Perhaps more accurately, Biden has been in the middle of Capitol Hill’s evolution.
He was Senate Judiciary Chairman in 1987 when Democrats jettisoned a controversial Supreme Court nominee from President Ronald Reagan. Robert Bork, a favorite in conservative legal circles, got a floor vote but garnered just 42 votes, including two Democrats. Six Republicans were among the 58 nays. The move incensed conservatives and gave birth to the highly organized activist network that Republicans have used to great success in confirming their preferred jurists in recent years.
But it’s worth noting that a subsequent Reagan nominee for the same vacancy, Anthony Kennedy, was confirmed unanimously. The final vote occurred early in the presidential election year of 1988.
When President Bill Clinton nominated Ginsburg in 1993, her liberal credentials and outlook were well-established. She was confirmed 96-3 anyway. Partisan wrangling intensified from Clinton’s second term onward. Democrats spiked the filibuster for regional appeals court judges in 2013, citing Republican obstruction. McConnell and Republicans followed suit in 2017 by ending filibusters for Supreme Court justices. Biden, who’d once shepherded Kennedy’s nomination through seamlessly, voted against both of George W. Bush’s nominees: Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito.
Over the same period, bipartisan legislative deals waned.
Bush’s signature domestic policy, the No Child Left Behind education law, had a Senate champion unthinkable today: the late Ted Kennedy, the “liberal lion” from Massachusetts. Biden often claims while campaigning that he cajoled three key Senate Republican votes for a 2009 economic rescue package when he was vice president – but just one of those senators, Susan Collins of Maine, remains in the Senate, and she faces a tough re-election battle. Obama’s signature domestic legislative win, the Affordable Care Act, got through Congress without a single Republican vote and only because Democrats managed procedural moves to avoid a final filibuster.