White house under pressure

Democrats know that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is likely to respond to a filibuster of Neil Gorsuch's Supreme Court nomination by invoking the "nuclear option" and changing the way the Senate works forever.

They just don't care.

"The filibuster is such a silly, non-intuitive tactic that most people don't even believe it exists," Markos Moulitsas, founder of the liberal blog DailyKos.com, told CNN in an email.

Inside the Senate, some red-state Democrats and longtime institutionalists have fretted that mounting an all-out battle to stop Gorsuch will hurt the party's chances of winning future fights and further degrade the more deliberative chamber of Congress. The 'nuclear option' would lower the bar from 60 senators needed to break a filibuster to 51, and Republicans currently control the chamber with a 52-48 margin.

But off Capitol Hill, Democrats -- from Washington insiders to progressive activists across the country -- are sick of hearing about those precautions.

Fueled by the base's anti-Trump energy, Democrats across the spectrum don't want to hand Trump any easy victories. They are insisting on showing Republicans that blocking Merrick Garland's Supreme Court nomination in President Barack Obama's final year won't go without retaliation.
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