I’m of two minds about President Obama’s shout out for Senate rules reform in his State of the Union speech. I’m glad he brought attention to the need for reform, but mostly I’m very disappointed he proposed to eliminate the filibuster only for appointments and not everything else.

Senate Democrats had an opportunity to get together and make the Senate a working, majority-rule-based chamber. They could have recently used the “Constitutional Option” at the start of this new Congress to rewrite the Senate rules to either eliminate the filibuster outright or at least make staging a filibuster more difficult. Yet, due to a combination of a greedy refusal to give up any individual power, and a pitiful cowardice about a potential future in which the voters reject them, Senate Democrats collectively chose to throw away this opportunity. By doing nothing, they effectively voted to give Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell total veto power over everything.

I know this is often hard for professional politicians and political aides to comprehend, but regular Americans really don’t pay attention to abstract congressional maneuvers. If the Senate Democratic caucus thinks reforming Senate rules is a good thing that would eventually will lead to better policy outcomes, they should implement them. If they don’t think it will, they shouldn’t make the change. But what definitely shouldn’t be part of their decision making process is any concern that slightly modifying the rule could cause a broad political backlash. There simply won’t be any.

Even using just Quinnipiac’s numbers, I still find it impressive that there are almost as many people in the general public who support completely eliminating the filibuster and returning the Senate to majority rule as there are individuals who support the status quo. Totally ending the filibuster effectively lacks any even semi-prominent champion, outside a few bloggers.

While there seems to be some growing intellectual consensus in support of slightly reforming Senate rules to modestly reduce obstructionism, the idea of returning the Senate to its original intent of a majority rule chamber is still labeled too radical. In reality there is nothing radical about merely bringing back the original Senate rule that allows a simple majority to end debate. Actual radical reform would be completely eliminating the Senate and making the country a more egalitarian democracy, with the House as a unicameral legislature.

On Wednesday, the newly elected Republican majority took power in the House of Representatives. As part of the changeover, the House Republicans adopted a new set of rules based on the principle of majority rule by a majority vote. This is effectively the same thing each new House has done for decades. Amazingly, there was no media outrage about the Republicans again choosing to govern this legislative chamber on the basis of majority rule.

I fail to see how having a bill winning the support of a majority of members elected to the House, then having the same bill win only a majority votes from the elected members of the Senate, then having it not vetoed by the President and finally having it upheld as constitutional by the courts can be seen by anyone as a legislative steamroller.