Democrats Give Up 2014 With the Filibuster

I'm not going to insult your intelligence by pretending there's a right and a wrong side in the just-concluded battle over the filibuster. At this point, arguments about the justice of the filibuster are entirely instrumental: To know what someone is going to write, you need only know which party they supported in the last election. Let us just note that this has been a long time coming, and at this point it was probably inevitable from one side or another; the grievances are long and deep, and both sides have joyously fed the wild tide of ill will that has swept the capital over the last few decades.

What's left to discuss is what this means. In the short term, it obviously means that President Barack Obama can more easily fire people and confirm replacements, and that the D.C. circuit court, which hears regulatory appeals, is going to be a lot more liberal-leaning in the future. In the medium term -- if you think, as I do, that Republicans have a pretty good shot of taking the Senate and White House by 2017 -- we can expect Republicans to do away with the rest of the filibuster, accompanied by the writhings and groans and outraged cries of many now celebrating Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's courageous stand against minority obstructionism. In the long term, the Senate will be a more majoritarian body, for good and for ill; parties will enjoy new power when they are in the majority, and when they are not, they will bitterly lament the bygone respect for minority rights.