Due respect to Jonah and JPod, but the arithmetic that concerns me involves the dynamics within a set of 10, not 14 – which is to say, the nominees, not the centrists who have saved civilization as we know it.

POTUS nominated 10 well qualified people. The unprecedented filibusters the centrists have succeeded in preserving went on for so long that 3 of these pulled out entirely. Of the remaining 7, the centrists appear to have thrown 4 overboard. Now, maybe I’ll be wrong and it will turn out that 1 or 2 of these will get through (what would you rate the chances?). But for my money, it looks like at least 2 have been cast aside for sure, and it’s pretty craven of the memorandum of understanding not even to mention the other 2.

Taking the long view, the centrist moment has given POTUS a 30 percent success rate. This is not baseball – you gotta bat at least .750 in this league to make the cut. And even taking the first 3 out of the equation for argument’s sake (on the dubious ground that they decided to take themselves out of the running), the success rate is still below 50 percent with a slim hope of possibly edging slightly above that mark – which itself would be unprecedentedly poor.

To the contrary, if a rules-change had been approved, there is a good chance that at least 5 and maybe all 7 would have gotten through, perhaps some of the others could have been cajoled back into the progress, and – the rarely discussed but crucial benefit – good people who are currently unwilling to subject themselves, their families, and their successful professional lives to the no-end-in-sight scandal that this process has become might change their minds.

So, I don’t see how this is progress. And as far as “breaking the logjam” is concerned, that’s a pretty glass-half-full way of looking at a rout. I suppose if the centrists had deigned to let a single judge get through, that would have broken the logjam, too. Would that have been progress? And do you really think that by letting a conservative get through on a Monday the people controlling these filibusters deem themselves in any way bound by a precedent that they must honor on Tuesday?