Landrieu decides and benefits politically -- for now

She decided – Sen. Mary Landrieu helped broker the deal that ended up giving more of a victory to the Republicans in the Senate and the White House over judicial confirmations.

The deal carries an immediate promise to confirm three nominees to circuit courts of appeals but doesn’t address four others (with two previously made recess appointments and another withdrawn). Democrats beginning two years ago had taken the unprecedented step of a minority party filibustering appellate court nominees made by the majority party president.

Using its power as the majority, the Republicans could have changed Senate rules (which have been changed many times on this account) to require a simple majority rather than 60 votes to stop the dilatory tactic. But when seven GOP senators said they would not vote to change the rule, and seven Democrat senators said they would not vote to have a filibuster, this meant neither the Republicans could make the rule, nor the Democrats could launch a successful filibuster under the current rule.

Landrieu was one of those Democrats. She must have been praying for this deal to come about because otherwise she would have been in a very untenable political position. She could have stayed with the Democrat leadership, and been pilloried endlessly in the 2008 campaign. What would have been worse would be the deal failed, the rule gets changed, and then she gets forced to cast a vote against all the highly-qualified nominees (particularly regarding Janice Rogers Brown, betraying desires of many blacks in Louisiana). She would have to because then the hard left that has taken over the national Democrats would encourage their Louisianan minions to abandon Landrieu in the campaign which would give her no chance to win reelection.

Now, she can take some credit for this and cast symbolic votes against these nominees (her position on Brown should be interesting), and then maybe defect on a couple, such as Michigan-based nominees being opposed by Democrat senators from those states simply because they object to the majority Republicans preventing confirmations of Clinton-era district court nominees (at lowest court levels, senators essentially can dictate to the president appointees to courts in their home states when they share the same party as the president). This enables her to throw red meat to the hard left on some nominees, but on others she can appeal to the Louisiana public by arguing she showed independence from the national party and voted for qualified nominees.

However, the main event looms – a Supreme Court nomination as early as this fall. The deal leaves open the possibility of Democrats' mounting a filibuster against judicial nominees "under extraordinary circumstances." Hopefully, the attendant publicity would make some of the seven “moderate” Democrats, including Landrieu, think twice about trying to filibuster that kind of nomination. No filibuster ever has been launched against such an appointment where the nominee had not some ethical cloud hanging over his head. So her participation in this matter may have delayed, but not permanently postponed, a political day of reckoning for her.