If you're a Republican under pressure — or
concerned about vulnerable blue-state GOP incumbents being under pressure — for considering holding up Obama's to-be-determined pick, what Biden said would seem to be pretty damning stuff.
But in the end, the vice president's past words probably don't fundamentally shift the high-stakes debate.
Here's how Biden defends it: He says he was speaking about a hypothetical (there was no court vacancy at the time). He was also speaking in June of an election year — not February — which is around the time something
called the Thurmond Rule has traditionally kicked in. (Though congressional experts say the Thurmond Rule is less an actual rule and more of a guideline that both parties call on when politically expedient on when the Senate can shut down the judicial confirmation process.)
[The 5 ways Senate Republicans are talking about the Supreme Court vacancy]
But the real reason Biden's comments probably won't give Republicans the edge is that there was likely never going to be a consensus among the American people on this anyway. And there's too much gray area in his comments for this to be seen as a game-changer.
A recent
NBC-Wall Street Journal poll found that Americans are split evenly on whether the Senate should vote on Obama's pick or wait until next year. Dig deeper into the results and you'll see there's little room for that number to change. A full 81 percent of Democrats polled say the Senate should consider Obama's pick — the same percentage of Republicans polled who say the Senate should wait to consider the next president's pick.
In other words, Americans view this Supreme Court battle through the same lens they view most events in Washington these days — through their politics.
What Biden's 1992 comments show more than anything is that politicians do the same, especially when it comes to the forever that is approving a president's Supreme Court nomination.
There
are a handful of examples of major players in the Senate appearing to flip-flop — depending on the president doing the nominating — on whether the Senate can and should block Supreme Court nominations in an election year, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). As we noted, though, not all of the examples are so clearly self-contradictory. As in Biden's case, questions are raised of when this no-nominees period should begin and whether the Senate shouldn't confirm any justices or simply should be extra-selective in doing so.
Still, what today's players said yesterday doesn't seem to have changed a significant number of people's minds, if any at all.
"You can have all the competing quotes you want," Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on the Senate floor Tuesday morning. "They amount to nothing."
Schumer was making the case, according to polls from
Pew Research Center and
Fox News, that a majority of Americans (between 56 and 62 percent) think the Senate should vote on Obama's pick. But Schumer's broader point about Biden stands: When there's so much discrepancy on both sides, it's difficult for one in particular to stand out.
That's why Biden's 1992 comments are less of a watershed moment in today's Supreme Court drama and just one more example of politicians saying things that make political sense at the time.
