So Long, Filibuster

Well, I was hoping that a couple of Republican Senators might have the guts to vote against ending the filibuster of Supreme Court nominees, but nope. Okay. I'm not going to spend time on that, except to share this from writer Alexandra Erin from Twitter.

Reasons I'm not covering the Senate confirmation of Gorsuch as it happens: the breaking news is exactly what was obviously going to happen.

I will say: everyone who thinks the Democrats are foolish for "throwing away" the filibuster is naive and confused. The idea that they could have "saved it for when it would make a difference" presumes that day would somehow come.

"They'll miss it when it's gone!" Nope. It was already gone, at least for them. The Democrats forced the GOP to end the pretense.

[Harry] Reid didn't go nuclear on the GOP's filibuster of sub-supreme court appointments until they had stonewalled HUNDREDS of President Obama's. But the GOP, who had openly planned to prevent any Clinton SCOTUS pick from being seated for her entire term, nuked after one block. They would have nuked *any* SCOTUS block.

As a party, they don't recognize the Democratic Party has any right to govern. At all.

This is why they're fine with voter suppression and gerrymandering and no worse than lukewarm on Russian collusion and treason. It's no good (in swaying them) to point out their hypocrisy on Garland vs. Gorsuch because they literally do not care.

The goal, as articulated by Grover Norquist during the Gingrich "revolution," is to achieve permanent power, to be the only legitimate party. They do this by winning through any means available, and when they lose, obstructing through any means available.

There's not some fabled SCOTUS pick that might come up in the future that McConnell would have suffered the Democratic Senators to block. So now the farce is ended. The only party that would actually be allowed by the GOP to use this filibuster no longer has it.

We're going to have to fight like heck to win a Senate majority in 2018. We have more to lose than they do. In 2018, Democrats have 23 seats up for election in the Senate. GOP has 9. Remember this day next year. We have to fight.

At the same time, their majority is super slim (I think they have 52 seats right now), so it's totally doable. We just have to have people who will vote Democratic way more engaged in the midterms than usually happens. And that looks good so far.

We need the biggest turnout in 2018 that's possible, we need it to be bigger than imaginable. We need to be sure the Republican majority will fall in 2018, not because it *must* fall, but because WE THE PEOPLE ARE TAKING IT DOWN.

Gorsuch is going to be confirmed tomorrow. That's going to happen. A 30+ year lasting blow to the integrity of our highest court. So the next step is damage mitigation. Draw the line and say "This far, and no farther." And that means taking back the Senate.