Show me in the Constitution where it says the Senate must hold hearings and schedule votes when it flies in the face of precedent? Your opinion of what the Senate's job is needs supporting material. The Constitution contradicts you.
That is a pretty empty argument. The constitution says very little about the government having to do anything. The constitution grants and assigns certain powers to certain branches of government. Sure, congress could refuse to confirm justices every again and the supreme court would cease to exist in a few decades, because nothing says they have to. I don't know how you can't see how silly of an argument you are making. Nothing says cops have to give you CPR if they find you having a heart attack, by your logic I guess you would be fine with them standing over you saying they don't have to help you.
There have been 29 times that a SCOTUS vacancy occurred in a presidential election year. That counts vacancies created by new seats on the Court, but not vacancies for which there was a nomination already pending when the year began, such as happened in 1835–36 and 1987–88.
The President made a nomination in all 29 cases! That's 22 presidents out of 44 (obviously some made multiple nominations in election years -- Washington made 3). Therefore, Trump would be breaking with precedent if he decided to not name a nominee.
As I have stated already, I have no problem with Trump nominating someone, it is his job to nominate people. He also wasn't the one that made the stupid argument in 2016. Besides that, I am glad you are suddenly so interested in Trump maintaining tradition.
Next, the Senate. The Constitution gives that majority the power to seat any nominee they want, and to BLOCK any nominee they want. Up until Harry Reid changed the rules, the Senate needed a super majority (60) to approve cloture, which allowed a confirmation vote to be taken. Basically a vote to hold the real vote. If the Dems had left that rule in place, they could have blocked the vote via a filibuster. Too bad for them, the rule change allows a cloture vote with a simple majority. Sucks to be so bent on immediate wins that you lose sight of the damage it can cause down the road when the power changes parties. 
Yup, they shot themselves in the foot there.
The norm in these cases strongly favored holding the seat open for the conflict between the two branches to be resolved by the presidential election. That is what Republicans did in 2016. [/u]
That is really just an empty excuse devised to hide the real position they are taking: "We are doing it because we have control and we can."
Presidential elections aren't supposed to resolve SCOTUS justice picks, that is just made up. Elected people are elected for a term, none of this BS about not doing their job because voters should get to choose. Voters chose when they elected the people for their term.
Finally, in the case where the President and Senate Majority are unified, election-year nominees get confirmed. That is the norm that applies this year. 19 times between 1796 and 1968, presidents have sought to fill a Supreme Court vacancy in a presidential-election year while their party controlled the Senate. 10 of those nominations came before the election; and 9 of the 10 were successful.
Of course you can make the case that it is "the norm" but there is absolutely no argument to be made that it should be the norm. Lots of things are normal that shouldn't be normal. Again, you really gotta come up with better arguments here.