There’s been a lot of rhetoric about how the “nuclear option” will change the Senate forever, which is supposed to be a bad thing. But folks who talk like this seem to identify the Senate entirely with inaction and verbosity. So for them, the consequences of the “nuclear option” should actually be good, because they might end up making the Senate even more frustratingly Senate-like. Consider this other Democratic threat from the New York Times: “Mr. Reid and Mr. Durbin said that if Republicans changed the filibuster rule, Democrats would hold the Senate to the letter of the rules on other matters, like forcing the reading of all legislation on the floor.”