“McConnell is a klutz.”
If Democrats had afforded Gorsuch a relatively non-controversial confirmation process (after all, it was simply swapping one conservative for another), it is a very open question whether McConnell would have been able to corral all 52 votes to pass a rules change on behalf of Trump’s second pick — whose credentials may not be quite as sterling as Gorsuch’s, and whose presence on the Court would tilt the ideological balance rightward. By picking the fight that they did in order to appease the barking jackals in their base, Democrats ensured that the next pick can get installed on the bench with 50-plus-one votes.