evidence: "Of course," said McConnell, "the American people should have a say in the court's direction. It is a president's constitutional right to nominate a Supreme Court justice, and it is the Senate's constitutional right to act as a check on the president and withhold its consent." [...] For his part, McConnell argued that the Democrats had at least contemplated a similar tactic back in 1992, when Obama's vice president, Joe Biden, was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and mused about urging President George H.W. Bush to withhold any nominees to the high court until the end of the "political season." [...] A previous version of this story incorrectly said that before 2016, the last time a Democratic president made a Supreme Court appointment while Republicans held the Senate was in 1885. The last such appointment was in 1895.