1. I've made my case that, historically, when POTUS & Senate are different parties, the Senate has held open SCOTUS seats rather than confirm presidential-election year nominees. @nycsouthpaw does not dispute this. But a few rebuttals.
@nycsouthpaw 2. The chief argument he makes is about the procedure, rather than the outcome - eg, that there was no hearing & no recorded vote. These are red herrings, for three reasons.
@nycsouthpaw 3. One, as I've noted before & he now concedes, hearings are a modern innovation for the benefit of the Senators, not the nominee. They serve no purpose if the outcome is not in doubt. nationalreview.com/corner/it-does…
@nycsouthpaw 4. It was still common as recently as FDR to have no hearings. James Byrnes, for example, was confirmed the day he was nominated. If the GOP had decided (and they had) not to proceed w/Garland, hearings were pointless Kabuki.
@nycsouthpaw 5. The complaint that McConnell & Grassley decided this unilaterally is...not how a Senate caucus works. Many GOP Senators were up for re-election. Others were questioned. Only one (Kirk) dissented from the decision. That's a majority of the Senate.
@nycsouthpaw 6. The "no floor vote" complaint is a legitimate one when a minority prevents a vote to hide the existence of majority support. But here, it was the majority that did so.
@nycsouthpaw 7. This part is not totally accurate. See the next tweet with a chart - several nominations have died without a recorded vote, and not just ones like Miers where the nominee was pre-emptively withdrawn.
@nycsouthpaw 8. Here's the list of unsuccessful nominations. Harlan & Matthews were resubmitted after an intervening election. But several of the Tyler & Fillmore nominations were blocked without a recorded vote. 
@nycsouthpaw 9. As I've noted, there was just one failed election-year nomination when the parties were the same (Fortas/Thornberry in 1968, killed by bipartisan filibuster) & just one successful one w/opposing parties (Fuller in 1888).
@nycsouthpaw 10. Moreover, as I've noted, his "six" includes both Thornberry, who was filibustered by a minority of the Senate, and Brennan, who was a recess appointment - Senate took no action on Brennan until *after* the election. So 1/3 of his examples are bogus.
@nycsouthpaw 11. And Brandeis' nomination only got a hearing (the first of its kind, at which he did not appear) to address the anti-Semitic opposition to the first Jewish Justice. It was not exactly a courtesy.
@nycsouthpaw 12. Remainder of the complaints leveled in this & other recent efforts to respond to my argument take issue with what McConnell *said* rather than what he did. And I don't defend everything he has said. My point is simply that this was not a huge break from historical precedent.
