I guess you could play this game all day, because it definitely cuts both ways.
You being such a fan of strict adherence to the Constitution, I thought you might find clinging to the filibuster as particularly odd, since the framers pretty clearly intended business to get done on a majority vote. The current de facto 60-vote threshold is a recent innovation. It’s based on Senate rules, not the Constitution, and Senate rules can and do change. Eliminating it would bring the body more in line with the Constitution.
If we’re suddenly concerned with norms and traditions around judicial nominations, why are we saying nothing when Republicans now decide to ignore the “blue-slip” system which allows home-state senators to hold up nominations? Is a good system? Maybe not, but Republicans insisted on honoring it when Obama was nominating judges, and ignoring it when Trump is nominating judges. Same with ABA ratings for judicial nominees. Republicans are stacking the courts with ideological activists, some of whom are unqualified to serve, specifically to be a backstop against actual democracy.
The Constitution similarly does not set the number of Supreme Court justices. Congress does. It’s varied over the years from as few as 5 to as many as 10. Changing it would be political hardball, yeah. So was holding up the lawful nomination of a qualified candidate for over a year.
My solution is and has always been this: make the franchise as widely available as possible, make it practical and feasible for more people to register and vote without undue restrictions. If the legislative branch, particularly, was the product of a more robust democracy, I’d expect that a lot of things might change. You might call it sour grapes from losing elections, but I’d say the greater evil arguing to perpetuate a system that is the fruit of the suppression of a truly representative democracy.
