Two things stood out. First, I thought that Al Franken, in his opening statement, introduced himself nicely to the public. He was very serious and cordial to his colleagues. It will be really interesting to see if he can follow through with good substantive questions.

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Overall, I’m now slightly optimistic that we aren’t headed into a permanent death spiral between Democrats and Republicans with each party relentlessly attacking the other’s nominees and voting on party lines. Republican senators have behaved almost uniformly responsibly. Democrats haven’t tried to caricature Republicans and play the race card with them. If we could take a step back from the brink of the judicial wars, that would be a tremendous step forward.