Son of a Bitch!

I am not surprised that Republicans pulled the trigger on the nuclear option, but I am surprised that the Democratic caucus actually held together to sustain a filibuster.

I was wrong in my assessment of the Democratic caucus in the Senate,and (for once) they exceeded my (admittedly low) expectations:

Senators voted on Thursday to advance Judge Neil Gorsuch’s nomination to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, setting up a final confirmation vote on Friday.

By a vote of to 55 to 45, all Republicans and three Democrats voted to proceed to final debate on the nomination of Gorsuch, 49, a Denver-based judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit. If confirmed, Gorsuch would replace the late Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, who died unexpectedly last year, sparking a more than year-long feud among senators about the future makeup of the high court.

Gorsuch’s nomination advanced shortly after Republicans successfully voted to approve what is known as the “nuclear option,” changing Senate rules to allow the confirmation of Gorsuch and all other Supreme Court nominees by a simple-majority vote.

The long-anticipated change came after Democrats earlier blocked attempts to advance Gorsuch’s nomination. The change now means that all presidential nominees for executive branch positions and federal courts need only a simple-majority vote to be confirmed by senators.

But the change is also likely to make an already bitterly divided Senate even more partisan, with several senators warning in recent days that ending filibusters of presidential nominees could lead to the end of filibusters on legislation — effectively ending the Senate’s role as a slower, more deliberative legislative body.

First, the filibuster is, and always has been, an accident, and was never intended to be routine.

Secondly, the Senate is not a great deliberative body, it is a Petri dish for narcissistic sociopaths.

In the short term, the winners are the Republicans, and the losers are the American people, who will be subject to the Republican "ideas", and the Democrats.

In the long term, the winners will be the Democratic Party, who can enact policies without watering them down to meaninglessness, and the American people, who can benefit  from those policies.

The long term losers are the Republicans, who will find it harder to obstruct, conservative Democrats, who can no longer use the filibuster as an excuse to water down policies to their base.

All in all, I think that this turned out as well as can be expected.

I would suggest that people remember the 4 disloyal Democrats, Donnelly, Heitkamp, Manchin, and Bennet.

These political careers need to be ended.