Thread by @thomasafine

The McConnell rule makes zero sense. When the Senate and the president are the same party there is no check whatsoever against court packing. When the Senate and the president are different parties there is an inherent built-in check in place.

Why then did McConnell completely block the nomination from even going to a hearing in 2016?

Did he not even have the votes to block her?

FYI, since 1980, three Justices were confirmed by mixed President/Senate (though not in an election year). All nominated by Republicans and confirmed by Democrats.

(Thomas and Alito, confirmed by Dems, and Breyer, confirmed by Republicans)

But again, if lame duck court packing is your concern, the rule would be against SAME party nominations/confirmations.

Because, again, when the parties are different, the voting process itself is the check against packing. The very vote that McConnell blocked in 2016.

Going back all the way to World War II there are several other Dem Senates that approved GOP nominees for SCOTUS. There are zero cases of the reverse, but I don't want to be unfair here — there was only one case where there was ever an opportunity and that was Garland.

So yes since WWII there have been five Republican Senates under Democratic Presidents, and in that time only one SCOTUS nomination ever came up.

In that same period there were eleven Democrat-led Senates under Republican Presidents, and Democrats confirmed nine Justices.

It's striking that since WWII we have only had twelve total Republican Senates (out of 40).

But in that time Republican Presidents nominated fully half of all confirmed Justices (14 of 28)*.

*I've been saying "since WWII" in this thread but I started with 1941 the term. If I only look truly post-WWII, then Republican Presidents have nominated the majority of the Justices (14 of 24).

This is an excellent point. Regardless of Senate leadership, most of the confirmations were strongly supported by the minority party too.

https://twitter.com/WMcCord128/status/1315757380815085568

It's really just the last decade that things have fully turned to shit.

I know a lot of people trace this all to the Powell Memo in 1971 (and there's some truth to that), but a lot of different things had to combine to work their magic over several decades to put us here.

Things like corporate monopolization of the media; ending the fairness doctrine; the Internet (and it's corporate monopolization); and a radical right-wing underground movement that steadily gathered power.

By the way I have a huge error above that I thought I corrected but that tweet apparently didn't go out. Breyer was not confirmed by a Republican Senate. My other tweet where I said that a Republican Senate (post WWII) has confirmed zero Democrat-nominated justices is correct.