removed the requirement for 60 votes to end debate. Even under filibuster rules, once 60 votes were in place to end a filibuster, only a simple majority was needed for confirmation.

Now only a simple majority is needed to end debate.

because I remember Harry Reid removed this requirement for non- Supreme Court nominees?

it's always been a simple majority for a confirmation vote - the higher requirement was to actually get to the confirmation vote. Reid removed that requirement for other federal judges in 2013.

One Republican didn't vote

who is recovering from surgery.

and the vote taken on Friday would have occurred earlier and Gorsuch would have been
approved 54-45 a day or two earlier than today (it only takes a simple 51 vote majority
to approve a nominee, the 60 vote requirement was for ending a filibuster).

Since in the end the Democrats failed to stop Gorsuch and there will be no filibuster for
any future Republican Supreme Court nominees they only thing achieved really was to
get Republicans on record eliminating the filibuster for Supreme Court choices (until a
Democrat becomes president and has a Democratic Senate and also benefits from the
lack of a filibuster).

I've read some place that some years back Elizabeth Warren was against filibuster.

Perhaps this belongs to earlier time, when members of the senate followed some sort of decorum. But with Cruz and the turtle, this place really is a swamp.

(including filibusters for legislation) but ultimately failed to do so as even then majority leader Harry Reid didn't
support their effort. Reid ultimately became so frustrated with Republicans blocking Obama's appointees that
he used the "nuclear option" to eliminate filibusters for votes on presidential appointees.

It all seems like it was so simple! Democrats voted against cloture, so the Republicans just changed the rules, and that only required a majority? It seems anti-climactic to me. All these years we've been told how "sacred" the filibuster is, and how hard it would be to remove it, and then **poof** it was gone in a few minutes. Part of me is kinda happy that it's gone, and I almost wish that it was eliminated for legislation as well. Elections have consequences, and the victors deserve to have their policies put into place. Just think about what could have been accomplished during Obama's administration if that 60-vote threshold had been eliminated.

we've seen?

I'm not sure. I'd wager that your average Joe out there doesn't even think about the filibuster. All he knows is that Congress can't get anything done! What they did to Obama was almost enough for me to support ending it for legislation. I know that the Repubs would destroy us, but at least they couldn't hide behind it any longer. People would see what their policies are really capable of doing.

We were rightfully angry about Garland, but we cut off our nose to spite our face, as far as I'm concerned. Gorsuch was replacing Scalia (conservative for conservative) and there was little to lose in allowing him through. We have much more to lose next time, and our arsenel is now empty.

Trump (or Pence, if Trump is outsted) now has absolutely no barrier to nominating the most radical right-wing nutjob to the court to replace what is likely a liberal retirement in the future because all it requires to confirm the next justice is a simple majority.

Had we saved the filibuster, it might have moderated future Supreme Court selections. As long as a filibuster was an option, Trump (or his handlers) needed to nominate a facially reasonable enough candidate to ensure that Republicans would be willing to exercise the nuclear option to put that candidate on the bench. At least some Republican members of the Senate would have been reluctant to exercise the nuclear option for - say - a Steve Bannon, Robert Bork, or Harriet Miers. But since we lit the fuse by filibustering this time, bomb's all gone. We only had one. All it takes is 51 votes and we'll have a lifetime of the worst of the worst.

(We were never going to get a good choice by the filibuster - but it was pretty much the only tool we had to fight against the worst of the worst. Now it's gone, solely to please the base.

We were aimed to please the base, just as Republicans have been the party of NO to please its own.

I honestly think that it is time to have three parties. A moderate middle, Sanders supported on the left, the the teabaggers on the right. That is, if we want to ever be able to actually govern this country for the benefit of, well, the middle.

stockpile a bunch of dry powder? As easily as it fell the filibuster was no longer a bulwark against majority dominance. Better to go down swinging.

Gorsuch is, by any objective standard, qualified to be a Supreme Court Justice. He's gone to the right schools, he's clerked on the Supreme Court for two justices, he was easily confirmed as a Circuit Court judge. No sane Republican (and there are a few in the Senate) would take a stand against the rule change if that was the only way to move the Gorsuch nomination forward - it would be political suicide

Had Trump nominated Bannon, as an example, there are any number of Republicans who would have refused to change the rules to move Bannon forward - likely the same ones who signed the letter seeking to retain the filibuster for legislative purposes, or the ones who signaled they were unwilling to vote for the AHCA, for example.

But - now that the rules are changed there is no more filibuster, no vote to change the rules. That means Trump (or his handlesrs) will not hesitate to nominate someone who fits their wildest, craziest fantasy - a Bannon, or a Harriet Meirs, or a Robert Bork.

We should have saved the filibuster to use as a deterrent to moderate Trump's choice for a replacement for one of the more liberal justices. That fight will matter.

Instead, we just tossed it out of the window in a futile attempt to shoot down a nominee who isn't going to make a gnat's worth of difference on the court because he is replacing Scalia. This fight was purely for show.