You can't believe trump won?

[Maxosaurus-rex]

Mr_Destiny said:

Maxosaurus-rex said:

Google "is blah blah blah unprecedented"

The answer is no. The thought that Senate will not consider lame duck nominations is long standing

 

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/05/senate-obama-merrick-garland-supreme-court-nominee/482733/

 

Critics—who concede that the Senate can refuse to approve Supreme Court nominations—argue for an atextual requirement that the Senate must refuse its consent through  formal procedures. But nothing in the Constitution requires this, and the Senate’s longstanding practice has included many failures to take formal action on nominees.

https://www.acslaw.org/acsblog/text-of-senator-schumers-speech

Second, for the rest of this President’s term and if there is another Republican elected with the same selection criteria let me say this:

 

We should reverse the presumption of confirmation.  The Supreme Court is dangerously out of balance.  We cannot afford to see Justice Stevens replaced by another Roberts; or Justice Ginsburg by another Alito.

 

Given the track record of this President and the experience of obfuscation at the hearings, with respect to the Supreme Court, at least:  I will recommend to my colleagues that we should not confirm a Supreme Court nominee EXCEPT in extraordinary circumstances

 

Chuckie Schumer

 

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/history-political-fights-over-supreme-court-seats/

 

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/history-stolen-supreme-court-seats-180962589/

 

“There is this tendency to view history through rose-colored glasses from time to time, and to suggest we’ve never been this political,” says Charles Gardner Geyh, a law professor at Indiana University and author of the 2008 book When Courts and Congress Collide. “In reality, we have always had a highly politicized selection process.” Several times in the 1800s, Geyh says, “the Senate certainly appears to have delayed with an eye toward saving the nomination for the next president.”

Also from that Smithsonian article: "Despite the stolen Supreme Court seats of the mid-1800s, says Geyh, the modern Senate's outright declaration that no Obama nominee would get a hearing or vote in 2016 still violated the Senate's norms. None of the tabled nominees of the 1800s were federal judges like Garland, whose qualifications the Senate endorsed in 1997 by confirming him for his appeals court seat, 76-23. "You've got a consensus choice," says Geyh, "which makes it all the more bald-faced that the Senate would do as it did."

Lots of chaotic SC crap went on in the mid-1800s--that's why these "norms" were established in the first place.

I admit it was not literally unprecedented--I only checked the 20th century nominees. And indeed nothing in the Constitution requires the Senate to vote on nominees. Even so, norms have a place--if it weren't for them, the Dems could have blocked Eisenhower's, Nixon's, and maybe Reagan's picks since they controlled the Senate for 52 out of 62 years from the 30s to the 90s; the GOP could have done the same to Bill's nominees. Each side understood that if one broke the norm, it'd start a race to the bottom. Aging justices would always retire while their party controlled the other two branches so the makeup of the SC would stay locked no matter whom the people vote in. How about electors? Nowhere in the Constitution does it require they follow the popular vote, so I'm sure it's fair if they choose anyone they want!

So yes, these things aren't set in stone, but they most certainly have a valid purpose.

The norms were already being challenged by the dems as Schumer and Reid show. No seat was stolen and the tactics used had been used previously. They could have just abolished the seat and have no tie breaking vote. They allowed the seat to remain vacant for long enough.

 

Electors can and have voted against the popular vote of their state