rubber stamp on Constitutional matters effectively loses the power it gained in Marbury v Madison. But it would still be the Supreme Court and the highest court of appeal on all sorts of other matters.
So otherwise we're back to electoral constraints. And short of actual civil war destroying one party or the other, Democrats and Republicans will both maintain enough power in enough places that new power-limiting arrangements will probably emerge.
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We have pretty clearly initiated the beginning of the end of the US some years ago, arguably with the election of Trump in 2016.
Obviously, and this is pretty clearly the plan, at least arguably on both sides. Blues and Reds do not share sufficient compatibility of values to make cooperation possible, so the only remaining options are separation or war. Legacy social institutions obstruct these natural solutions, and so we observe the culture war blastwave striking, bending, and blowing out those institutions in sequence as it propagates through society. SCOTUS won't be able to hold it back any more than Free Speech Principles or Liberalism or the Courts or Academia was; things made by humans can be unmade by other humans.
There have been worse presidents than Trump, by and large our institutions have held against his efforts to get around them. He'll be gone in a little over two and a half years. No successor to him has been really able to gain any kind of traction to his cult of personality. The US is able to handle the bumpy road of a bad presidency, SCOTUS court packing is a different animal as there is no foreseeable end it to.
If it was the plan on the right, they'd court pack now, but they haven't - they won't even kill the filibuster for the SAVE act. I'd suggest both sides want to win, but that is different than locking the other out of power through court packing, killing the filibuster, adding US states, etc.
We have been in worse culture war situations than now. Cooler heads must prevail.
When you begin packing the court, the constitution becomes useless - as it only matters what SCOTUS says it does. Fundamental rights could oscillate as quickly as every four years, that is not an environment for a stable society. The last time court packing happened was right after the civil war - I'd suggest that is where it should stay.
Is the current GOP really any more a "Cult" than the Democrats are at this stage?
While I would not underestimate the GOP's penchant for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, they appear to have a clear path forwards. Assuming that the political apparatus that Rubio and Co. have spent the last decade and a half building will simply evaporate the moment Trump exits stage right seems presumptuous.
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