Disagree. Trump and the country won bigly today. Trump can point to the fulfillment of a major campaign promise to appoint an originalist to SCOTUS to replace Scalia. The Dems died on Mt. Gorsuch this afternoon further infuriating their base who will become more desperate and extreme.
The next appointment to SCOTUS will be decided on a majority vote. Let's hope that Trump has some more opportunities to fill vacant SCOTUS positions.
I agree with that, my point about "not a big deal" was that today's vote didn't change anything. There is no Senate practice of minority veto of SCOTUS nominees, never was. The DEMs tried to implement that (in typical hypocritical fashion, after receding from the dysfunctional system they established, that allowed minority veto), and lost.
As Cornyn pointed out, the practice of minority veto of nominees is not some "old senate tradition." It is a Senate dysfunction, started by the DEMs in 2001. Reid abandoning that in 2013 was a bigger deal than today's vote.
Now, that's me taking a longer term view of Senate practice. I have no problem if the GOP spins this up to be the biggest, most monumental thing the GOP has ever done. And I don't mean to imply that success here is no big deal, because the alternative was failure, and that failure would have been a disaster for Trump, for the GOP, and in the long run, for the country.
kabar is right. Today is a BIG day. A truly historic vote.