Reviewing my Alito predictions

Seeing that Matthew Franck and Ed Whelan over at Bench Memos are reviewing their predictions on the Alito nomination made me remember that I made some, too., back in October. Seems a good time to review them.

Hearings will start in December, either Monday the 5th or Monday the 12th.

Got that wrong.

They'll last for 3 days, Dick Durbin will tell him that he wants to restrict freedom, Ted Kennedy will thunder questions and ignore answers. Alito will answer much the same way that Roberts did, demonstrating competence, intellectual capabilities, thoughtfulness, and a complete lack of anything that would make the vast majority of Americans think "monster!"

Right.

He'll make it out of committee on a party-line vote, before Christmas.

Got the time frame wrong, but otherwise, right.

He will be confirmed with fewer than 60 votes, but he will be confirmed, as they'll get 61-63 votes for cloture.

OK, so they got more than 63 votes for cloture. I was absolutely right that he was confirmed with fewer than 60 votes.

There will be enormous pressure on the Democrats from the left, from MoveOn.org and the Daily Kossacks and the interest groups and George Soros to filibuster, but there will be enough members of the Democratic caucus, enough of the signers of the Memorandum of Understanding, who understand that a filibuster attempt will result in a rules change. There are still appellate nominees being filibustered, and the rules change will let them through. Once the filibuster rules are changed to break a filibuster on a Supreme Court Nominee, the filibuster's gone as a tool for blocking judges. There will be enough Democrats to realize that they cannot win a fight to filibuster a Supreme Court nominee with majority support. So the filibuster will fail, the rules change won't have to be invoked, and Alito will be confirmed.

I really got the time frame wrong. I thought that it would all happen before Christmas, but the Republicans didn't push it. So he wasn't confirmed before Christmas. All of the rest of it (you know, the really easily predictable stuff) I got right...