Filibuster reform might really, actually, finally be on the verge of happening in U.S. Senate

Great news from Greg Sar­gent:

With Sen­ate Repub­li­cans block­ing a third Oba­ma nom­i­na­tion to the pow­er­ful D.C. Cir­cuit Court of Appeals, a senior Sen­ate Demo­c­ra­t­ic lead­er­ship aide tells me Reid is now all but cer­tain to move to change the Sen­ate rules by sim­ple major­i­ty — doing away with the fil­i­buster on exec­u­tive and judi­cial nom­i­na­tions, with the excep­tion of the Supreme Court – as ear­ly as this week.

At a press­er today, Reid told reporters he was tak­ing anoth­er look at rules reform, but didn’t give a time­line. The senior lead­er­ship aide goes fur­ther, say­ing it’s hard to envi­sion cir­cum­stances under which Reid doesn’t act. “Reid has become per­son­al­ly invest­ed in the idea that Dems have no choice oth­er than to change the rules if the Sen­ate is going to remain a viable and func­tion­ing insti­tu­tion,” the aide says.

If this is true, then hal­lelu­jah. Democ­rats have tol­er­at­ed Repub­li­can obstruc­tion­ism and abuse of Sen­ate rules and pro­ce­dures for so long that many peo­ple have despaired of fil­i­buster reform ever becom­ing a reality.

But it appears that Har­ry Reid and Sen­ate Democ­rats may have final­ly, final­ly, final­ly had enough. In fil­i­bus­ter­ing Pres­i­dent Oba­ma’s high­ly qual­i­fied nom­i­nees to the Court of Appeals for the Dis­trict of Colum­bia Cir­cuit — for no rea­son oth­er than because they want the vacan­cies to go unfilled so the court leans ide­o­log­i­cal­ly to the right — Repub­li­cans have suc­ceed­ed in con­vinc­ing Demo­c­ra­t­ic sen­a­tors pre­vi­ous­ly opposed to vot­ing to change Sen­ate rules to curb fil­i­buster abuse to jump on the reform band­wag­on. Even long-serv­ing sen­a­tors like Dianne Fein­stein:

“I do now,” she told TPM in the Capi­tol. “It is uncon­scionable for a pres­i­dent not to be able to have his cab­i­net team, his sub-cab­i­net team, and not be able to appoint judges.”

“I’ve been very shocked by the way very qual­i­fied nom­i­nees, par­tic­u­lar­ly for the D.C. Cir­cuit, have been fil­i­bus­tered,” Fein­stein said.

And Patrick Leahy:

Sen­a­tor Patrick Leahy, the chair­man of the Sen­ate Judi­cia­ry Com­mit­tee, said yes­ter­day that he’d seen enough.

The fil­i­buster of Judge Wilkins, he said before it inevitably hap­pened, “will be a tip­ping point.”

“I fear that after tonight the talk about chang­ing the clo­ture rules for judi­cial nom­i­na­tions will no longer be just talk,” Sen. Leahy said. “There will be action.”

Fein­stein and Leahy’s will­ing­ness to change Sen­ate rules is huge. They’re among the most senior mem­bers of the cau­cus, and have in the past expressed strong reluc­tance to pur­sue what’s alter­nate­ly been called the nuclear option and the con­sti­tu­tion­al option. Bar­bara Box­er is on board too:

“I am very open to chang­ing the rules for nom­i­nees,” Sen. Bar­bara Box­er (D‑Calif.) told The Huff­in­g­ton Post. “I was not before, because I felt we could work with them. But it’s got­ten to an extreme sit­u­a­tion where real­ly qual­i­fied peo­ple can’t get an up-or-down vote.”

Extreme, indeed. These days, Repub­li­cans abuse the fil­i­buster in a very robot­ic way, to block any­thing and every­thing. Nom­i­nees. Leg­is­la­tion. Amend­ments to bills.

Michi­gan’s Carl Levin, among the biggest hold­outs to fil­i­buster reform, says he sup­ports chang­ing the rules, but only through a super­ma­jor­i­ty vote, as opposed to a major­i­ty vote. But that’s not an option.

If the rules are to be changed, it will have to be by major­i­ty vote.

The Demo­c­ra­t­ic cau­cus con­sists of fifty-three sen­a­tors plus the two inde­pen­dents who cau­cus with Democ­rats (Angus King and Bernie Sanders). King and Sanders are known to be sup­port­ive of fil­i­buster reform, so aside from los­ing Levin, Reid could prob­a­bly afford to lose four oth­er Demo­c­ra­t­ic sen­a­tors and still have the votes to change Sen­ate rules. Of the Pacif­ic North­west del­e­ga­tion, Jeff Merkley is per­haps the most sup­port­ive of fil­i­buster reform, while Max Bau­cus is the most lukewarm.

NPI ful­ly sup­ports a major­i­ty vote in the Unit­ed States Sen­ate to end Repub­li­cans’ out­ra­geous abuse of the fil­i­buster. There is no rea­son not to make the change. If Repub­li­cans ever get the White House and the Sen­ate back, they won’t hes­i­tate to change the rules them­selves to over­come Demo­c­ra­t­ic fil­i­busters of nom­i­nees. Democ­rats should go ahead and change Sen­ate rules so Con­gress’ grid­locked upper cham­ber can begin oper­at­ing demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly, at least some of the time.