Christ, we're getting the "why didn't Obama use the One Unspecified Magic Trick that could have made McConnell vote to confirm Scalia's replacement" takes now, with an added "so this means it's fine if Trump nominates the replacements for RBG and SB" to make them even dumber

Obama could have invented a time machine and gone back to 1787 and gotten the advice and consent clause taken out of the Constitution but he just doesn't know how to play HARDBALL

Anyway, even if there WAS some way Obama could have persuaded a Republican Senate to give up the median vote on the Court (which there very, very obviously was not) it STILL doesn't follow that we should be fine with a Supreme Court with a 7-2 Republican majority.

"When Justice Coney Barrett writes the opinion striking down the Clean Air Act, that will really stick it to Barack Obama, who is definitely in the socioeconomic group most vulnerable to a Supreme Court who thinks that the entire federal regulatory state is unconstitutional."

I can't believe this even needs saying, but the fact that winning the White House is not a sufficient condition to get Dem replacements for RBG and Breyer confirmed doesn't mean that it's not a necessary one.

It's also hilarious to see how many Politics Knowers apparently think that RBG, who wouldn't even resign in 2013, would totally have gone along with a galaxy-brained scheme to just ignore the Constitution and have a new justice just show up for work like nothing happened

And even in the fantasy alternate universe in which a single Supreme Court justice would treat a non-confirmed nominee as a legitimate addition to the Court, if they had done it Republicans would have had like a 16-5 majority on the Supreme Court by March 2017