Since we’re all about gangs this week, please step into my TED talk about how the Gang of 14 was one of Democrats’ worst strategic mistakes of the past few decades.

The year is 2005. Republicans really, really want to go nuclear to confirm Bush’s judges. Like, really want to.

Bush, Cheney and Frist were all eager to go nuclear. The floor general for the fight was a young comer named Addison Mitch McConnell. In May, on the Senate floor, McConnell announced that the “Senate is prepared to restore the Senate’s traditions and precedents,” and go nuclear.

To lay the intellectual groundwork for the effort, former Baker counsel and all-around Senate guru Martin Gold penned a law review article dubbing it the “constitutional option.” It’s good! Makes a strong case the Framers would’ve opposed the filibuster 😊

Sorry I started that thread in a Lyft then got to where I was going 😂 ANYWAY, let’s continue

At issue were the nominations of a bunch of hyper-conservative Bush judicial nominees, like William Pryor and Janice Rogers Brown. Dems were using the filibuster to block them. If at this point you think to yourself, “huh they’re on the bench today,” you know where this is going.