"No, the Senate’s Supreme Court Blockade Has Never Happened in American History"

"It is certainly true that Biden, like Schumer, was demanding broader latitude for the Senate. Both these remarks are within the historic tradition of senators tussling over how much say their chamber should have in the ideology of a new justice. But neither of them advocated flat-out blocking the president from any nomination, however moderate or well-qualified.
"And maybe the old system, in which social norms dictate that the Senate allow the president to put his ideological imprint on the Court, is simply untenable in a polarized age. Maybe that system was bound to perish. (That's the case I made.) And maybe the Democrats would have wound up becoming the party to kill that old system if they found themselves in the position Republicans currently occupy. But the clear fact is that they didn't kill that system and they didn't create the new one that is taking its place. The current Senate Republicans did."

Jonathan Chait at New York reacts to the Senate Republicans announcing that they will refuse to consider the president's choice of a new Supreme Court justice.