The Senate Democrats now find themselves in a dangerous position: now that they theoretically have a 60-seat supermajority, the public will expect action. If the Republicans continue to be able to block legislation by allying with conservative Democrats, the resulting demoralization is likely to turn off the public, discourage the base, and result in Republican gains in future years.
The solution is for the leadership of the party to start playing hardball. The filibuster is an anti-democratic measure that used to be used on in exceptional circumstances. It was never the intent of the rules to require 60 votes for every measure. Yet we currently treat the most moderate Republicans and the most conservative Democrats as the most powerful members of the Senate: the filibuster threat means that they get to shape legislation, against the will of the majority of the country. So what to do?
The answer is to do what every other political party in the democratic world does: enforcement. There need to be consequences for defying one's party and undermining its program, the program it ran on and that convinced the public to vote for. Certainly a senator should be able to vote his or her conscience. But a senator should not be permitted to block other senators of his/her own party from voting on legislation favored by the majority of the Senate.
What I am proposing is that the Democratic Party create a policy that says that if you filibuster any legislation that is designated critical by the leadership (and most major bills should be so designated), you lose part or all of your DSCC money and you lose seniority, it's the back benches for you. Committee chairs should be assigned to real Democrats, not DINOs. If you morally object to a piece of legislation or it would hurt your chances for re-election, you can still vote against it, you just can't block your colleagues from voting for it.
There could be circumstances where this penalty wouldn't be appropriate, and for this reason European democracies will designate some bills that aren't a key part of the government's program as "free votes". But filibustering health reform and still calling yourself a Democrat? No way.
Such a policy would greatly strengthen the prospects for enacting decent health care reform, environmental laws, a repeal of DADT and DOMA, and right down the list. Furthermore, it would make it much more likely that discouraged, disgusted activists would write checks to the DSCC. Under the current system, the very people most likely to get DSCC funds, those in Republican-leaning states, are most likely to vote like Republicans. Why would I want to give to them?