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Alec MacGillis at The New Republic on why nuking the filibuster is great. "The Senate Democrats’ 52-48 vote Thursday [to allow a simple majority vote on presidential appointments] was met with predictable laments about the resulting loss of bipartisan comity," MacGillis explains. "Such laments willfully overlook that we have long since entered an era of total partisan warfare that would be difficult to escalate any further – it’s as if a moral philosopher showed up at the Second Battle of the Marne in 1918 fretting about the use of automatic weapons." He insists, "bipartisan comity not only left the barn long ago; it had been tracked down and shot behind the woodpile." Maria Bustillos, a contributor to The New Yorker and The Awl, tweets, "really great, wide-ranging, thoughtful."
Greg Sargent at The Washington Post on the long road to filibuster reform. On Thursday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid "finally went nuclear and changed the rules by simple majority — after a years-long campaign in which [Sen. Jeff] Merkley and other Senate liberals were instrumental." Merkley told Sargent, “Neither a Democratic president or a Republican president should face this level of obstructionism in exercising their Constitutional responsibility. They have a right to get an up or down vote on staffing the administration and on judges." Merkley and other Senate liberals have been pushing reform since before Obama was elected. Sargent concludes, "Dem leaders had to be pushed to this point, but from the point of view of liberals, they did the right thing." Salon contributor David Dayen tweets, "@JeffMerkley victory lap."