SCOTUS (Page 2)

Filibusters were already prevented on other federal courts.

Yep.  The Democrats, who will surely be feigning outrage later this week, used the "nuclear option" a few years ago so that they could easily confirm Obama's executive and judicial nominees.  The only reason they didn't expand it to the SCOTUS nominees, is because the Republicans did not filibuster Obama's SCOTUS nominees. 

Didn't realize that.  Thanks

The change in the lower courts was 2013, but the whole thing goes back maybe 10 years before that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gang_of_14

Just saw this one.  hah

Did it involve a little Cinderella story?  ;-) 

Ha, nice quote.  "We can do that... we don't even have to have a reason".

Just my thoughts.

So here's the thing.  This is the first time in a bazillion years (or ever, can't remember) that anyone has attempted to filibuster a supreme court nominee.  So the fact that it takes 60 votes to block a filibuster is kind of irrelevant because nobody's ever even tried to filibuster a nominee.
Whoever has simple majority of the Senate is who decides if a nominee gets through with or without the nuclear option and it always has been.

Senators in the past have recognized this, so they just go along and let the votes happen in the Senate.  obviously the Republicans didn't like Sotomayor or Kagan, but they let it come to a vote because they couldn't stop it anyways.

So the fear of this causing some huge precedent shift in the future is kind of silly because it still doesn't change anything no matter who gets nominated.  I think the bigger precedent is what happened last year with Merrick Garland.  In that situation you had a majority Republican Senate who would not approve the nominee of the President.  They stopped it at the committee, procedurally, but I think we can all agree he would have failed to pass the full senate as well.  So lets say the roles are reversed and Trump had a majority Democrat Senate.  Anyone other than a strong liberal would fail to get through the senate no matter what their qualifications.  To me this seems like a monumental power shift to the Senate for the Supreme court.  Essentially whatever party controls the Senate from this point forward is the direction the Supreme court will go regardless of President. 

My understanding is that there's a new set of cases that hit the Supreme Court on Monday, so if they can delay him even through the weekend then he won't be able to be a part of those cases.  Then they'd be ruled on with the 4-4 court where all lower court rulings stand with a tie and several lower courts are liberal majority.  This would be more liberal than a 5-4 conservative majority court that would rule on all of them. 

As with many things in Congress it's more about their individual constituents than anything else.  In a hypothetical situation with the numbers flipped, t'd be like a Republican filibustering to prevent some gun control law.  Maybe it passes anyhow but when you're running for office again, you don't have to defend yourself against attacks from a challenger on that topic.