Harry Reid's Winning Hand on the Senate Filibuster : The New Yorker

Harry Reid's Winning Hand on the Senate Filibuster : The New Yorker

The deal that Reid made yesterday, with John McCain’s help, was actually pretty good. Reid’s big talk yielded big action. He gets confirmation votes on five of the seven nominees on the Democrats’ must-have list. Obama has to withdraw two of his N.L.R.B. picks, but the Republicans agreed to prompt confirmation votes on the replacements he chooses. And the Democrats made no promises about the future of the filibuster. If the Republicans revert to their routine of blocking votes on perfectly qualified Presidential appointments because they don’t like the laws that the appointees would carry out or the agencies they would run, the “nuclear option” remains “on the table.”