The 2026 midterms are fast approaching, and the players are already manoeuvring ahead of the presidential election in two years’ time. As they do so, one phrase is increasingly on Democrats’ lips: “Supreme Court reform”. Which is to say, court-packing.

Behind the innocuous, focus-group-tested phrasing lies an ugly message: Democrats are finished with appeals to vague ideas of “democracy” and “country over party”. This is pure partisan revanchism, a political street fight that appeals to no neutral principle, no liberal democratic ideology, but merely a win-at-all-costs radicalism. History tells us that this effort will not find favour with voters. That is a good thing, because if it did, it would signal the end of the 250-year-old experiment in American governance.

Nothing in the Constitution requires a nine-member Supreme Court. From 1789, the size of the court fluctuated between six and 10 seats. But in 1869, Congress set the size of the court for the last time, and it has generally been seen as a settled issue, rather than one that should shift with the political winds. The same is true with the impeachment of justices for political reasons — which was tried once, failed, and has since been considered to be outside America’s democratic norms.

The only serious attempt to change that consensus came from a president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was vastly more popular than any political figure alive today and who controlled massive majorities in both houses of Congress. It still failed because many members of FDR’s own party saw it as a step too far, an opportunity for one man to exercise never-before-seen control over the fate of the republic. Senate Democrats let FDR’s court-packing bill die in committee.

The Democrats of 2026 have outdone FDR in their lust for one-party control. Roosevelt at least dressed up his court-packing proposal in a neutral idea: some of the justices were too elderly to do the work of the court, so he wanted to appoint a few younger men to take the burden off those old shoulders. His bill would allow an additional justice for every one then serving over the age of 70, with a maximum of six extra. But everyone knew what it was — a play for more power — and the bill died in committee.

FDR’s ideological successors don’t even present that fig leaf of non-partisanship, because their demands for an expanded and term-limited court bizarrely come at a time when they don’t control the presidency, the Senate or the House. If they really thought the court needed “reform”, they could certainly propose a gradual, bipartisan expansion in a Rooseveltian spirit of helping the justices share the burden of a federal judicial system that has massively expanded in size and scope since 1869. (I proposed such an idea myself in 2018.)

That, however, is not their plan. Democrats pushing for court-packing just want to win, and they don’t care which constitutional norms they tear down to do it. If Republicans want to highlight their opponents’ hypocrisy and out-of-control tribalism, they should take up the bills Dems are proposing.

“We need to revisit the point of expanding the court to 13 justices like we have 13 district courts [sic],” former vice president Kamala Harris said last month. Congressional Republicans ought to call her bluff and introduce the bill as soon as they return from the August recess. Let Democrats vote to give Donald Trump four more seats to fill. Of course, they will vote it down, but it would be a valuable lesson for the people that the party which claimed “our democracy is on the ballot” is back with a more sinister message in 2026: power at all costs.

Democrats would be wise to ease up on these radical ideas. As much as they excite the hardcore progressive base, the country — now, as in 1937 — has never been much inclined to elect a dictator.