Joe Biden advocated the same alleged changing of the "rules" back when he was chair of the Senate Judiciary committee in the 1990s. Both sides do it. It's just that Republicans gambled on a power-play last year and won a massive and decisive victory with Donald Trump's election. All leftists can do now is scream about "stolen" seats" and about how "Hillary won the popular vote."
God it's pathetic.
But we're in a new era. Democrats just can't stand that they now face a powerful Republican administration, and majority in Congress, that is willing and able to fight by the very rules leftists invented: Alinsky Rule #4, make the enemy live up to its own standards.
In any case, see the childish whiner David Leonhart, at the New York Times (where else?), "Why Democrats Should Oppose Neil Gorsuch":
Democrats cannot play by the old set of rules now that the Republicans are playing by a new one, writes @DLeonhardt https://t.co/gRhzTJQj9U— NYT Opinion (@nytopinion) February 1, 2017
It’s important to remember just how radical — and, yes, unprecedented — the Senate’s approach to the previous Supreme Court nominee was.It doesn't make him "deeply uncomfortable." Frankly, by a look at his Twitter feed, the dude's reveling in his partisan hatred and demonization of the administration.
Republican leaders announced last March that they would not consider any nominee. They did so even though Barack Obama still had 10 months left in his term and even though other justices (including Anthony Kennedy) had been confirmed in a president’s final year.
The refusal was a raw power grab. Coupled with Republican hints that no Hillary Clinton nominee would be confirmed either, it was a fundamental changing of the rules: Only a party that controlled both the White House and the Senate would now be able to assume it could fill a Supreme Court vacancy.
The change is terribly damaging for the country’s political system. It impedes the smooth functioning of the court and makes it a much more partisan institution.
Of course, the strategy also worked, and the flip from an Obama justice to a Trump justice will likely be the deciding factor in many of the most important cases in coming years.
So what can Democrats do?
First, they need to make sure that the stolen Supreme Court seat remains at the top of the public’s consciousness. When people hear the name “Neil Gorsuch,” as qualified as he may be, they should associate him with a constitutionally damaging power grab.
Second, Democrats should not weigh this nomination the same way that they’ve weighed previous ones. This one is different. The presumption should be that Gorsuch does not deserve confirmation, because the process that led to his nomination was illegitimate....
*****
Finally, the Democratic Party should begin planning its long-term strategy for the court, and that strategy needs to revolve around last year’s events. One option, for example, would be a plan first to deprive a Republican president of one nominee in coming years and second to offer a truce with Republicans.
I understand that all of these options sound aggressive and partisan, and it makes me deeply uncomfortable to make such an argument. But Democrats simply cannot play by the old set of rules now that the Republicans are playing by a new one. The only thing worse than the system that the Republicans have created is a system in which one political party volunteers to be bullied.
Fuck him.
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