BYRON YORK: Ugly Senate fight could await Obama’s attorney general nominee.

President Obama has a pretty obvious deadline for nominating a successor to departing Attorney General Eric Holder. If Democrats lose control of the Senate in November, they’ll still run things until newly-elected members arrive in January. So just to be safe, if the president wants guaranteed confirmation of a new attorney general, he’ll need to pick one soon. That way, even if Republicans win the Senate, and even if Obama’s choice is unpopular with the GOP, lame-duck Democrats will still be able to steamroll the opposition and confirm a new Attorney General.

But it could be very, very ugly.

The White House claims there is ample precedent for a lame-duck nomination. In fact, it’s more complicated than that.

There hasn’t been an attorney general nominated and confirmed in a lame-duck session since before the Civil War. So there’s not much in the way of direct precedent, at least in the last 150 years.

Particularly since Holder has been unprecedentedly partisan in his “scandal-goalie” role.