Democrats haven’t learned from Harry Reid’s mistakes

Former Sen. Harry Reid, DNev., will lie in state in the Capitol next week. Unlike Bob Dole, R-Kan., another Senate majority leader who recently died, no one is looking back on Reid’s tenure as a bygone era of comity. As even his admirers acknowledge, Reid was an unapologetic partisan.

But that partisanship backfired. Reid’s biggest legacy was the elimination of the judicial filibuster in the Senate, which ultimately resulted in today’s 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court. Now Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., is following in Reid’s footsteps — threatening to weaken or even eliminate the filibuster.

It seems Democrats have not learned from Reid’s mistakes. So, let’s review the history:

Reid laid the foundations for the Supreme Court’s conservative majority in 2001, when he launched a series of unprecedented filibusters against President George W. Bush’s appellate court nominees. But, at Reid’s direction, Senate Democrats blocked 10 Bush judicial choices, all of whom had majority support in the Senate.

Reid’s filibusters were so unprecedented that in 2005 the Republican majority briefly considered eliminating the judicial filibuster. Schumer said that doing so would be “doomsday for democracy.” But, as soon as Democrats took back control, Reid did exactly what Schumer had warned against. When Republicans followed the precedent Reid set, and filibustered some of President Barack Obama’s nominees, Reid eliminated the filibuster for all federal bench appointments except Supreme Court nominees.

The move allowed Democrats to fill the circuit courts with liberal judges. But Democrats paid a steep price. In 2014, Republicans retook the Senate. When Justice Antonin Scalia suddenly passed away in the last year of Obama’s presidency, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., blocked a vote on his nominee to replace Scalia, keeping the seat open for the next president to fill.

For Democrats, the history of the Senate’s judicial malfeasance begins here. But had it not been for Reid’s serial breaches of precedent, McConnell would never have had enough support in the GOP conference to block Merrick Garland’s nomination.

Yet Reid was undeterred. He was sure Hillary Clinton would win the presidency, and in October 2016 he boasted that the new Democratic majority would eliminate the filibuster for the Supreme Court, confirming Clinton’s nominees by simple majority vote.

Clinton didn’t win. President Donald Trump nominated the unassailable Neil Gorsuch to fill Scalia’s seat. When Democrats filibustered his nomination, it united reluctant Republicans behind expanding Reid’s elimination of the judicial filibuster to Supreme Court nominees. If they had not tried to block Gorsuch, the filibuster would still be in place today. And there is no chance McConnell would have would been able to muster enough Republican votes to eliminate it to confirm Brett Kavanaugh in 2018 or Amy Coney Barrett in 2020. Reid’s actions made their confirmations possible.

Now Schumer is pushing to end the filibuster for legislation. The only thing standing in his way is the foresight of two lonely, moderate Democrats — Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema — who recognize that Democrats will not hold the Senate forever and will regret eliminating the institutional guardrail that forces negotiation, moderation and compromise.

Democrats should think back on all the conservative policies they delayed and derailed in the minority thanks to the filibuster and then imagine all that and more being enacted when Republicans win back the House, the Senate and the presidency.

If Democrats like the Supreme Court Reid wrought them, they will love a filibuster-free, McConnell-led Senate.