The election is over, we have another month or so of the lame duck session of Congress, and it's already crystal clear that the "party of no" gridlock we saw from Republicans is only going to get worse, not better, in the next two years. Right now, today, the Senate needs to change its rules to fix the filibuster. We should be filibustering ourselves to make that happen.
As has been exhaustively chronicled here on DKos, the Senate's rules about filibusters, intended originally to give some voice to minority party members, have been turned into an effective supermajority for every vote before the Senate, requiring 60 senators to invoke cloture, the ending of debate, to bring bills to a vote. The biggest flaw in the current system (as embodied in Senate Standing Rule XXII) is that, regardless of the term, an actual "filibuster" (or the Jimmy Stewart equivalent), through which a senator keeps speaking and thereby refuses to yield the floor, is no longer required to oppose a cloture motion. Senators wishing to forestall a cloture vote need not actually filibuster anything; their expressed intention to have done so in theory is sufficient. The Senate, and the entire country, are being held hostage by the "silent filibuster."
This is not a constitutional issue (although it does seem to fly in the face of the Constitution's designation of only a limited number of issues as requiring supermajority votes), because the Senate is empowered to set its own procedural rules. Unfortunately, the Democratic majority in the Senate, notwithstanding how vulnerable it has been to the silent filibuster (with the delay in seating Al Franken, the illness-driven absences of Teddy Kennedy and Robert Byrd, and the need to include Joe Lieberman and some of the most conservative BlueDogs in the caucus, there have been few months since the beginning of the Obama Administration where a solid 60-vote Senate Democratic majority was possible, let alone present), has been too afraid of eventually losing its majority status or rocking the boat to take up the challenge of modifying the rules in some way to return the Senate to functionality.
Enough.
This week's election, and the particularly close calls for Harry Reid and other Democratic senators, should be sparking immediate action by the majority to amend the rules now, so that it can get something done before the new Congress is seated, and so that it has a chance to at least pass bills and show progress on the Senate side, even if the new Republican majority in the House will undoubtedly dig its heels in on anything remotely resembling the President's agenda. Whether it's reducing the number of votes needed for cloture, or even just eliminating the silent filibuster as an option (make 'em debate!), something must change. We've signed petitions, but that may not be enough.
Pick up the phone. Call your senators. Call every senator. Call every day. Use your voice, as Jimmy Stewart did, to call for change, to make it clear that democracy must trump cowardice and fear.
FILIBUSTER THE FILIBUSTER!