I don’t know what I expected. Maybe the phrase “nuclear option” conjured some cataclysmic moment on the Senate floor when Harry Reid presses a cartoonish red button and Mitch McConnell, tie askew and hair mussed, shouts an anguished “Noooooo” while lunging to stop him.
But there’s no such dramatics on the Senate floor. Not even anyone raising a cane.
Instead, through a series of votes the Senate rules are being changed, one aye (or nay) at a time. Real anger among Republicans, don’t get me wrong. Real historic changes to be sure.
But the threat of the filibuster changes, made endlessly for years, carried such implications of high drama and momentousness, that the rather mundane way it actually happens seems almost anticlimactic.
It makes you wonder why it didn’t happen sooner.
