It seems nothing short of preposterous to believe that certain "norms" of comity and deference to the executive will hold up under these conditions. Nor, for that matter, will the losing side take solace in the knowledge the justices casting votes against them were well-qualified to take their seats and exceptionally skilled in doing the damage.

From day-to-day, Democrats accept that Donald Trump is president and may exercise his legitimate executive authority, and Republicans acknowledged in similar fashion the Clinton and Obama presidencies—even if one takes into account impeachment proceedings brought against the former and a committed program of obstruction pursued against the latter. But the opposition political party has to swallow hard to accept that a president’s authority extends to his opportunity to shape the Supreme Court for a generation or two after he leaves office. And it will be that much harder to sell any number of Democrats on the proposition that they should honor the norm of deference to a president who lost the popular vote by millions and who, critics charge, won with the illicit support of a foreign power.

But the hostility to Trump, while it will stiffen resistance to this nomination, is not the primary source of it. Any Republican president now poised to reshape the court in the aftermath of Kennedy's retirement would meet with similar resistance and for the same reasons: the outsize role of the court and the decades’ length of the typical terms of service. Both Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, are highly and reasonably motivated to fight in these conditions. The “norms” have little chance. It is not obvious why they would.

The longer discussion of the nominating process assumes that the norms still have life to them—and the more elected officials feel compelled to pay empty homage to them— the more hypocritical and poisoned the process becomes. It then becomes imperative for the party mounting resistance to deny that it is driven by ideology or distinctive constitutional visions, and to find instead severe personal fault with the nominee. Sometimes they will claim to have uncovered a strain of unacceptable jurisprudence, bias or political thought. At other times, the objection will lodge against personal character: some questionable conduct exposed in their personal or professional life.

Required by fidelity to “norms” to give the nominee fair and neutral consideration, without regard to ideology or judicial philosophy, the opposing party has to assure that the assessment is negative. No, it is not that the nominee is conservative, but that he or she stands outside the "mainstream." Yes, the president is entitled to his or her nominee, but only if the individual question is a person of high integrity, and here is someone who has come forward to report on this scandalous or disreputable behavior in college/law firm/Kiwanis Club, and so on. The stage is then set for the full-scale demonization of someone who often, only hours before, had struck everybody as a reasonably decent sort.