True to form -- and God I love saying that in this context -- Reid spent the day leading the Democrats in the fight to defeat "the Nuclear Option". The entire caucus assembled to hear him give the Democratic response (watch it here), and they followed him to deliver a letter to Bill Frist. It was a powerful show of unity, and a warning that Democrats are unafraid to make a media circus of the issue.
If I were Frist, I'd be a bit concerned right now. As Luntz should have already alerted him, nothing called "the nuclear option" is going to sound like a good idea to Americans. The image that Republicans will detonate the Senate if Bush doesn't get every last one of his judges approved is a nasty one, which they'll find out as soon as they began talking about it on the shows and seeing their poll numbers plummet.
More to the point, I'd like to see Reid take a page out of Bob Dole's 1992 playbook and realize he's representing a majority. As many remember, Dole welcomed Clinton's election with a promise to represent the 57% (Bush+Perot vote) of folks who didn't vote for the winner. Reid has an even stronger case. Senate Democrats, despite being in the minority, were actually voted in by the majority. If you total the votes cast for all serving Senators in their most recent elections, you come out with 50.16% for Democrats and 49.84% for Republicans. That should be more than enough reason to demand that Bush and Frist cease attempting to steamroll the minority. If the American people had their way, we'd actually be the majority. We shouldn't concede that advantage simply because the place doesn't work democratically -- after all, isn't Bush's second term all about democracy promotion?