Police Lt.: Well, Denham, the airplanes got him.
Denham: No, it wasn't the airplanes. It was beauty killed the beast (King Kong, 1933)
The filibuster will be eliminated this year. One, and possibly two, Justices will retire at the end of the term in June. There is a 100% guarantee that Republicans will filibuster anyone President Obama appoints, claiming approval should await the outcome of the November elections. The president has shown a belief, unsupported by events, to try to be acceptable at least to some Republicans so they will vote for him, in this case, his nominee.
They won't.
So, we will get a lukewarm nominee, and no Supreme Court Justice. The Republicans know theatre very well -- that situation will be perceived as the pathetic end of a dysfunctional government.
At that point, Democrats will truly be in a no-win position. If they eliminate the filibuster at that time, for that single purpose, Republicans will have a couple of months right before the election to denounce the 'trickery' to get 'activist' Justices seated. Nonetheless, they will have to eliminate the filibuster then because not to do so would alienate all their constituencies, and guarantee a shellacking in the 2010 elections.
More importantly, Democrats will be in a no-win position because the government will have been dysfunctional for another year and, despite it being Republicans' fault, the Democrats will be blamed because they are in control. And, they have 59 votes, more than Republicans ever had when they rammed through their agenda, and ran the country into the ground.
So, why not recognize the inevitable? Eliminate the filibuster right now. Then, the Republicans' pompous posturing will dissipate after a couple of months now, not near the election, and the Democrats will have a chance to do a "First Hundred Days" of year 2, to pass a robust agenda that will indeed have brought about change:
1)A jobs bill that actually creates jobs;
2) Approve all the president's appointments, together, one vote.
3)A financial reform bill that incorporates Elizabeth Warren's consumer protection agency and (my hope) reinstitution of Glass-Steagall.
4)Healthcare reform incorporating Joe Lieberman's former love, buy-in to medicare for those 55 and older; and a public option; and a combination of taxing high-end plans + a surtax on the wealthy (House + Senate version).
5)Student loan reform
6)Energy tax and rebate (Senator Cantwell's proposal).
While the Republicans bellyache about being steamrollered, Democrats can pass the agenda for which the nation voted in 2008, but soured on because of the dithering and dealmaking the existence of the filibuster created. Without the filibuster, no one would have had to talk to Joe Lieberman or Blanche Lincoln or Ben Nelson. (And, since no one would have had to talk to them, I bet they would have been more supportive!)
Without a filibuster, when the summer arrives, and the 1-2 Justices announce their retirements, the president can nominate really good people to the bench. One might suspect that the caliber of those people would be significantly higher than whom he might choose in the vain attempt to get Republican support.
Today, the world is disintegrating. Republicans fear the president's success, both at home and abroad. So does al-Qaeda and Ahmadinejad. They are all reveling in his troubles, because his capacity to force change abroad is limited by his inability to do it at home.
I am late to the "end the filibuster" movement because I worry about what Bush et al. might have done if there were no filibuster then. Social security would have been privatized -- and decimated by the financial collapse. Stem cell research would have been totally outlawed (passed twice by the House).
But, I am willing to take those future chances, because the country and the world cannot await an even greater than 60-vote majority that Lyndon Johnson had in the 1960s that will never happen. Eliminating the filibuster means we have to deliver for the American people, and maintain constant vigilance against another radical rightwing takeover.
Although the president is not himself a "boomer," those who control the Congress are. Many of them had their hopes and dreams for a better America, and a safer and more just world, dashed when Robert Kennedy was assassinated. It was then hijacked by George W Bush.
This is their last chance. It starts with eliminating the filibuster.
Now.