The Rats are such a joke! Now Biden is saying that these hearings for court nominees are a waste of time. He's saying that because these hearings always HELP Republican nominees. It didn't happen with Bork, but that was before cable TV had penetrated the culture as much as today, and before the internet and talk radio revolution. By the early 90's, cable and talk radio had reached enough penetration to help Thomas when the Rats smeared him. Thomas was BOOSTED by those hearings, because he came off as a decent, honorable man being smeared by a pack of lying thugs.
Today we have the internet, and it's even worse for the Rats. If there were no hearings, the Rats could get more traction out of their lies and smears because the target wouldn't be able to respond immediately and would be a largely unknown figure to the public.
Ted Kennedy came off looking like a drunken, stupid thug questioning Alito about that CAP and Vanguard nonsense. But if there were no hearings, and the public never got to see and hear the nominee speak, Kennedy would have a better chance simply by calling a press conference charging Alito with being a corrupt extremist.
It neither helps nor hurts Democrat nominees to have hearings. Republican senators never behave badly towards them. Their hearings are generally mundane. But hearings for GOP nominees help them by allowing them to look intelligent and decent in the face of the hysterical raging and smearing the Rats engage in.
That's why Biden wants to scrap the hearings. No hearings means no chance for the nominee to respond adequately to charges, no chance for the nominee to be widely seen in direct comparison to his Rat inquisitors.
I think there's a provision in the "elastic clause" that provides for hearings, but only if Laurence Tribe is one of the panelists and gets enough face-time on C-SPAN.
Great post, puroresu. Your observations are spot-on and let's hope the Dems don't see it your way. They're addicted to their own voices and images, so probably they will go right on holding hearings.
Let's hope, also, that the next nominee to the Sup Ct is Janice Rogers Brown. She has nothing to fear from these impotent Rats.