WATCH: Joe Biden Tells Local Reporter Court-Packing is ‘A Legitimate Question’ — Then Gives Almost Perfect Answer

Local CBS Nevada reporter Orko Manna took another crack at asking Joe Biden about adding justices to the Supreme Court, and the former vice president acknowledged it’s “a legitimate question” — then gave an almost perfect answer.

During a campaign swing in Las Vegas Friday, Manna scored an exclusive interview with the Democratic presidential nominee, and didn’t let the fact that the court-packing question has been asked nine million times dissuade him in the least.

“You and Senator Harris have dodged the question a little bit in terms of do you support packing the court, adding more justices, what would you say?” Mr. Manna asked.

“I think it’s a legitimate question to ask,” Biden conceded, then launched into a lengthy response that brought attention to several key issues in the election — the Republicans’ obstruction of coronavirus aid, the stripping of health care — while standing his ground on the court-packing issue:

But you know what this is all about? The president doesn’t want to talk about, all this time they’re working on making sure they push through a nomination that is, where the elections already begun, and it’s never been done before. Over 4 million people have already voted. And what are they doing?

Instead of meeting to deal with the needs of the people of Arizona and the rest of the country, what are they doing? They don’t have time to do that. They can’t even bring themselves back together to pass that legislation.

But they have time to do the Supreme Court. Why? They want to make sure they take away your health care, because they’re in court, they’re going into court seven or eight days after the election, the Supreme Court, to srip away Obamacare. Take away coverage for 20 million people. Over 100 million people with preexisting conditions.

And the moment I start talking about what’s going to happen after this, becomes the headline. All of a sudden it’ll take the focus off for you all, and I’m not blaming you, but the press all of a sudden is going to start talking about ‘What is he going to do, are we going to pack the court, are we going to have a filibuster?’

We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. In the meantime, they should not be going forward with this vote. They should wait until the election because the only time the American people have an opportunity to speak, and I taught constitutional law for 22 years, is when they pick their senator and their president. And that is already underway, next president should be able to nominate and the next Senate should be able to confirm. That’s what we should be doing.

The answer frustrates journalists, but this general tactic is Biden’s wisest possible course, and the number of times he and running mate Senator Kamala Harris have been asked bears that out. The interest in making this a story is intense, but instead, Biden and Harris are using each question as an opportunity to amplify the stakes of the election in their own favor.

But his answer could be better. With apologies to Biden for President Deputy Campaign Manager and Communications Director Kate Bedingfield, who touched on this during a cable news hit last week on a date and show that I can’t quite recall, the missing element to Biden’s answer is ending it by placing the onus on Republicans to do the right thing.

Both the court-packing and the filibuster questions are hypotheticals that only become relevant if Republicans behave poorly. Biden has even said so in the past when it comes to the filibuster, promising he’ll consider nuking it if the opposition can’t be budged, saying in August “If the Republicans, if there’s no way to move other than getting rid of the filibuster, that’s what we’ll do.”

In this case, Biden should answer exactly as he has, but conclude by saying “This is a legitimate question that I don’t believe I will ever have to answer, because I have faith in the Senate to do the right thing and delay this nomination until the American people have finished voting.”

Period.

Watch the clip above via 8 News NOW.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.