As a very savvy political strategist, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell foresaw back in February, in the immediate aftermath of Justice Scalia’s death, that Senate Republicans would win the political battle over keeping the Scalia vacancy open. That indeed appears to be what’s happening.
As Politico reported yesterday:
For months, Democrats touted the GOP’s Supreme Court blockade as a major political liability that would help turn the Senate majority in their favor. But for all their tough talk, Merrick Garland has basically disappeared from the Senate campaign trail.
The air wars over Garland have largely gone silent, with no Senate Democratic candidates having run television ads invoking the unprecedented Republican blockade of Garland. And some Senate Republicans have actually turned the tables, using the court to motivate their own base.
Similarly, Washington Post political correspondent James Hohmann writes:
For six months, the Democratic push to move Merrick Garland has gone nowhere….
[Yesterday’s] day-long push [in D.C.] unintentionally underscored what relative non-issues the Supreme Court generally and Garland specifically have been in the 2016 campaign, despite Democrats talking a big game in the spring.
No Democratic Senate candidates are talking about Garland in paid television ads.
No one mentioned Garland during the Democratic National Convention in July, including Barack Obama.
Hillary Clinton has not committed to re-nominate Garland if she’s elected. While she talks about the Supreme Court, she almost never talks about him.
Don’t get me wrong: Victory in the long-term battle over the Scalia vacancy, and over the Supreme Court more generally, requires that Donald Trump (gulp!) win the presidency, make quality nominations, and have a Republican Senate to confirm those nominations. But if Hillary Clinton wins and/or Democrats regain control of the Senate, there is no reason to think that the Senate Republicans’ stance on the Garland nomination will have contributed to such results.