Given the power inequalities in the situation, and that fact that a number of right wingers seem to be extremely pissed off by the compromise, I think the Demcrats did about as well as could be expected in the Senate Showdown.
Josh Marshall has some good points on the matter:
[the] whole tenor of the Republican ultras on the Hill today is to demand unimpeded power, to push past conventions and limits, to go for everything. And here they got turned back. A sensible Republican party might be satisfied to have gotten three of its nominees — numerically speaking, they did fairly well. But this whole enterprise was based on wanting it all, on not accepting limits, on rejecting government by even a modicum of consensus with a sizeable minority party. They got stopped short. And the senate Republican leadership is undermined.
So this isn’t a pleasant compromise. But precisely because the Republicans — or their leading players — are absolutists in a way the Democrats are not, I think this compromise will batter them more than it will the minority party, which is after all a minority party which nonetheless managed to emerge from this having fought the stronger force to something like a draw.
No, I am not happy three unqualified judges get sent to the federal benches as part of the deal. But at least there is a compromise and there is still hope of more in the future.