Words cannot express how disgusted I am with Harry Reid, Carl Levin, Pat Leahy, Dianne Feinstein, Max Baucus and Mark Pryor. Because of their fear that someday their party might be in the minority, they watered down proposed filibuster reform to virtually nothing.

The changes will surely disappoint reformers who were pushing for more sweeping revisions to rein in the filibuster, once a rarely used legislative tool. It will not include, for instance, a requirement that senators be present on the Senate floor when they want to block a bill from coming to a vote, continuing the practice of allowing them to filibuster in absentia. And opponents would still have the opportunity to filibuster a final vote on any legislation, thwarting its passage without 60 votes.

So whoop-di-damned-do. Not much has changed. The minority gets an opportunity to offer two amendments to bills in exchange for it dropping its right to block the motion to proceed to the Senate floor. That sounds like a victory, but if either of those two amendments contains a poison pill which would destroy the primary bill’s intent then what good is that?

The old bulls resisted change and won. The only way to get past them is to elect more Democratic Senators who think differently.

Update: This HuffPo article indicates there was much less support for full-on reform than for the weak tea we got. It explains all the nuts and bolts of the deal.