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There are another 120 vacant federal judgeships and, of course, the Neil Gorsuch nomination to the Supreme Court. Each requires Senate approval.

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White House staff is busily choosing and vetting candidates for the rest of the positions, and there undoubtedly will be many nominations sent to the Senate for confirmation in the next several weeks.

And where is the Senate now? On vacation.

We hear a lot of talk that Harry Reid gave away the store when he exercised the nuclear option, and that Republicans have the 51 votes needed to get the Trump team confirmed. That may be, but with the way Majority Leader Mitch McConnell runs the Senate, Democrats canand probably willmake it impossible to confirm more than a handful of nominees.

The problem isnt the votes. Republicans have those. The problem is timefloor time.

As a senior Senate staffer told me this week: Regardless of how many votes it takes to confirm or approve anything in the Senate, if Democrats want to force the issue, they can require a minimum of 30 hours to debate any nomination or any bill. Let that sink in. 549 vacancies, at 30 hours each, equals 686 days. If you subtract weekends, and add a nice vacation every few months, you are looking at never finishing this job throughout the entirety of Donald Trumps first term. And this assumes they are in session around the clock and do no other legislative business, which is also impossible.

Under Senate rules, when debate is cut off, senators are entitled to another 30 hours of debate. Since the Senate is rarely in session for more than 25to 30 hours a week, Democrats can tie things up indefinitely.

So you would think the Senate would be working long hours, forcing Democrats to talk until exhausted, so the Presidents team gets confirmed, right?

Wrong. After doing virtually no work during most of January, and working at a leisurely pace in February, the Senate just left town for a 10-day recess. That means they went home to campaignafter being on the job for about six weeks. As my friend said: The Democrats are shutting down the Senates business, and Mitch McConnells answer is to give everyone a big vacation. The message to Democrats is: keep up the great work, we have no intention of fighting back.

The result? The government will be run by bureaucrats, Obama holdovers and temporary acting trump appointees. Neil Gorsuch wont get confirmed for weeks and weeks, and other judicial vacancies will remain vacant. Not to mention letting President Trumps program simply die on the vinethe crucial business of repealing Obamacare, tax reform, passing budgets and appropriations, and the rest of the things Donald Trump and taxpayers so badly need.

So what is to be done?

I spoke with a long-time staff member from the Senate Judiciary Committee (who must remain anonymous if he wants to keep his job), who told me that Republicans only remedy is to force Democrats to debate until they wear themselves out. Schedule Senate floor debates to go all day and night, on weekends and holidays until Democrats cry uncle.

Is McConnell likely to do that? I asked. Not a chance, said my friend.

Are any Republican Senators demanding that they fight back? I asked.

Not a one, I was told.

Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington told the New York Times this week that [Democrats] have to resist [Trump] every way and everywhere, every time we can By undermining Mr. Trump across the board, Democrats hope to split Republicans away from a president of their own party.

Unless Mitch McConnell gets down to business and gets the Senate back to work, he may help Democrats do exactly that.

Alfred S. Regnery serves as the Chairman of the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund.

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ExclusiveRegnery: Anti-Trump Democrats' Best Allies Are Senate Republicans - Breitbart News

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Donald Trump has been president for about a month. And already, a sizable majority of Democrats say he should be impeached.

A new poll from the Public Religion Research Institute shows 58 percent of Democrats are onboard with the idea of impeaching Trump.

That's not an unthinkable number in our polarized political climate, but it is extraordinarily early in a presidency for such a high level of support for impeachment. As PRRI notes, as late as 2014 in the sixth year of Barack Obama's presidency a similar proportion of Republicans supported impeachment: 56 percent. And even as the case for the Iraq War was being picked apart in 2006, Democratic support for impeaching George W. Bush was only at 48 percent lower than it is today for Trump.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi says she hasn't called for President Trump's impeachment yet, but added "when and if he breaks the law, this is when something like that will come up." Pelosi made the comments at a news conference on Monday, Feb. 6 at the Capitol after California Rep. Maxine Waters said, "eventually we've got to do something about him." (Reuters)

Overall support for Trump's impeachment (27 percent) is still slightly lower than it was for Obama in 2014 (30 percent) and Bush in 2006 (30 percent). But the support for impeachment among Democrats appears to be what is keeping the overall number for Trump in the same ballpark.

It's a testament to just how insatiable Democrats' appetite is for opposing Trump something we've seen in other polling as well. A Pew poll this week showed 72 percent of Democrats were more worried their leaders would do too little to oppose Trump vs. 20 percent who were worried they would do too much.

And according to this new poll, the vast majority of that 72 percent doesn'tthink impeaching Trump even at this early juncture is going too far. That's not exactly a recipe for bipartisanship going forward.

The grounds for impeaching Trump or any other president, it bears noting, are laid out in the Constitution, which says a president shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

Democratic Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota recently joked that such a situation was months and months away, since Republicans control Congress and would have to support impeachment. And that's a key point: Congress is always reluctant to move toward impeachment especially since it can backfire, as it did late in Bill Clinton's presidency. But in the case of Trump, it's even more unlikely given Republicans control the House, which would initiate any impeachment proceedings if it got to that point.

Some Democrats and ethics groups havesued alleging Trump is already in violation of the law specifically, the emoluments clause, which prohibits a politician from accepting any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State. (The Post's Allison Michaels and David Fahrenthold have much more on this in this week's version of the Can He Do That? podcast.)

