In the present political climate, it isn’t too surprising to hear U.S. senators and other political leaders say that they won’t support any candidate for the Supreme Court who strays too far from their own ideological bent, but to say that a sitting president has somehow lost or forfeited the right and obligation to even submit a nomination carries mindless partisanship to absurd levels, whether it comes from the right or the left.
In particular, the claim that President Obama lost the faith of the American people in his right to make nominations because his party did poorly in 2014 overlooks the fact that the Democrats also did poorly in 2010, and yet Obama was reelected in 2012. Midterm congressional elections don’t nullify presidential ones, and neither they nor the fact that a president is in the last year or so of his term relieve him of his constitutional duties and prerogatives.
It’s inevitable that Republicans will oppose anyone the president brings forward, but the claim that he somehow lacks the right to or should not even make such a nomination exposes the naked nihilism and obstructionism that characterize the party of McConnell, Cruz, Trump, et al.