What a difference two years makes. In 2016, the Republican senate majority leader Mitch McConnell was all about letting the voice of the American people be heard, before the Senate would dream of making so important a decision as nominating a judge to the US Supreme Court.
When Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia died in May 2016, six months before the election, McConnell made it clear that allowing Obama to nominate a successor, as was his constitutional right as president, was a total non-starter. His party refused even to give the eminently qualified judge Obama nominated, Merrick Garland, a hearing; the seat was eventually filled by Donald Trump, whose nominee, Neil Gorsuch, was confirmed by the Republican-controlled Senate last year.
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