Schumer's announcement

Bookworm is thinking about sociopaths today. Is Chuck Schumer a sociopath?

Honestly, after reading that Schumer announced that the Dems will filibuster Gorsuch, I don’t know if Schumer is an idiot or a sociopath with a grand game plan. It strikes me as insane for the Democrats to filibuster Gorsuch.

In a logical world, the filibuster triggers the nuclear option doing away with the filibuster entirely for Supreme Court nominees. It creates the risk that, if a certain hard-Left, very aged Supreme Court justice whom I shan’t name leaves the Court, a simple majority vote will get the most conservative judge in the world onto the Supreme Court. After all, the filibuster benefits conservatives more than Leftists, because Leftist always get on the Supreme Court.

One theory is that the Dems know the filibuster is dead anyway, so they need to grandstand today to pacify their rabid base. Another, more Machiavellian theory is that Blue state Dems will start a short and meaningless filibuster, while explicitly authorizing Red state Dems to vote for Gorsuch. That way, there’s no reason to blow-up the filibuster rule, but the Dems can still say to their base “at least we tried.” In that case, Schumer is a sociopath, not an idiot, because that would be quite a clever, albeit unprincipled approach.

Read more here.