From the New Republic piece:
It goes without saying that Obama appointing Garland in this fashion would be highly controversial. Indeed, it would make the nation’s collective head explode. Conservatives would demand the Court immediately block the appointment. However, it is likely they would need Garland to participate in a case that gets a ruling so they could have a plaintiff with standing to say they have been harmed by the Garland appointment. And then they would have to move that case through the lower courts. That process would take several months, and all the while the Supreme Court would have a center-left majority.
The intervening months would be filled with outrage and talk of treason. The media would be consumed with debating the question. Trump and his allies would denounce Obama’s lawlessness. Dahlia Lithwick is correct to call the prospect a “grotesque spectacle.” And potentially nothing else would get done, which, if you’re interested in not having the Republican majority govern effectively, is a little side benefit.
All that said, this would be completely out of character for Obama, who plans to spend his final two months in office as a horse whisperer to Trump, not an antagonist. The gambit would have an extremely low likelihood of permanent success—even if the Court didn’t rule the Garland appointment unconstitutional (and it probably would), he’d be out in a year.
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As we now know, NOTHING damaging and disruptive is out of character for Obama, whether it be overturning decades of US protection for Israel in the UN, to writing hundreds of magic pen decrees in his last month in office, seeking to hamstring the incoming President for months...
