“Are we just going to sit here and pee on each others’ shoes for the rest of our adult lives?” Coons said of what spurred his bid to try and save the filibuster. “How does this ever get better?”

The second-term senator circulated a proposal calling on senators in both parties to admit they’d abused the Senate rules to the detriment of the institution — and commit to not do so again in the future. It was designed to be painful and cathartic: Republicans would express regret for blocking Merrick Garland last year; Democrats would do the same for a 2013 rules change that set the stage for this year’s nuclear option.

But clinching an agreement on how Democrats would advance Gorsuch while preserving the option of blocking a nominee for the next vacancy proved impossible. The fact that the parties clashed so severely over whether Gorsuch was even a mainstream jurist undermined any confidence that senators could hold to a pact covering President Donald Trump’s next Supreme Court pick.

“They had a hard time trusting that we wouldn’t just filibuster the next nominee,” Coons said hours after giving up on a deal. “We had a hard time trusting that they wouldn’t just break the rules on the next nominee.”