Some quick observations on Vice President Joe Biden’s remarks today urging Senate Republicans to confirm Merrick Garland:

1. Biden declared that failure to give the Garland nomination an up-or-down vote would be “setting an incredibly dangerous precedent.” You mean, Joe, the same precedent that you threatened to set way back in 1992?

2. Biden asserted that “the fact of the matter is, every nominee, including Anthony Kennedy in an election year, got an up-or-down vote…. Not much of the time, not most of the time. All the time. Every single solitary time.”

No, Joe.

For starters, Kennedy wasn’t nominated in an election year. (I’ll acknowledge that Biden’s phrasing is ambiguous on this point.) Kennedy was nominated in November 1987 to a vacancy that arose in June of that year. (He was nominated after the defeat of the Bork nomination.)

Further, the only two nominations made in an election year since 1932—those of Abe Fortas and Homer Thornberry in 1968—never received an up-or-down vote. (Fortas was filibustered for elevation to chief justice, and Thornberry’s nomination to fill Fortas’s seat as associate justice died in the process.)

(Yes, vacancies haven’t often arisen in election years, but the reason is that justices don’t choose to retire in election years because they know that election-year nominations can be especially controversial.)

3. Biden stated, “It is the Senate’s responsibility to act up or down.” Insofar as Biden is making an argument about a supposed constitutional duty of the Senate, he’s as wrong now as he was when he made that silly argument six months ago. If he’s merely making an argument about a supposed political duty, he’s in a realm in which there’s ample room to argue either side. In either case, it would be good if he would acknowledge, rather than run away from, the fact that his current position contradicts the position he carefully staked out in 1992.