The Washington Post reported here at the time:
The Senate voted 85 to 13 to confirm Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state, providing the most negative votes cast against a nominee for that post in 180 years.
Maybe if Dick and Dirty Harry had gotten their shit together last fall Loretta Lynch could already have been confirmed as the first African-American female Attorney General.
From the AP story here:
Lynch was nominated last fall and Democrats are growing increasingly agitated over the holdup in confirming her, although they were in control of the Senate for some of that time. "Loretta Lynch, the first African-American woman nominated to be attorney general, is asked to sit in the back of the bus when it comes to the Senate calendar," Durbin said. "That is unfair. It's unjust. It is beneath the decorum and dignity of the United States Senate."
It's not like Obama didn't have plenty of time to fill the position while Democrats still had control of the Senate. Eric Holder resigned in late September 2014, and Obama didn't nominate Lynch until after Democrats had taken a good thrashing at the polls on November 4th.
