Actually I think there was a wonderful opportunity missed - based mainly on the writings a radical political thinker called Nathan Newman whose ideas you seem to be ignoring.
Start with the point (which you convinced me of a long time ago) that the judicial independence, at least to the extreme degree we have it in the U.S. is a bad idea. Secondly look at the fact that the reactionaries are presently in control of the Supreme Court. Maybe not the worst of the worst, but the worst of the rest. Preserve the filibuster and the myth of judicial independence and even if every Bush nominee for supreme court is stopped the Demos still have to deal with if they ever get a majority again. And if the filibuster is maintained they will have to deal with Republican filibusters too. That means a lot of what we are seeing will be institutionalized even if the Democrats return to power.
OK - so take an alternate strategy. The Democrats refuse to compromise. The filibuster is ended and Bush gets everyone he wants on the Supreme court during his remaining term. This not only destroys the filibuster; with an obvious partisan choice of judges it opens the door to argue that we know longer have an independent judiciary; the fig leaf is gone; we have a right wing Republican judiciary.
Now the Democrats get their majority. It is now established that any Senate rule can be changed by a simple majority through the expedient of having the chair declare the rule unconstitutional and having it upheld via a simple majority. So you eliminate the remainder of the filibuster. Then you appoint a liberal supreme court - either by impeaching existing justices or by increasing the size of court. It does not get stopped the way Roosevelt's "court packing" was stopped because there is no longer a reasonable way to argue that there is such a thing as independence any more. (It would be up the radical and liberal movements to spread this meme.)
What is that you say - the Democrats will never have a majority again? Then preserving the filibuster or a slight less reactionary supreme court is not worth much. Any strategy that involves working within the Democrat Party (your favored approach) has to start with the assumption that it is possible for them to get control again some day.
Of course this is a bit of science fiction - an exercise in alternative world building; the imaginary part is not in the the assumption of that the Democrats may yet win a majority again (though it looks increasingly unlikely) ; it is in the assumption that they are actually interested in some day being able to put through radical or even liberal policy. A situation in which they take a majority , and can give lip service to progressive ideas, while being stopped from actually having to carry them out by a right-wing supreme court or Republican filibusters is pretty attractive to most "moderate" Democrats. So I can see why Harry Reid would consider this as a victory. I don't see why you would.
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