Senate Democrats Regret Reid’s Nuclear Option Power Play

Senate Democrats are eager to make Donald Trump pay a political price for nominating staunch conservatives to fill out his Cabinet, hoping to exact revenge for the GOP’s stubborn opposition to President Barack Obama’s nominees.

But there is little they can do about it — and some top Democrats are now coming to regret it.

That’s because Senate Democrats muscled through an unprecedented rules change in 2013 to weaken the power of the minority party to filibuster Cabinet-level appointees and most judicial nominees, now setting the threshold at 51 votes — rather than 60 — to overcome tactics aimed at derailing nominations.

With the Senate GOP poised to hold 52 seats next Congress, some Democrats now say they should have thought twice before making the rules change — known on Capitol Hill as the “nuclear option.”

“I do regret that,” said Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware, a Democrat who voted for the rules change three years ago. “I frankly think many of us will regret that in this Congress because it would have been a terrific speed bump, potential emergency break, to have in our system to slow down nominees.”

. . . .  Some Democrats realize they’ve made life harder for themselves.

“In specific circumstances, we may regret that we can’t block a nomination,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Connecticut. “But I think that the American people want action, and they want the process to work. And they want the folks whom they have elected to actually do the job and get stuff done.”

One person who seems to be having buyer’s remorse over the change in filibuster rules: Sen. Chuck Schumer, the incoming Democratic leader. Schumer told The Washington Post last month that he privately lobbied Senate Democrats in 2013 to maintain the 60-vote threshold for Cabinet-level nominees, but: “I didn’t prevail.”