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This post was originally posted at The New Democrat on Blogger

As I said yesterday Senate Democrats essentially had no choice, but to do this because of how Senate Republicans have changed the rules in how the Senate filibuster was used. By saying, “even though we are the opposition and minority party in the United States and only have forty-five members of the Senate, we get to decide when the President of the United States that our party has now lost to twice both in Electoral College landslides and lost the Senate elections as well, we’ll get to decide when an if President Obama will get to make appointments to either his administration or the courts. Based on whether we believe those offices should exist. And whether or not we believe that office needs to be filled right now.

Instead of Senate Republicans blocking people based on whether they are qualified or not. Which has been the tradition of whether or not presidential appointments should be blocked or not. Again Leader Reid was forced to do this, but Senate Democrats will pay a price for this. The next time there is a Republican president and Republican Senate at the same time and with the state of the Republican Party, that could be a while, but stranger things have happened, like Senate Republicans picking up eleven seats in 1980 to give Senate Republicans the majority in the next Congress starting in 1981 to go with a Conservative Republican President in Ronald Reagan.