By 2012, this article The Courts: How Obama Dropped the Ball was reporting that Obama was doing a miserable job of appointing judges. At that point there were already 100 vacancies, and no concerted effort to fill them.
The article credits Karl Rove with doing a great job filling court vacancies for W, leaving the courts with nearly 50% W-appointees at the end of W's presidency. Obama didn't have such a point man, and didn't seem to much care about judges himself. According to the article, he was opposed to judicial activism and wanted to get things done in Congress, not in the courts. (Hah!)
Also, Republicans did a good job of holding up nominations, both through filibuster and by simply publicizing the liberal character of Obama nominees, as not fit to be judges.
Unless Obama was paving the way for Hillary on the first day of his presidency, I don't think the argument that he was keeping vacancies open for Hillary holds up. I think he got a slow start and those Wascally Wepublicans kept him from catching up.
By 2012, this article The Courts: How Obama Dropped the Ball was reporting that Obama was doing a miserable job of appointing judges. At that point there were already
100 vacancies, and no concerted effort to fill them.
On the other hand.
I seem to recall that when Clinton got elected he fired 900 federal judges to put his own in. Nobody seemed to care unfortunately.
This article Trump’s federal judge pace matches recent presidents — but with a big twist gives Trump extra credit for his judicial appointments because he got 2 Supreme Court slots and made more appeals ("circuit") court appointments in his first two years than recent presidents did.