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Comment by coldpie | Hacker News Reader

Though republicans' stonewalling court appointments, and especially the supreme court appointment, for an entire year is unprecedented. Sadly it seems to have paid off. I guess presidents serve 3 year terms now.

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Democrats could stall another 4 years. So, it's going to be an interesting fight.

Court nominations? I don't think so, I believe it just requires a simple majority (>=50%) to approve a court nomination.

They can have a filibuster blocking that vote. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appointment_and_confirmation.... " A simple majority vote is required to confirm or to reject a nominee, but a successful filibuster threat could add the requirement of a supermajority of 60 needed in favor of cloture, which would allow debate to end and force a final vote on confirmation."

It only takes a majority, though, to change the rules to limit what can be filibustered. This has been done on occasion.

Unprecedented? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DVnkmGB6Uw

What's the date on that video?

Edit: You may find this to be interesting reading. Sorry, it's not a 30-second YouTube clip. Note it was published in July, four months ago. https://rewire.news/article/2016/07/20/republicans-history-o...

I'm not going to lie and say that no Democrat has ever talked about it before. It doesn't stop the fact that this is the longest a Supreme Court candidate has ever went without even a hearing so I don't think that "unprecedented" is inaccurate.

It takes two to tango on court appointments. If the Democrats had a majority in the Senate, then Obama would have gotten his nominee.

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