He's probably still in the 'America needs to choose the President first!' phase. Even though Garland is arguably the most neutral and most palatable to both sides that Obama could find, Clinton is really under no obligation to continue pushing Garland as a choice.
Garland is something else. He's got more experience and qualifications than anybody sitting on the court now does (discounting the experience and qualification of serving on the Supreme Court). He seems eminently reasonable and unswayed by partisanship. He hasn't even advocated an overly dogmatic standard for Constitutional interpretation. By all accounts he is theoretically what every SCOTUS nominee is supposed to be, but the fucking Republicans can't seem to accept that there's more than just endless maneuvering for the next election even when Obama is giving them someone who's not really against them.
Frankly, the most important part of the court is qualification, and given past standards I'd say they'd be fucking up even if Obama gave them a qualified abortion doctor to nominate, but this is just obscene. Even Clarence Thomas got a
hearing.Clinton won't be obligated to keep him, shit,
Obama isn't obligated to keep him in the event there's a clusterfuck and the Obama Invictus plan gets deployed. But that is what the narrative will become and will be the "first controversy" since I'm sure Clinton won't wait more than a month in office to bring up a nominee. Garland at this point only gets in if McConnell decides to be a naked opportunist and call the hearing on election day, or if Clinton wins but the Senate stays Republican.
I'm just fucking disgusted that one of the few previously operating elements of the legislature is now breaking down into the tit-for-tat cycle. First it was the budget, now it's judicial appointments all the way up to SCOTUS. This shit keeps up and we really are going to need a one-party state, just to function.