Reuters, Larry Downing

The coming fight: President Obama says he will nominate a successor, but even before he could announce that Majority Leader Mitch McConnell vowed that the Senate will not confirm anyone this year. “The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice,” the Kentucky senator said.

Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) retorted:  “Failing to fill this vacancy would be a shameful abdication of one of the Senate’s most essential Constitutional responsibilities.”

-- Trump, Cruz, Rubio and John Kasich all suggested either Obama shouldn't pick a replacement, or that the Senate should "delay, delay, delay" in Trump's words.

-- Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders agreed that it is "outrageous" for Republicans to block a nomination. "Apparently they believe that the Constitution does not allow a Democratic president to bring forth a nominee to replace Justice Scalia," Sanders said in a statement. "I strongly disagree with that.”

 WASHINGTON POST
McConnell's decision on blocking Barack Obama’s pick for the Supreme Court is a bold and understandable gambit designed to prevent a leftward lurch in jurisprudence after Antonin Scalia’s unexpected death this weekend, but it could backfire badly.

Assuming the president picks a Hispanic, African American or Asian American – bonus points if she’s a woman – this could be exactly what Democrats need to re-activate the Obama coalition that fueled his victories in 2008 and 2012. Even if he does not go with a minority candidate, the cases on the docket will galvanize voters who are traditionally less likely to turn out.

Take abortion rights. Marco Rubio is against abortion even in cases of rape and incest. For women, the prospect of Roe vs. Wade being overturned just became much more real. “When I’m president of the United States, I’ll nominate someone like Justice Scalia,” the Florida senator declared on the Sunday shows.

More broadly, this could also undermine efforts by Senate Republicans to show that they are capable of governing and not just “the party of no.” Make no mistake: The upper chamber will grind to a standstill if the GOP follows through on this threat. Democrats who are inclined to work with them promise to stop doing so if Republicans play hardball.

Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley 

-- Ultimately, though, there is not really anything Democrats can do procedurally to force Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley to hold a hearing on Obama’s nominee. The only lever they have is public pressure.

The most potent pressure points are the seven GOP incumbents who are up for reelection this year in states Obama carried in 2012. New Hampshire’s Kelly Ayotte and Wisconsin’s Ron Johnson publicly came out in favor of obstruction yesterday. The others are holding their cards close to the vest for right now.

 What’s the Republican political calculus? Blocking judges historically motivates their base – including donors and the U.S. Chamber – more than it does liberals. And they don’t think independents will really care all that much. It will just sound like more Washington noise. McConnell, not a favorite of the grassroots, also needs to keep his own base ginned up. Amidst a presidential primary, it is untenable for Republicans to look like rubber stamps for Obama.

Most smart Republicans in D.C. still believe either Trump or Cruz would lose a general election. Their hope is that a Supreme Court vacancy might help galvanize conservative volunteers to go do work for endangered Senate incumbents.

McConnell’s Saturday night statement declaring that the vacancy should be filled by the next president did not rule out the possibility of a confirmation hearing or floor time to consider whoever the president picks.

That might be the more politically astute play, since Republicans could slow walk the vetting, trickle out negative revelations about the nominee to right-wing media outlets and then ultimately vote to reject the nominee. 

Having hearings could give some cover to purple state Republicans to say they are doing their jobs. “If the Republican leadership refuses to even hold a hearing, I think that is going to guarantee they're going to lose control of the Senate," said Patrick Leahy, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee.

Plus, even if Obama’s pick gets past the Judiciary Committee, they will be hard pressed to get confirmed by the full Senate. Fourteen Republicans would need to come out against Cruz’s promised filibuster.

 Ironically, if Clinton wins and Democrats retake the Senate after McConnell spends the year taking heat, she will have a mandate to put the most progressive justice imaginable on the bench. And Republicans will have no real grounds to oppose her. For McConnell, right now, that’s a risk worth taking.

-- Who will Obama nominate?

One leading candidate will probably be Sri Srinivasan, an ex-Justice Department official who is now on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. He'd be the first judge of South Asian descent on SCOTUS and was confirmed, 97-0, for his current post by the Senate in May 2013. Read Jeffrey Toobin's New Yorker story on Srinivasan here.

Sri Srinivasan,

Other names mentioned by court insiders last night, per USA Today: Srinivasan's colleagues on the D.C. Circuit Patricia Millett and Merrick Garland, as well as California Supreme Court Justice Goodwin Liu.

The Post's Bob Barnes, an expert on the court, forecasts a lot of 4-4 splits on controversial issues like abortion, affirmative action, the rights of religious objectors to the contraceptive mandate in the Affordable Care Act, and the president’s powers on immigration and deportation. When there's a tie, the decision by the lower court is affirmed. That means there is no precedent for the future. This means that who won in the lower court matters a great deal.

The law could be interpreted differently in different regions: “For instance, a Texas law that imposes new restrictions on abortion providers was found constitutional by a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit. A 4-to-4 tie would uphold that finding. But a similar law in Wisconsin was struck down and would be unaffected by the court’s tie in the Texas case.”

Barnes adds that, if Republican leaders hold firm, it will also affect which cases the justices choose to take up when the next term starts in October. (Read a breakdown of how four cases will likely be impacted here.)

A big break for public employee unions: “At oral arguments, the court seemed prepared to hand a significant defeat to organized labor and side with a group of California teachers who claim that their free-speech rights are violated when they are forced to pay dues to the state’s teachers union. The court’s conservatives — Scalia included — appeared ready to junk a 40-year-old precedent that allows unions to collect an ‘agency fee’ from nonmembers to support collective-bargaining activities for members and nonmembers alike. But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, citing that precedent, had ruled for the union. And with the Supreme Court’s liberals seemingly united in upholding the precedent, a 4-to-4 vote would mean the union victory would stand.”