Senate Majority Leader Rich Trumka, er, Harry Reid held a gun to the head of Republicans on the filibuster, Republicans blinked, and President Obama and the AFL-CIO will now get their nominees confirmed for the cabinet and especially a legal quorum for the National Labor Relations Board.

Cut through all the procedural blather and that's the essence of the Senate's "deal" Tuesday over the 60-vote filibuster rule. While Democrats didn't formally pull the trigger of the "nuclear option" to allow a mere majority...