One thing I love about being a progressive is that in the longer term, we always win. Conservatives can only delay their imminent defeats. Take the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2009 for example. Conservatives in the Senate delayed Civil Rights and Health Care Reform for about thirty years, despite the House and the White House generally supporting it. Eventually though, the Senate’s filibuster couldn’t delay the bill any longer.
If we fix the Senate, progress will speed up dramatically. When us Democrats had the trifecta in 2009-2011, the Senate was the only obstacle to progressive bills. The repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, Health Care Reform, Wall Street Reform, the Stimulus, and a Food Safety bill were all significantly delayed or water-downed in the Senate during 2009-2011. Meanwhile the Public Option, Cap and Trade, the DREAM act, the Disclose Act, and the expiration of the Bush Tax Cuts for the wealthy were all killed in the Senate. All of these bills had support from the White House, the House of Representatives, and the needed 50 US senators. Also numerous well-qualified federal nominees like Goodwin Liu, Elizabeth Warren and treaties like Copenhagen and START were either stopped from confirmation or delayed for way too long. Some might argue that we need the filibuster as a safeguard against a possible Republican trifecta. But the truth is liberal Senators can’t use the filibuster, at least that is successfully. Conservative Senators have “successfully” filibustered (in other words: stopped the bill from reaching the floor) for about a century now. Liberals almost never successfully filibuster. For instance, look at all the controversial bills passed during the Bush Administration, none of them got to 60 votes. One of the most controversial laws, the 2003 Bush Tax Cuts, was passed through Cheney’s tie-breaking vote! The liberals' attempt to filibuster some of the extreme Bush judicial nominees largely failed because of the “Gang of 14”. If you compare that to some of the most “controversial” bills during the Obama administration, you see that almost all of the laws (e.g. Health Care Reform and the Stimulus) passed with sixty or more votes.
The Senate used to be very respected and prestigious body. After the Civil War, it has turned into a corrupt block of progress. Conservatives (in particular southern conservatives) abused "unlimited debate" terribly. They were masters at using parliamentary tricks to bring the whole Senate to a stop. Their power declined substantially after the requirement to sustain a filibuster was increased to 41 (originally was 34) in 1976. But in response they just use the filibuster to hold non-controversial bills hostage in exchange for not voting on somewhat controversial bills (see: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...). Republicans recently broke the record of filibusters used. Thus progressives alike, should applaud Majority Leader Reid for taking a great step forward by changing the Senate rules through a majority vote. If we can eliminate the filibuster and achieve the trifecta again, a tidal wave of progressive legislation will break through.