While writing earlier on the “nuclear option” and the regrets that Democrats should be feeling now, I referred to a speech by former Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich. He spoke on November 21, 2013, hours after the Senate had already gone nuclear over his objections. You can watch the whole thing here — and this week, with Neil Gorsuch’s nomination coming to the floor, it’s really worth taking the 20 minutes to watch him deliver the whole thing.
Levin was truly a liberal senator, not some Democrat-in-name only, not known for being especially moderate, and not the sort of senator who was worried about primary challenges from his left. In this speech, he pulled no punches in castigating Republicans for filibustering three of President Obama’s circuit court judges at that time. But he nonetheless called the Democrats’ action a mistake, and laid out a grim vision of what was going to happen to Democratic priorities as a result of the choices they’d made that day.
Levin complained that by changing the Senate rules with only 51 votes, Harry Reid had opened the door to an endless stream of rule changes, many of which would work against Democrats and their political interests.
“We should have avoided the nuclear option,” he said. “We should have avoided violating our precedents. We should have avoided changing and creating a precedent, which can be used in the same way on legislation. It may give comfort to some today — ‘But this is only on judges, this is only on executive appointments.’ This precedent can equally apply to a majority that wants to change the rules relative to the legislative process.”
He concluded:
Madam President, those who have abused these rules — mainly on the other side of the aisle — whether they acknowledge it or not, are contributors to the loss of protections which we see today for the Senate minority. Given a tool of great power, requiring great responsibility, they have recklessly abused it. But now I am afraid that it won’t just be them that will pay the price.
In the short term, judges will be confirmed who should be confirmed. But when the precedent is set, the majority of this body can change the rules at will — which is what the majority did today — if it can be changed on judges or on other nominees, this precedent is going to be used, I fear, to change the rules on consideration of legislation. And down the road — we don’t know how far down the road; we never know that in a democracy — but, down the road, the hard-won protections and benefits for our people’s health and welfare will be lost.
