Byron York‘s latest Washington Examiner article covers an intriguing bit of congressional inside baseball:

For months, some Democrats had been working on a plan to use a parliamentary maneuver called the “nuclear option” to put an end to minority Republicans’ ability to block Democratic initiatives. Under that scenario, on the first day of its session — and only on the first day — the Senate would be able to change its rules regarding filibusters with a simple majority vote. Normally, it takes 67 votes to change the Senate’s rules, but on the first day, Democrats believed, they could kill the filibuster with just a 51-vote majority.


Of course, the first day the Senate was in session was January 3. Most people would assume that such first-day changes, even if they were possible, would have to be made on that day. But in the Senate, “first day” can be a flexible term. So when the Senate finished business on January 3, Majority Leader Harry Reid did not adjourn the body, which would have meant the end of the day. Instead, Reid declared the Senate in recess, which meant that it remained, in technical Senate terms, in its “first day” until whenever Reid chose to call an adjournment.


Through January 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25 — through all those days the Senate was in recess and therefore still officially in its “first day.” That meant liberal Democrats could continue to maneuver and negotiate ways to end the filibuster and, if they could find 51 senators willing to go along with their scheme, take a vote on the Senate’s “first day.”


Furious negotiations went on behind the scenes. The Democrats’ anti-filibuster wing, led by Sen. Tom Udall, tried to muster support for the effort to kill, or at least substantially weaken, the filibuster. Udall wasn’t, of course, trying to persuade Republicans to go along; all GOP senators opposed the idea. Rather, Udall and his allies were trying — and, it turns out, failing — to convince 51 Democrats to put an end to the filibuster. By Tuesday, it was clear they had failed. After the State of the Union, Reid adjourned the Senate, and the 22-day “first day” was over.