When they kick at your front door how you gonna come?

To elaborate on a point I made in passing below, I’m frankly puzzled about why Matt has switched sides on the merits of filibustering Alito, which remains the obviously correct option. I think both of the arguments he seems to be making are incorrect:

• The heart of Matt’s argument seems to be a claim that everyone Bush appoints will be equally bad. But that’s simply not true. I made the argument repeatedly with respect to Harriet Miers; it is possible that Bush will appoint somebody considerably less certain to be on the far right of the court across the board. Even with Roberts, there’s considerable uncertainty, and the Dems were right not to filibuster him. Alito, conversely, leaves no significant doubt. From a left-liberal (as opposed to left-communitarian, but I know Matt is with me in the former camp) perspective Alito is almost certainly worse than Scalia or Thomas, let alone O’Connor. If we’re not going to filibuster him, we might as well take the option off the table for Supreme Court nominees; I’m not sure what Matt is waiting for.

• On the question of political damage, judicial nominations have a vanishingly small effect on votes for the Senate, and ordinary people simply don’t care about legislative process issues. Moreover, to the extent that the issues matter it’s far from clear that a filibuster would be a net negative for Democrats. Alito is not terribly popular, and on the most important issue associated with the courts the Republican position is exceptionally unpopular.

Now, on the overall issue Matt is completely correct: we will have very bad judicial appointments until the Dems recapture the White House and the Senate. But aside from whatever remaining Naderite dead-enders are still out there, I don’t think this is in any dispute. Irrespective of that, you have to get the best outcome you can get within the available constraints, and especially with lifetime appointments to the nation’s highest court getting a less-bad option matters a lot.

…more from Atrios.