Neil Gorsuch is going to be the next Supreme Court justice by the weekend. The final vote will be Friday evening at 7 PM ET, but that's just a formality. When Majority Leader Mitch McConnell changed the rules on the filibuster, that was that. But Gorsuch will be on the court without the acquiescence of the majority of Democrats, 45 of them, who refused to play by the old rules and accept the stale and flat-out delusional conventional wisdom we used to hear so frequently that they "had to keep their powder dry" for the next bad nominee.

Sure, a small handful with sponges for spines tried to play "bipartisan," (with Colorado's Michael Bennet getting dishonorable mention for trying to split the baby, he didn't join the filibuster, but then voted against moving forward on the nomination under the new majority vote rule), but the majority stood by their principles, recognized reality and—this is the most important part—did what we asked them to in filibustering the nominee.

We're seeing an evolution in our Democrats, one pushed into the 21st century by the new generation of senators, like Jeff Merkley (D-OR), who showed everyone how Senate opposition is supposed to be done by standing on the floor and talking for 15 and a half hours about why this nomination should go down. We're seeing it in Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), who gets that it's about the people.

"I've certainly never lived through an era like this," Gillibrand says. "I've never lived through a moment in history where people are using their voices and becoming strong advocates for what they believe in." The only comparable contemporary example is from the right: the tea-party wave that swept through Congress in 2010. "The grassroots are doing this," says Gillibrand. "I mean, nobody told them to do it. Nobody told women to march. Nobody told people to run to JFK after the immigration ban. The message isn't coming from Washington; that's the crux. The message is coming from regular people, and no one is telling them what to do."

That's what stiffened the spines of all but the squishiest of Democrats, those who have to run for re-election in Trump country (and the one who doesn't—Bennet). It's you—everyone who marched, who called, who wrote to your Democratic senators. That made the difference. That's what opened their eyes. Keep it up, and we're going to actually have good reasons to turn out for them in 2018 and 2020, not because of the awful we're trying to prevent, but to do the good they're promising.