It is said that the filibuster — a procedural tool that blocks a vote — protects the minority from the tyranny of the majority. And Sanchez, a Democratic congresswoman from Orange County, knows what it’s like to be in the out-of-power minority, as she currently is in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, where majority rules.

“In the House of Representatives, I’ve seen what it is to have a lop-sided, winner take all system, and it hasn’t benefited Americans,” Sanchez said in an interview at the California Democratic Party Convention.

Reform efforts

The filibuster refers a long-standing Senate tradition. While it’s changed over the years, in modern times it usually means blocking the 60-vote threshold required to advance a bill.

There is also a standing filibuster — made popular in the 1939 movie “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” — where a Senator holds the floor as long as he or she is standing, thereby delaying action on a bill. The standing filibuster is rarely used nowadays though.

In 2013, then-Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., reduced the 60-vote threshold to a simple majority on most presidential nominations, excluding those for the Supreme Court.

Republicans in the House of Representatives, and a few in the Senate, have been calling for more filibuster changes as Senate Democrats have used the procedure to block legislation and gain leverage (the same thing Republicans did in the minority) — like forcing a budget deal at increased spending limits last year. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has so far been reluctant to change the rules further.

“When you’re in power in the Senate, you don’t much like the filibuster,” said Sanchez. “But when you’re out of power in the Senate, all of a sudden it’s your good friend.

Sanchez’s top opponent, Democrat Kamala Harris, California’s attorney general, has not responded to requests for comment.

History

It’s changed over the years. It was largely the standing filibuster before, where a senator could hold the floor as long as they could stand up, delaying a vote on a bill.

The longest standing filibuster was in 1957, when Strom Thurmond, a southern Democrat, held the floor for 24 hours and 18 minutes in opposition of the Civil Rights Act.

A few years ago, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, spoke for more than 21 hours straight. However, it technically wasn’t a filibuster because it didn’t delay a vote. Cruz had arranged an certain amount of time with Reid, and ended when he was supposed to.

Harris, California’s Democratic attorney general, is leading in polling, fundraising and name ID in the race to replace Sen. Barbara Boxer, who is retiring. But her inclusion on lists in publications like USA Today and the New York Times as a possible replacement to Antonin Scalia — the conservative Supreme Court justice who died over the weekend — is leaving observers in doubt.

“It would surprise me if she were very high up on the list,” said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a political scientist at the Sol Price School of Public Policy at the University of Southern California. “I just don’t think it makes sense at this point, particularly since she is the frontrunner for the Senate.”

Why Harris Doesn’t Make Sense

Harris has little incentive to accept a nomination if it were to be offered by President Barack Obama since the nominee is not likely to get confirmed.

The U.S. Senate has the Constitutional responsibility to advise and consent to Supreme Court justices and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., issued a statement within hours of Scalia’s death saying the Senate won’t confirm a replacement until after the November presidential election, leaving Obama with little leverage.

But Bebitch and others agree that if and when he nominates someone, it would make sense for the nominee to have already been confirmed by the Senate, like a federal judge, so that Democrats could say: “Look, you already voted for this person once.”

U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch — who Scotusblog argues is the most likely choice — also already survived a Senate confirmation. But neither Harris nor Lynch have judicial experience, which would likely be seized upon by opponents.

There’s no requirement that justices have judicial experience, but they usually do. With the exception of Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, the Senate hasn’t confirmed a nominee without judicial experience since the early 1970s.

“Her lack of judicial experience would give opponents an easy rationale for opposing her,” said John J. Pitney, Jr., a professor of American politics at Claremont McKenna College. “And by choosing a partisan political figure, Obama would enable opponents to accuse him of politicizing the court.”

Senate Race

It would be very difficult for someone to complete the tasks required of a Senate candidate while being subjected to a Senate confirmation process, so Harris would likely be forced to choose one or the other, and again, there’s little benefit to accepting the nomination in this instance. But just being mentioned helps her campaign, said Raphael Sonenshein, the executive director of the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at California State University Los Angeles.

“Getting on a list of 10 is always a plus for a candidate,” said Sonenshein.

But if she were to be nominated, and if she were to accept, it would likely throw the Senate race into turmoil, as Democratic candidates would rush in to challenge Rep. Loretta Sanchez, an Orange County Democrat, and two former CAGOP chairmen.

“There are only a few weeks until the filing deadline, and Democrats would be scrambling to find a better candidate than Loretta Sanchez,” said Pitney.

How This Plays Out In The Senate

Obama and Senate Democrats don’t have too many options if McConnell holds true to his word. Sooner or later, Obama will send a name to the Senate, and the Judiciary Committee will have to decide whether it’ll consider the nominee or refuse to play along.

