> Everyone fantasizes about government by an unelected group of experts, until they wake up one day and find out those unelected experts don't share their values at all -- and there's nothing they can do about it.

Does SCOTUS fit into this hypothetical?

No, because they neither make laws nor execute them.

This implies the common false dichotomy though that public officials can only be either: elected in toxic, wasteful campaign cycles every 4 years; or completely independent of public oversight. Those aren't the only two mechanisms that exist to develop an administrative apparatus. They are actually two points on a spectrum, and in fact closer to being at either end of the spectrum.

One, quick example: You can have appointed experts who can be recalled by public input but never have to campaign for election. I'm writing this in short minutes with zero research so be assured there are countless possible systems that exist in the infinite space between the two binary options implied by your dilemma.

In other words, being elected to office is not the advantage of congress. The advantage we seek is public accountability. Public elections are a pretty fucking poor proxy for accountability though because we end up with single-issue voters acting out of rage and electing people who are specifically inept at their job.

The courts could reflect the values of elected officials. This is in fact a major strategy of the Right for about a generation, and is working great for them. It's only Liberals, who seem to be allergic to power, who have handcuffed themselves and decided that "packing the courts" (a loaded way to refer to the totally reasonable practice of appointing people from your own team to the bench so that they outnumber those from the other team) is somehow incompatible with democracy.

The totally reasonable practice of "I lost the game, so I'm going to flip over the table and pull a gun."

When your opponents are lying, cheating, and breaking their own made up rules (no supreme court nominees during the lame duck session unless nominated by a Republican) your characterization is uncalled for.

The rules are that the executive can appoint judges. Right wing executives take advantage of this rule. Doing the same from the other corner seems reasonable too. The failure to do so means that the Democratic party is incompetent, uninterested in enacting their own alleged policies, or some combination of the two.

Some people say "if you're not cheating, you're not trying" but this is even a level removed. This is a perfectly legal move that they've denied themselves for no material reason.

Yes, the right have been doing it for a long time and it works. Either make it stop working, or copy the thing that works. Don't just handicap yourself to a guaranteed loss.

Nothing in the rulebook says a {dog,Democrat} can't {play basketball,appoint liberal judges}.

Tell that to Merrick Garland and Mitch McConnell.

But they don't.

Appointing people based on party loyalty is always cited as one of the major reason the Soviet Union became a slow-motion train wreck. It's not something America should emulate.

Not to mention that packing the courts could well be interpreted as an open attack against the separation of powers

The Democrats desperately want to keep the moral high ground.

With a populace that cares about ethics and morals, that would be a sensible strategy, but unfortunately about half the voting US population doesn't give a flying fuck about either any more.

Additionally, the danger for Democrats going for low blows and breaking tradition is that they might lose a significant part of their own voters as a result.

Indeed they have already done so - many left-wing voters are swearing off voting for Biden, over his support for the Gaza genocide. This guarantees a Trump victory.

The issue is that the "ethics and morals" of the powerful are in reality weapons pointed at working people. If using state power gained through elections to improve the lives of the people who elected you is immoral or unethical, your system of ethics is a farce.

superficially this argument seems reasonable.. but my limited understanding of the history of the Supreme Court of the United States says that there have been substantially different eras, and substantially different rules in those eras, for this same Federal body. Needless to say, in a "two party" political system, the details of what each of those two parties represents has also changed dramatically.. i.e. what is called conservative has changed quite a lot, many times.. same with "liberal"