Amid the now month-long Obamacare-Fail-gasm among the Right, the Media and the Punditocracy, normal perspective and scope on events unrelated to the ACA has been completely lost.
At first, this seemed to be a temporary lighting of hair, sky-is-falling crisis; but the Obamacare struggles have turned into catnip for the media and the Repubs are only too happy to keep the supply coming.
They've even gone so far as to back-burner their own tax reform agendas, Benghazi and other "scandals" in favor of beating the Obamacare drum as loud as possible. The media, for better or worse, has found itself unable to lead with any other story than breathlessly un-fact-checked stories of people being driven into the ground by the pain of Obamacare's jack-booted tyranny.
If you're the Dems, what can you do? You can try to change the narrative. You can apologize for the frustrations in hopes of disarming them. You can fact-check the stories in the hope that the shame of pushing bull-hockey will tame the media down.
But, what if none of that works?
In that case, why not use the cover of Obamacare noise to pass meaningful change that will take much of the wind out of one of the Republican's best tactics?
The so-called "Nuclear Option" to break the overly-abused Senate filibuster has been seen for the last few years almost as a political "third rail." It was thought that the party that broke the filibuster by changing the rules of the institution would suffer the fall-out of broken comity in the eyes of the public.
Yet, both parties agree that the abuses of the filibuster have become out of sync with the intentions of the Founders to insure that the Senate be able to operate effectively on a simple majority basis, leaving a 2/3 threshold only for the most severe of decisions.
So, why not choose this moment in time, with the media whipped to an unhealthy froth over Obamacare, to push the Nuclear Option?
The media will probably cover it as a page 2, maybe a page 1 (but for only a short time) until the GOP pushes its next wave attack on Obamacare.
And, more importantly, it forces the GOP to choose putting light on the Nuclear Option at the expense of feeding the media the next "Horrors of Obamacare" story .. or letting the Nuclear Option succeed without making the Dems pay for it politically at the gain of continuing their Obamacare bleating.
It's win-win for Reid and Co. The GOP won't let go of Obamacare for anything, because the Right thinks they smell blood in the water. The media is enthralled with the GOP narrative, facts or no. This refusal to talk about anything else provides a convenient smoke screen for the Dems to move change that would be in normal times a big deal.
The Nuclear Option will deliver a dam-busting deluge of meaningful appointees to the EPA, the bench and other agencies. What's more, the Senate will be able to pass these through at will, since the House is pushing almost zero legislation that would eat into the Senate's legislative calendar.
In short, it's savvy. Almost brilliant. A silver lining in the struggles of the Obamacare launch.
And if we arrive three months from now with the Obamacare struggles somewhat or completely forgotten, but with a functioning senate? That's almost too much to hope for, but it would represent 3rd dimensional chess.