In Senate, what comes after the 'nuclear option'?

Democratic senators should have paid heed to Kenny Rogers when it came to the nomination of Neil Gorsuch. By ignoring The Gambler's advice ("You've got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em"), they inadvertently paved the way for the next Supreme Court nomination when, unlike what just occurred, the balance of power could really swing.

First things first: Merrick Garland was done wrong by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) and company. The idea that a president with a year left on the clock can't appoint a Supreme Court nominee is arbitrary, unprecedented, and obstructionist.

After all, if a president can't pick a justice in the seventh year of an eight-year term, what else can't he do? And why attach that limitation to the final year. Why not two years? Or more? Democrats were understandably irritated. Still, Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D., N.Y.) just led them off a cliff.

Under the old rules, supporters of a Supreme Court nominee needed to amass 60 votes to invoke cloture, or shut down a filibuster, and schedule an up-or-down vote. This time, Republicans, who hold a 52-seat majority, didn't have the 60 votes they needed for cloture. So, they instead changed the rules - just as McConnell said they would.

By invoking the so-called nuclear option, the GOP was able to end the filibuster with a simple majority. Democrats made a worthy point about the handling of Garland, but they should have folded before the GOP went to DEFCON 1.

And here is the Democratic dilemma: Liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is 84; swing vote Anthony Kennedy is 80; and liberal Stephen Breyer is 78. Should any of their seats require filling on the watch of President Trump, he'll get to replace a liberal or moderate with a conservative and that's when the balance of power could really shift. It was far easier for the GOP to change the rules when it was arguably just a conservative replacing a conservative than it might have been when a liberal would be replaced by another conservative selection that Trump pulls from the list supplied by the Federalist Society.

Former Sen. Alan Simpson knows a thing or two about Supreme Court confirmations, and he told me this analysis was spot-on.

"I think I'd give you an A, no question, as an old professor," said the Wyoming Republican who served on the Judiciary Committee during his 18 years in the Senate.

"You've described it well, but let me tell you it really isn't the nuclear option," Simpson said. "It's a sparrow-belch option. They never used that before. Look at Clarence Thomas. He was confirmed by a vote of 52-48. We never heard of a filibuster. I, in my 18 years put seven of the nine men and women on the court. I didn't care what party they were in or their ideological efforts. It was: Are they good lawyers? Do they have a judicial temperament? Are they smart? And I voted for seven of the nine before I left the shop down there. This is madness, and guess what? Talk about - what's that wonderful phrase? - hoist with his own petard, which means blown up by your own bomb, and that's Schumer. . . . When he got into the leadership, he somehow got twisted up with the Elizabeth Warren wing and you don't want to get over there too far, and he's being pushed, pushed, pushed."

Sen. Chris Coons (D., Del.) interned for Joe Biden in 1991, when the latter was the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Today, Coons holds what was once Biden's seat. He acknowledged that mine was the "best argument for having held off on a filibuster this time." But that is not how he voted.

"Sen. Schumer decided, largely based on the amount of intensity among the Democratic Party on the very deep, very hard feelings about how Merrick Garland was mistreated, to go ahead and force a filibuster on this one, and he got support from I think all but four members of the Democratic caucus for that, including me," Coons said. "And that's in no small part because we looked at the treatment of Merrick Garland and said that was a partisan filibuster, seven months of denying him a hearing or a vote, and that set up this conflict.

"The partisan politics around the Supreme Court have steadily gotten sharper and sharper and more divided over 25 years. I was an intern on the Senate Judiciary Committee for then-Chairman Biden back when I was in law school in 1991, and there was a fair amount of hard feelings at that point not long after the [Robert] Bork and Thomas hearings. I do think that the next steps forward may be even worse."

Now, Coons worries that the next step will be the legislative filibuster, and he is working with Sen. Susan Collins (R., Maine) to ensure that the legislative filibuster survives.

"We got a letter circulated and signed by 61 senators on Friday before we left saying we are pledged to defend the legislative filibuster," Coons said. "That's the only thing that makes us different from the House at this point. That's the only thing left between us and just raw majority rule. And what's striking to me is that at least two dozen senators refused to sign it."

In the meantime, he worries that it could take a foreign-policy crisis with Syria or North Korea to bring about bipartisanship.

"I've said to a couple of friends, maybe what'll come out of this is that we will be able to work together and make the Senate great again."

Shame it might have to take a crisis to bring that about.

Michael Smerconish can be heard 9 a.m. to noon on SiriusXM's POTUS Channel 124. He hosts "Smerconish" at 9 a.m. Saturdays on CNN.