He exited, stage right, with class. Miguel Estrada, President Bush’s nominee to a powerful federal appeals court viewed as the springboard to the U.S. Supreme Court, had put his life on hold for almost two years.

Finally last week, after several Democrat-led Senate filibusters, Estrada removed his name from consideration, saying the delays weren’t fair to his family or his future. “The time has come to return my full attention to the practice of law, and to regain the ability to make long-term plans for my family,” the Honduran-born lawyer, who arrived in this country as a teenager, wrote in a letter to Bush.

The Democrats gloated. Estrada was among five nominees for federal appellate courts blocked (either in committee or on the Senate floor) from an up-down vote for confirmation. Sen. Edward Kennedy went so far as to claim Estrada’s withdrawal “is a victory for the Constitution, for the nation’s judicial system and for the American people.”

Spare us, Teddy. By filibuster, the Democrats managed to bypass the constitutional requirement of a simple majority. They turned the Senate’s practice of advice and consent into a litmus test for liberal interest groups.

Clever in the short term, perhaps, but the Democrats surely harmed their outreach to Hispanic moderates and independents by denying all Hispanics a historic moment — the first and highest-ranking Latino judge on the federal bench. It’s not as if Estrada didn’t have strong backing from a wide range of Hispanic groups, including the nonpartisan LULAC.

It’s not as if Estrada were unqualified for such a prestigious post — he graduated from Harvard and served in the Solicitor General’s Office, arguing cases before the U.S. Supreme Court through Republican and Democrat administrations. He was ranked “most qualified” by the American Bar Assn., hardly a right-wing conspiracy group.

None of that mattered to desperate Democrats on a witch hunt, aided and abetted by the Democrats’ Hispanic congressional caucus. They sought every memo Estrada had ever written in the solicitor’s job even though that, too, would have violated the constitutional separation of powers.

Every living former U.S. solicitor general — three served Democrats and four, Republican administrations — voiced support for the White House’s stand that such records must remain privileged information necessary to “defend vigorously the United States’ litigation interests.”

The Republicans aren’t squeaky clean on plots to deny Democrats certain judgeships, either. When the GOP controlled the Senate Judiciary Committee during the Clinton years, the Democrats complained of candidates never brought up for a vote. It took Richard Paez, a Clinton nominee from California, four years to get confirmed thanks to delays caused by GOP senators’ maneuvering.

Now Democrats, having lost Senate control, resort to filibuster to stop those judicial candidates feared to be anti-choice. Yet, when asked about the landmark Roe v. Wade abortion ruling during confirmation hearings, Estrada said, “It is the law. I will follow it.”

Not good enough. The whole vicious campaign against Estrada centered on fear. Fear of an unknown, an enigma in Washington circles.

The low-key Estrada didn’t help himself either. With no real record of community service during his years as a public employee, with no real links to Latino groups or communities in Washington or anywhere else, Estrada lacked passionate political advocates. Little wonder that Democrat-affiliated Latino groups found it so easy to pound Estrada with unfair innuendo, all geared up for the 2004 presidential race.

Estrada, qualified by all objective measures, didn’t deserve to be the whipping boy for Democrats still simmering over the 2000 election.