FLASHBACK: What Democrats Said in 2016 About Filling a Supreme Court Vacancy

A number of Democratic leaders favored a Senate confirmation hearing and vote for President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Judge Merrick Garland in 2016.

When Justice Antonin Scalia passed away, Obama had nominated Garland, who at the time was the chief judge of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.  Nevertheless, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell vowed to block a confirmation vote for Garland until after the 2016 presidential election, as reported by the Washington Post.

“The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice,” McConnell said, according to Politico. “Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president.”

Several Democrats condemned McConnell within days that lasted weeks following his decision, but now they demand the same McConnell block any nomination made by President Donald Trump to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who passed away yesterday, may God rest her soul.

Though Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden favored pushing aside a confirmation hearing during 1992, an election, as a US senator, Biden supported Garland’s confirmation in 2016 as vice president, according to ABC News.  That’s because most Democrats are two-faced frauds.  Biden stated there was no supposed “Biden Rule” concerning Supreme Court nominations in an election year.  In reality, there isn’t a Biden Rule officially, however that’s how everyone in the known universe referred to Biden’s speech when as a senator he said that for the remaining months of the George H W Bush presidency, the Democrat-controlled senate would not entertain any judicial appointments.

“Deciding in advance simply to turn your back before the president even names a nominee is not an option the Constitution leaves open,” Biden said, according to Business Insider. “It’s a plain abdication from the Senate’s duty. … [It’s] never occurred before in our history.”

“Elections have consequences,” Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party’s nominee at the time said, according to Politico. “The president has a responsibility to nominate a new justice and the Senate has a responsibility to vote.”

Clinton called McConnell’s decision “outrageous.”

“We’ve never had vacancy and nomination for a year that didn’t get voted on,” Senator Patrick Leaky Leahy (D-VT) the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee said. “Obama’s been elected twice, you have to assume if Mitt Romney had been elected he’d be making this nomination.”

Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) tweeted: “Garland has integrity, a brilliant legal mind & is a perfect fit for the Supreme Court. GOP inaction does our country a great disservice.”  And it’s my opinion that had Garland made it onto the High Court, we would have had to turn in our guns by now as he was just as ready to trash our Second Amendment as the other leftists on the Court, even though to do so legally would require a new Amendment that would rescind the Second Amendment.

At the time, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) tweeted: “Judge Merrick Garland, is a respected jurist who must be given a fair hearing & timely vote.” It’s a shame she didn’t feel the same way about any Republican nominees.

Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT), an Independent democratic socialist who caucuses with Democrats, tweeted, “Judge Garland is a strong nominee with decades of experience on the bench. Obama has done his job. It’s time for Republicans to do theirs.”

In the meantime, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) tweeted that Republicans must “ditch their extremism” and schedule a vote for Garland.

Then-Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said the Senate should consider a nominee immediately, according to Politico.

“It would be unprecedented in recent history for the Supreme Court to go a year with a vacant seat,” Reid said. “Failing to fill this vacancy would be a shameful abdication of one of the Senate’s most essential Constitutional responsibilities.”

Lest we forget that Joe Biden in 1992 took to the floor of the US Senate and gave a speech and said, among other things:

“Given the unusual rancor that prevailed in the (Clarence) Thomas nomination, the need for some serious reevaluation of the nomination and confirmation process, and the overall level of bitterness that sadly infects our political system and this presidential campaign already, it is my view that the prospects for anything but conflagration with respect to a Supreme Court nomination this year are remote at best.”

Younger people may not realize that the “overall level of bitterness” that Biden spoke of was mainly of his own doing.  Biden attacked then nominee Clarence Thomas in what can now be thought of as a somewhat milder approach from what the disgusting Democrats on the Judiciary Committee did to now Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearing, by using Anita Hill, who was proven to be lying, to trash Thomas by false allegations of sexual misconduct.

Biden continued:

“Mr. President, where the nation should be treated to a consideration of constitutional philosophy, all it will get in such circumstances is a partisan bickering and political posturing from both parties and from both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. As a result, it is my view that if a Supreme Court Justice resigns tomorrow, or within the next several weeks, or resigns at the end of the summer, President Bush should consider following the practice of a majority of his predecessors and not — and not — name a nominee until after the November election is completed.”

WATCH:

As Mitch McConnell has already stated, you have to go back to the 1800s to find a Supreme Court nominee from a president when the Senate was controlled by the opposing party.  Obama was a Democrat when he nominated Garland, and the American people voted to make the Republicans the majority in the US Senate.  So, for the Garland nomination, Leader McConnell was following precedent.  Now, President Trump is a Republican, and the American people have since re-elected the Republicans as the majority in the Senate.  Therefore, the president has the right, according to precedent, to nominate a replacement for Justice Ginsburg’s vacancy.