An email: “The gap in your argument is what happens to (a) the current appellate court nominees being filibustered, and (b) future nominees who are filibustered. You can argue that once a filibuster is broken on the Court that it’ll go away for every lower court judge, or you can argue that Dems won’t add anybody to the current tally, or you can argue that we can tolerate lower court filibusters. . . . I look forward to your follow-on post . . .”

The emailer is quite correct to identify that gap in my argument. I would fill it in two of the ways he suggests. I do think that a Democratic defeat on a high-profile filibuster would tend to limit their willingness to use filibusters in later battles over appeals-court nominees. I also don’t care as much about the appeals-court nominations as I do about Supreme Court nominations. And to the extent that I do care about the appeals-court nominations, it is in large part (though not exclusively) because of their effect on the Supreme Court fights to come.