Letter: Democrats gained weapon in arsenal with Supreme Court vote

I want to clarify something regarding “Senate GOP rewrites rulebook,” your lead story April 7. You forgot the other side of it.

Senate Democrats, at least the reasonable ones, have no objection to Judge Gorsuch on the Supreme Court.

No, what’s going on here is an old pratfall Democrats are very good at. They gain a weapon for their own arsenal with no loss of political capital (thanks in part to the fulsome cooperation of their brethren of the fourth estate). The Democrats forced the hand of the Republicans, not on the nomination, but on the filibuster procedure — because everybody on both sides of the aisle knows that with the current inept administration, in less than four years it’s a Democrat who will be doing the Supreme Court justice nominating, and she won’t have to worry about that nasty old 2/3-majority-to-override-a-filibuster thing.

Many Democrats up for re-election need this feather in their cap on the Gorsuch vote to appear bipartisan.

This is one of the oldest tricks in the Democrats’ playbook, a bedrock principle since the days of Tammany Hall: “I seen my opportunities, and I took ‘em.”

This story was originally published April 13, 2017 at 4:18 AM with the headline "Letter: Democrats gained weapon in arsenal with Supreme Court vote."