And there already are very real grass-roots efforts to push for impeachment. A petition with 850,000 signatures on it was delivered to Congress last week. And Democratic leaders are trying to beat back the growing calls for impeachmentfrom their base.

Good luck with that.

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Impeach Trump? Most Democrats already say 'yes.' - The ... - Washington Post

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats join activists at a gun control rally at the Capitol last year. A new liberal group, Swing Left, is working to help House Democrats pick up seats in the 2018 midterm elections. Photo by REUTERS/Carlos Barria

Ethan Todras-Whitehall was disappointed when Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election. After his victory, sitting on your hands and just reading the news was intolerable, said Todras-Whitehall, a 36-year-old freelance writer and GMAT tutor from Amherst, Massachusetts. It still is.

So in the weeks after the election, Todras-Whitehall called two friends, Joshua Krafchin and Miriam Stone, and proposed a plan of action: creating a grassroots organization aimed at helping Democrats win back control of the House in the 2018 midterm elections.

The result is Swing Left, part of a loosely-connected network of liberal groups, like Indivisible, that pundits across the political spectrum are calling the lefts answer to the conservative Tea Party movement that emerged after President Barack Obamas victory in 2008.

Democrats havent been as focused on the House because weve held the presidency, Todras-Whitehall said. But now that Republicans control the White House along with both chambers of Congress, he said, regaining control of the House went from the last thing [liberal activists] think about to being a top priority.

To that end, Swing Left was specifically designed to target competitive House races, while leaving safe Democratic seats alone. Volunteers sign up by entering their ZIP code. From there, Swing Left points them to the closest swing district, in the hopes of boosting engagement in areas where Democrats have the most potential to pick up seats.

The model is based on the idea that its easier for people to volunteer close to home, where they feel they can make a difference on a regular basis, Todras-Whitehall said.

The group is targeting 52 House districts where the winners margin of victory in 2016 was 15 points or less. If the party wins 80 percent of those races, Democrats can regain a majority in the House, the group says.

Republicans currently hold 238 seats in the House, the GOPs largest majority in eight decades. Democrats control 198 seats; there are four vacancies.

Given those numbers, flipping control in the House is a tall order for groups like Swing Left, whose founders dont have much political organizing experience. Krafchin and Stone have never worked on a campaign; Todras-Whitehill did some phone banking for John Kerrys presidential campaign in 2004 and ran a small get-out-the-vote campaign in Ohio in 2008.

Most political experts agree the Democrats chances of regaining control of the House and Senate next year are slim.

No one thinks they can take back the House or the Senate in 2018, Republican strategist Brendan Steinhauser, a former Tea Party organizer, said.

Congressional Republicans have taken note of the energy on the left since Trumps election, said Matt Gorman, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, the House GOPs campaign arm.

But House Republicans plan to stick to their agenda in the face of the top-down effort from liberal activists to oppose Trumps presidency and make gains in Congress, Gorman said.

Donald Trump speaks at a campaign event last August in Ashburn, Virginia, a town in GOP Rep. Barbara Comstocks district. Swing Left is targeting swing districts like Comstocks in the 2018 midterms. Photo by REUTERS/Eric Thayer

Despite Swing Lefts long odds, the group is gaining traction. Roughly 300,000 volunteers have signed up with the group, Todras-Whitehall said.

Linda Keuntje said when she saw an advertisement for Swing Left on her Facebook newsfeed after the election, she immediately signed up to volunteer in Virginias 10th congressional district, a swing seat now held by Republican Rep. Barbara Comstock.

My coping strategy is to act, said Keuntje, a Democrat who lives in Arlington, Virginia. I feel like Im doing something to improve the situation.

Experienced organizers including some former Clinton campaign staffers have also signed up with Swing Left, Todras-Whitehall said.

Swing Left is helping volunteers plan house meetings next week so activists can meet in person and start organizing. After that, Todras-Whitehall said he hopes volunteers will begin canvassing, knocking on doors and registering voters in swing communities.

I want people to know their local swing district better than they know their own [district], he said.

In addition to targeting swing districts, Swing Left also plans to play defense in Democratic seats where voters shifted right and voted for Trump, like Rep. Matt Cartwrights district in eastern Pennsylvania. Obama carried the district in 2008 and 2012. But in 2016, Trump won the district and Cartwright was narrowly re-elected by a 7.6 percent margin.

Voters in his district are desperate for economic change and backed Trump because he effectively painted himself as the economic candidate, Cartwright said in a phone interview.

Nevertheless, I dont intend to change my messaging one iota, Cartwright said. Those are core values for me, and theyre not going to change cause the wind changed directions.

Political observers said it was too early to tell if liberal groups had the kind of organizing Democrats need to defend districts like Cartwrights and make further gains in the House.

Its really easy to join a march, sign a petition, said Emily Ekins, a research fellow at the right-leaning Cato Institute. Its quite another [thing] to do the hard tedious work of local and political activism.

But Steinhauser, the Republican strategist, said he saw some similarities between the Tea Party movement and the grassroots activism growing on the left today.

When [voters think they] see a disaster coming, you fight like hell to say no, Steinhauser said.

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How one liberal group is trying to help Democrats win back the House in 2018 - PBS NewsHour