After months of warnings, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid decided to “go nuclear” on Thursday, striking down continued Republican filibusters against President Obama’s judicial nominees. The vote appeared to catch Washington by surprise; the Washington Post didn’t even have an advance story on the impending vote.

But it shouldn’t have. Reid acted only after an unprecedented degree of obstruction by the Senate minority, to the point where it was unclear Congress could even function.

Both Maine senators played significant roles. Though an independent, Angus King voted for reform, saying, “the public is just fed up with our inability to do the simplest things, like confirm judges.” Three Democrats voted against limiting filibusters.

The “nuclear option” is called that because of an interesting ambiguity in Senate rules. It takes 60 votes to overcome a filibuster, once rare but now routine, but only a majority to change the Senate rules that allow for filibusters.

Susan Collins, along with the other 44 Republicans, voted against the change, but earlier took a more moderate position on three of Obama’s nominees to the D.C. Court of Appeals. She voted to break the filibusters, but, unfortunately, attracted only one other Republican vote.

Collins called the filibuster move a “terrible mistake” but the mistake was Republicans deciding they could, without explanation, permanently thwart the Senate majority.

If you want a dispassionate analysis of this constitutional crisis – not too strong a term – listen to Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s speech; available on YouTube. Warren, a former Harvard Law School professor, explains why the Senate cannot simply refuse to act on presidential nominations. Using the filibuster on vote after vote is an abdication of the Senate’s duties.

Warren notes that the three women Obama nominated – one withdrew last year after, yes, repeated filibusters – have argued 45 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. It’s hard to imagine nominees better qualified for the D.C. court, which ranks second in the federal system.

The fig leaf Republicans used was the idea that the court’s caseload was too small, so judges needed to be reassigned. The caseload is about where it’s always been, and includes all appeals from federal agency decisions. Republicans just don’t like a Democratic president filling seats vacated by retiring GOP-appointed judges, the largest number appointed by Ronald Reagan almost 30 years ago.

Our system can’t work if the people’s will is repeatedly thwarted, as Republicans seem bent on doing. The conventional response to the Democrats’ move was expressed by the New York Times, saying it will “further erode what little bipartisanship still exists.”

This reflects the persistent idea that “partisanship” is the problem, when the real issue lies elsewhere, demonstrated in irrefutable terms by Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann’s book, “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks”. It shows how Republican extremism, not disagreement between the two parties, has gridlocked Congress.

To battle over legislation and, yes, judicial nominees, to a point, is normal. What’s not normal is for one side to repeatedly threaten to wreck America’s credit rating and shut down government – actually carrying out that threat, lest we forget, six weeks ago – in pursuing an agenda it can’t enact in any legitimate way.

It’s clear that curtailing the filibuster was pursued only with reluctance. The change was resisted by senior members of both parties. Finally, Patrick Leahy of Vermont, senior Democrat and chair of the Judiciary Committee, realized there was no other way.

For Angus King, the decisive moment may have come last spring when, as a new senator — who hadn’t even been able to occupy his office, thanks to the Republican-engineered budget “sequester –: he discovered the Senate couldn’t muster 60 votes to enact gun background checks. The tiny but fanatical minority represented by the NRA won that round, but perhaps not next time.

By demonstrating a resolve that’s been in short supply among Democrats, Harry Reid may have done us all a favor. Making government work again is a cause in which we all have a vital stake, whatever our views or allegiances on a particular issue.

Republicans may now decide that debate and compromise is again part of their party’s strategy, rather than trying to block every attempt to enact legislation. Examples abound, such as the immigration reform and employment anti-discrimination bills the Senate did pass, but which House Speaker John Boehner won’t bring to a vote.

Elizabeth Warren provides an object lesson here. She’s in the Senate primarily because Republicans filibustered her nomination to head the new Federal Reserve consumer protection agency. Eventually, as she showed in reclaiming the late Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat, elections do matter.

Douglas Rooks is a former daily and weekly newspaper editor who has covered the State House for 29 years. He can be reached at drooks@tds.net.