Not really a victory

Look, I've been trying to see the positive side of the filibuster "compromise" but I've been uneasy about it from the moment we got the news of what it entails. Today I came upon an article by David Morris entitled, "The Filibuster Compromise: It's No Victory" and I have to say that I agree with him. Here are his conclusions:

The Democrats chose to make the fight on Bush's judicial nominees about saving the filibuster rather than stopping right-wing extremists from being given lifetime appointments to the federal bench. Indeed, in the last two weeks we heard nary a word about the deficiencies and the dangers of the nomination of the Gang of Three: Janice Rogers Brown, William Pryor and Priscilla Owen.

At stake, the Democratic Party encouraged us to believe, was not the future of the federal judiciary but the future of the Senate.
...
Minority Leader Harry Reid said he had 49 votes against changing the rules to eliminate the filibuster. If the Democratic Party hadn't blinked, could they have picked up two more moderate Republicans who were unwilling to see the very structure of the Senate shredded in order to pack the judiciary with extremists? We'll never know.

What if the Democrats had lost that vote? Were they then weaponless? Of course not. With unity comes power. They had threatened, vaguely, to "shut down the Senate" if the filibuster were eliminated. That was clearly within their capacity. Each Democratic Senator has at least an hour to speak on any amendment, any bill, any procedural call. That means 44 hours of every week could be spent on just a single motion.

But to shut down the Senate and gain the nation's support, the Democrats first must educate Americans that what they are fighting against are evil ends, not unfair means. The filibuster fight did not serve that educational purpose.

Only when the Democratic Party exhibits real backbone, only when it demonstrates that it is willing to take large individual and collective political risks, only when it is willing to do everything within its power to stop evil, only then will it rally the country to the task of stopping the nationwide lurch toward fanaticism.

I would so like the Democrats to manifest some fighting energy. But we're so caught up with making sure we appear civilized that we don't do what's necessary to combat the way the rabid right habitually takes us hostage. When are we going to start acting like the opposition party we are meant to be?