Nonobaddog is absolutely correct that the Senate minority is being obstructionist, and in ways I was unaware of.
That said, I don’t know that there has ever been a time that the Senate minority hasn’t been at least somewhat obstructionist. It’s kind of what they do. The Democrats problem is that they “nucularly” changed the rules on cloture to a simple majority on nominations so now they can’t prevent it. As a response, they are forcing the Republicans to force cloture on every NoM, instead of giving the traditional up down vote that noncontroversial nominations usually got, thereby delaying everything.
It’s a nasty form of gamemanship but nothing new. The Republicans played it to a great extent as well. At the end of the day though, it is much easier to force a nominee through today. A professor/friend of mine back during the Bush years had his nomination to the federal district courts sit for IIRC well over a year before he finally just withdrew it Since there didn’t appear to be any hope the Senate would ever take it up.
