So, uhm . . . who actually won?

The summary:

In case you've been changing out the canaries at the bottom of a mine shaft for the last couple of days, here's what happened with the "nuclear option" gambit in the Senate.

So what's the upshot? Well, like so many things in life, where you stand depends on where you sit:

The Left:

They're alternating among being mad that the Repubs didn't get screwed right to the wall, cautiously hopeful, and worried that they've been suckered. Senator Russ Feingold spelled out the worst-case analysis. I'm not absolutely, completely sure he's right, but I'm glad to see him finally gaining a healthy distrust of the Bush administration after believing for four years that principle required him to vote for some of their worst nominees (beginning with Ashcroft).

The Right:

Unlike the Left, the Right is just mad. Period. The Christian Right theocrats who forced Frist into this showdown are mad. The wacko fringe groups are so mad they're abusing Disney metaphors. And even what we might call the right-wing Man on the Street is mad.

Despite my reservations about this outcome--you'll see more, below--anything that makes these people this mad can't be a wholly bad thing.

The Constitutionalists:

Those like Senator Robert Byrd, who believed that the integrity of the advise-and-consent process as well as the system of checks and balances prescribed by the Constitution trumped other considerations, claimed this as a victory. It appears that not a lot of people showed up at their celebration, though.

The Pragmatists:

The pragmatic left declared victory, in a better-than-a-sharp- stick-in-the-eye kind of way

In fact, one Talking Points Memo reader suggests that the 5th District in New Orleans is already in such sorry shape that adding Priscilla Owen to the mix might not make things noticeably different anyway.

The Oregon Angle:

Since the nuclear option was headed off, Gordon Smith is spared the unpleasantness of defying most Oregonians by siding on record with the kill-the-filibuster Republicans.

For now.

The Bottom Line:

It all depends on what the meaning of what "extraordinary" is. Any sensible person would think that proposing to give Priscilla Owen, William Pryor, and Janice Rogers Brown life tenure on the federal bench was pretty damned extraordinary in itself.

While the Senate GOP may have had its nose smacked with the rolled-up newspaper of compromise, the fact remains that Bush didn't invest much of his own personal political capital in this fight, and his approach to not getting his way is traditionally to twist more arms and dare anyone to stop him. (Otherwise he wouldn't have resubmitted the same names that didn't make it through last session in the first place.)

Expect an "extraordinary" nomination for the first Supreme Court vacancy.

And in The Nation, David Corn makes a convincing (and so, in many ways, depressing) case that the Democrats' ability to use the filibuster is now in the hands of the seven "moderate" Republicans in the deal-brokering group, handing them effective veto power over the Dems' minority rights.

Update:

In the time it took me to get the above drafted, Frist has begun what appears to be a clear effort to undercut the deal by calling for an end of debate on the nomination of William Myers to the 9th Circuit, one of the four remaining retreads (not covered by the compromise) whose re-submission by Bush triggered this whole debacle. The Knight-Ridder analysis predicted this might happen "as soon as next month," but it looks like he couldn't even wait 24 hours to return to power-grabbing business-as-usual.