Meanwhile, Senate Democrats would label McConnell and Republicans as obstructionists — in press conferences, in campaign ads and in floor speeches. With the balance of power in the Senate hanging precariously on the 2016 election, and with an open presidential election, this will be one of the most politicized issues going forward.

Since the Senate operates largely on unanimous consent, Democrats would likely object at most, if not all, turns, thereby “shutting down the Senate,” predicts Jim Manley, a former top advisor to Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada.

“The idea that a president with 11 months to go doesn’t have the right to nominate a replacement for a crucial Supreme Court seat is absolutely outrageous,” said Manley. “So I assume that the caucus will demand retaliation.”

U.S. Senator Harry Reid, D-Nev.

Physically injured and in his 75th year, Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has opted against seeking reelection in 2016. Victim of a debilitating self-inflicted injury involving an exercise band, the Congressional titan has not only cleared an unexpected path for a political shakeup in Nevada. He has also touched off a consequential political contrast between Democrats in the Silver State and the Golden State — and Republicans on either side of the state line.

With Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., also retiring, California Democrats face a much different path through 2016 than Nevada Democrats. California Republicans, meanwhile, also face a starkly different path than their Nevada compatriots. For that reason, members of both parties were likely to pay extra attention to events taking place in both states.

Feast and famine

CA Attorney General Kamala Harris

In California, Democrats have a deep bench and great resilience. Already, they have comfortably handled the impending loss over the next few election cycles of Sen. Boxer and Gov. Jerry Brown. With remarkable efficiency, leading Democrats waiting in the wings have sorted out their ambitions among themselves, preventing potentially divisive and draining primary-season conflicts. While Attorney General Kamala Harris laid swift claim to the race to replace Boxer, her presumptive rivals chose differently. Former L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa passed on challenging Harris, tacitly reserving the option to instead challenge Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, who announced his intention to run in Brown’s wake. Tom Steyer, meanwhile, a billionaire activist and prominent political funder, stepped away entirely from making any kind of campaign commitment of his own.

In Nevada, by contrast, Reid’s departure is set to leave a gaping hole. A Democratic candidate with Reid’s stature and popularity, who is capable of stepping into his seat, will not be as readily available. Though Democrats enjoy a substantial bench of potential candidates, Reid’s chosen favorite, former state Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto, likely will face a challenge from Dina Titus — the state’s lone Congressional Representative — that could upend Nevada Democrats’ complex political pecking order.

Given that Reid barely survived his last political campaign for re-election, Democrats now confront a problem unimaginable next door in California: who to succeed Reid in a state where, as the Los Angeles Times put it, the outgoing Senator “was indispensable in helping turn Nevada from a Republican stronghold into a competitive state that Democrat Barack Obama carried twice.”

Rare opportunities

Nevada Republicans, meanwhile, have still not recovered from Harry Reid’s 2010 victory over Sharron Angle, one of that year’s insurgent Tea Party candidates. State Republicans fretted than Angle’s relative inexperience and uncoached utterances cost her dearly. Many Democrats adopted the same view. In the end, Angle managed to net 45 percent of the vote, but a loss was a loss — one the Nevada GOP do not want to repeat.

This time around, with Reid out, the dynamic has changed radically. Once down and out, Nevada Republicans have suddenly found themselves in a position the envy of the California GOP. Golden State Republicans have no equivalent to Gov. Brian Sandoval, who has not announced any move to replace Reid but boasts a formidable base of built-in support.

“If Sandoval entered the Senate race,” the Times reported, “he would be a commanding front-runner. A former federal judge who stepped down to run for governor in 2010 — when he beat Reid’s son, Rory — he is enormously popular, having won reelection in November with nearly 70 percent support.”

If he runs, Sandoval could establish a model of great interest to the California GOP. Sandoval, seen as an idiosyncratic moderate, could notch a coveted win for centrist Republicans in a blue state. Although relatively unpopular with the national party’s East Coast conservatives, a presumptive victory in the Nevada senate race — during a presidential election year — would put pressure on California Republicans to field similar candidates in the big races coming their way in 2016 and 2018.

Pelosi told Charlie Rose of PBS last year that the law was the greatest thing since air conditioning, proving a lifesaver for “individual families, small businesses, corporate America, our economy, our federal budgets and local budgets.” She's repeated the claims that it's a money-saver for everyone in recent days.

And Pelosi has set the template for how CA Dems defend Obamacare. For three years, I've written critically about the dumb incentives in the Affordable Care Act, and for three years I've gotten nasty emails and phone calls that amount to, “You lost, get over it!” — emails that never even address the points that I made.

ACA has financial incentives for divorce and against marriage

Now the Obamacare rollout has arrived, and sticker shock has set in, and we're still seeing fresh surprises about the awful incentives in the 2010 law. This is from The Fiscal Times: