The president nominating someone and the Senate giving them a vote is normal enough. It was the situation in 2016 that was outrageous, not this - and 2016, in political terms, is ages ago. I just can't get all that upset about Republicans deciding to run with the big opportunity they've been given - what else were they gonna do? Though it would have been interesting to see whether Collins and Murkowski would've taken the same positions they've taken now if they were actually the deciding votes - since they aren't, they are at liberty to follow their more centrist and fair-minded conscience.

As I argued more at length in my post below, the real problem of the Dems / liberals isn't that they will soon have a SC minority, but that they need a SC majority/deadlock so badly. Conservatives haven't had a clear, unambiguous majority on the SC in many decades (even though there was a large majority of Republican-appointed justices for much of that time), it shouldn't be such a disaster that they will gain one now.

I don't think Feinstein is the biggest obstacle among Dem senators - Synema and especially Manchin are bigger hurdles. Though I don't believe either Biden or Feinstein will be persuaded, nor obviously the other two.