The reason why this is not transferable to the Democrats, is because they haven't previously refused to hold confirmation hearings for an appointee solely on the basis that there'd be an election later that year.

If you're asking whether Democrats would have placed themselves in a similar position in 2016 if the roles were reversed, then the answer is no. I'd expect them to consider the nominee, and quite likely vote against - but they wouldn't stonewall until election.

But Democrats did try to nominate Garland in 2016, so now can they protest if Republicans put up a nominee now? Republican position may be inconsistent between 2020 and 2016, but if Reps now take position taken by Dems in 2016, how can Dems be critical if it?.

They can be critical of it precisely because of the republicans' hipocrisy.

Why would anyone believe Democrats would behave differently after they spent all of last year again threatening to pack the Supreme Court?

Has any elected democrat threatened to pack the supreme court, except as a response to McConnell reversing his position now that his party is in control?

You can't compare the senate majority leader with a random anonymous twitter account.

Two top candidates in the 2019 primaries, both senators, one of whom is running for VP: https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/434533-warren-ha...

From their statements, it's hard for me to see a "threat". This is a threat: https://twitter.com/EdMarkey/status/1307122232850870274.

"We are on the verge of a crisis of confidence in the Supreme Court, We have to take this challenge head on, and everything is on the table to do that." is...not.

Even still, your argument doesn't follow. Reacting to someone doing a thing you disapprove of isn't the same as instigating the thing. Your argument is that since Democrats disapprove of what Republicans did, and are considering taking action to undo and action they disapprove of, that they would have also done the act. That is very strange reasoning.

Nobody should be talking about court packing. Sitting on nominations to gain tactical advantage might be a sneaky. But it’s something that’s been done forever. Expanding the Supreme Court for political purposes would be unprecedented and breaking a huge taboo. It is not at all a proportional response.

Refusing to vote on a nominee is also unprecedented. You've yet to acknowledge that in every other case the Senate voted. This time they refused to even put it to a vote. (And some senators considered continuing it through the entire clinton presidency, were she elected, I might add)

That's also a huge taboo, and for good reason. It prevents voters from making politically informed decisions because their representatives don't have actions on which to judge.

Supreme Court nominations were allowed to expire without action 14 times (out of 37 unsuccessful nominations) before Garland.

Indeed, but to find one in an election year you have to jump back to 1881, where Hayes proposed a Justice after the election had already happened. The confirmation lapsed. President Grant proposed the same justice and he was confirmed. Worth noting, Hayes also had a justice confirmed as a lame duck (William Burnham Woods).

[Edit: I missed lame-duck Millard Filmore in 1852 the first time around also]

Prior to that you had John Tyler in 1844, who had two vacancies in the court open up in his election year. He made 9 proposals of 5 different people, one (John C. Spencer) was rejected and then later re-proposed and withdrawn, one (Reuben Walworth) was proposed 3 times, withdrawn once and postponed or lapsed twice. One was confirmed. Another was proposed twice. So this whole thing was a complete circus, but even still congress did their duty and confirmed one of Tyler's picks.

Prior to that there was John Quincey Adams who, also as a lame-duck, proposed a nominee who was tabled. In 1828.

So the precedent, insofar as there is one, is that when an election has already happened, the other party can table it. Except that more often than not, that doesn't happen. In fact, it's really only happened twice, in 1828, and 1852, and then not in 1880 despite similar circumstances. And then 2016.

And again those cases were different: Adams had already lost the election, when he made the nomination. Fillmore is maybe the closest, even though it happened later in the year the election hadn't happened yet, but Fillmore also failed to be re-nominated, so in a sense he'd lost the election in the primary.

[To be extra clear, in most of the cases where a nomination expired, the same president had a nominee confirmed later (Eisenhower, Harding, Cleveland), so it wasn't a flat out refusal to entertain candidates.

If your claim is supported by that article you linked down below, it seems like a big stretch to refer to Democrats as a unified whole ("believe Democrats ... after they") when you're referring to three people, two of whom were engaged in ultimately failed campaigns for the presidency.

It might be more constructive to speak with precision about a claim of such import.

Possibly. There is a level of accountability that seems to happen with the Democratic party. Not to say absolutely but it has happened.

https://www.vox.com/2018/5/21/17352230/al-franken-accusation...

Throwing one of your own under the bus for political reasons isn’t what I’d call accountability.

And here's the example comment that highlights the varying moral compass that seems to exist in defining what one perceives as "thrown under the bus" vs "holding accountable". What are your political leanings, if you don't mind me asking?

My leanings are complicated. I’d boil it down to a mix of pragmatism and pro-rights. I’m pro choice, pro 2nd amendment, pro gay marriage, mostly for a small government, etc. I usually lean republican nowdays due to the democratic side of the aisle being more likely to actually take rights away.

I don’t think what we know he did deserved the punishment, especially the picture where he was pretend groping. Nobody would have batted an eye at it at the time.

Maybe not as what we hope accountability really means but it is slightly better than protecting your own knowing they did wrong.