What Caused the Supreme Court Stalemate?

First Read: “We have one explanation: The elimination of the judicial filibuster. Now save us your emails and text messages on who’s to blame for its elimination; we’ve heard all the arguments, and both Democrats and Republicans have good cases to make about why the other side is at fault.”

“But does anyone believe we’d be in this situation if 60 votes still mattered? After all, Kavanaugh’s ceiling was never higher than 54 votes – before the sexual-assault allegation. (Then again, Neil Gorsuch’s ceiling was 55 votes in 2017.) Would President Trump have been forced to nominate someone with less of a partisan/political background or less of a paper trail?”

“In the Bush and Obama eras, we saw Democrats and Republicans abuse the filibuster process. But at its core was this benefit: You achieved consensus — more than just a simple party-line majority.”

“We realize our politics has changed over the last 15-20 years: Voters no longer reward the consensus-builders; instead they prefer fighters and bold ideas. But the result is a broken political process — as well as the spectacle we’re likely to see next week in Washington.”