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There really wasnt much that Democrats could do. Mitch controlled the agenda in the Senate at the time (and his friend Lindsey controlled the agenda in the Judiciary Committee). Every prior nominee, even the ones who were controversial, still got hearings and a vote, even if that vote failed. (The one exception might have been the absolute moron that GWB nominated, who was so clueless she failed the written questions* that the committee gave her, but I think she backed out after that so it never got a chance to progress).
The problem with Garland is that he was the compromise candidate. If Mitch let his nomination go to a vote, it would have passed. So he simply ignored it. The only person who might have been able to get around it was Graham, if he had progressed the nomination out of committee, but he didn't.
The Senate doesn't have any avenues to force a vote if the Leadership doesn't want that vote to happen.
Edit: found it
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_Miers_Supreme_Court_nomination
There was, they just chose not to use an anti-democratic loophole to do it. They took the high road by not using a recess appointment. Sure, that appointment would have only been temporary but it would have allowed some votes to get passed the 4/4 split at the time. It also would have been less of a campaign talking point for Trump to be able to appoint someone immediately (the temporary appointment would have been until 2018 I think??).
I don't know if they could have filibustered the vote on Trump's final pick during the election year. I'm not completely caught up on those rules.
You need a recess in order to make a recess appointment, and both houses of Congress often keep a few legislators around the Capitol just to pound the gavel so the Senate never actually goes into recess.
And in regards to judicial appointments, Harry Reid killed its use for judicial appointments when the Republicans in the minority during Obama's time in office filibustered everything. Reid kept it in place for SC justices, though. Mitch removed it for SC justices, too, when Democrats started making noise about filibustering Gorsuch.
And that's the weird thing about the Fillibuster. It institutes a 60 vote threshold to get most things done, but it was always just a Senate rule and Senate rules are set by a simple majority. It can go away tomorrow if 51 Senators agree to get rid of it.
I don't trust dems to not fuck this up. I can see them again trying to take the "high road"
And for getting fucked over by the Republicans, the Democrats decided to make this Republican the most ineffectual AG in fucking history, so desperate to avoid looking like he's making decisions for political reasons that he's practically blasting it from the rooftops that he was avoiding prosecuting Trump for political reasons.
This is literally proof in the pudding that Democrats are fucking weak willed pussies who keep giving into the same psycho fascist fucks who keep ostensibly fucking over the Democrats. The inability of the Democrats to choose their own fucking AG and not give Garland this fucking consolation prize is part and parcel to why our Democracy is falling apart and Trump has a chance to be elected again.
Garland waited TWO YEARS before starting an investigation into Trump.
We'll never know if that's true, they didn't try anything.