RUSH: Well, the confirmation hearings for Judge Neil Gorsuch are underway, and some Drive-By journalists are feeling sorry for Democrats. As the New York Times so eloquently puts it, they have two different paths to choose from: “Get out of the way, or get run over.”

If they filibuster and try to deny Gorsuch an up-or-down vote the Republicans are reportedly ready to fight. They can simply rip up the rule, kill the 60-vote threshold for Supreme Court nominee, and confirm Gorsuch to the Supreme Court over Democrat objections, and the Democrats would lose.

But if the Democrats don’t mount their standard character-assassination playbook operation, that’s bad news. If they don’t do everything they can – find political operatives to smear him, distort his record, try to paint him as a monster – then their lunatic anti-Trump base will turn on them, and they lose that way.

The Democrats still cannot believe they didn’t succeed with their Merrick Garland nomination, stonewalled by the Republicans. Despite Obama’s loading up the federal courts with activist judges, that loss still hurts. So they’re hoping against hope for victory somehow.

Too bad for them. It won’t happen. The difficult path the Democrats face here is their own doing. Under Harry Reid’s leadership, they changed the filibuster rules to get Obama’s judges in over Republican objections.

Elections have consequences, folks, and now it’s time for the Democrats to lose and eat it with their own rules.