Sorry for the length and/or lack of content here; I'm trying to make a point but also initiate a little discussion to help some of the people who are in my boat and simply not comprehending how this is working, so please, bear with me.
Civics classes in this country being what they are, I expect many people are like me in that their first real exposure to any practical demonstration of the filibuster and its power comes from watching "Mr. Smith Goes To Washington". Call it hokey if you must, and I'm not prepared to address the question of its accuracy in practice, which is why I'm bringing it up. It depicts the valiant junior Senator preventing or postponing a decision on a land allocation bill, as I recall, by speaking nearly until he drops, until he can convince others or simply outlast them. The tactic is spoken of as an unusual maneuver. On the other side, some simply ignore the idealistic innocent taking advantage of the loophole in the rules, while on the outside, a massive smear campaign is launched against the evil Senator who dares to waste the country's time while federal business grinds to a halt.
My question is, if Democrats have no supermajority capable of overriding the possibility of a filibuster, why not call the bluff of anyone who'd actually do it? It's my understanding that in 2009 the Republicans in Congress have either threatened a filibuster, or actually filibustered, approximately three times as much as Democrats did in the entire eight-year Bush administration. If Obama is reelected, and that pace is maintained, that's a whole lot of blue-faced breath-holding and whining, some 24 times as much by my math.
In the movies, the person launching a filibuster is the good guy, the lone voice of reason willing to pit his sweat and vocal chords against powerful special interests, and the next thing we knew, there was carnage in the streets, smear campaigns in the media, and demands that the public become directly involved in stopping the upstart daring to hijack the machinery of government for his own ends.
If they're going to use the threat of a filibuster as a means of getting what they want, why not simply let them? It's not easy, is it? It's hard work, and it can't be kept up forever. In the movies, it was only Smith's having reached the last molecule of decency in his colleague at the last possible moment before breaking down and giving up his place on the floor, and not the technique itself that worked. Why not simply listen as they threaten to filibuster, let them talk until they can talk no more, explain often, long and loudly that the tasks Congress was sworn in to accomplish are on hold thanks to Senator X, (R, State of No). Hammer home the all-too-true meme that the vast majority who want healthcare reform aren't getting it because of Senator X, (R, State of No), and his campaign donations from Kaiser Permanenete, United Healthcare, or whomever.
I mean, they're being given a free pass on using a tool that was never intended to be used almost daily, and instead of forcing them to get their hands and faces dirty and stand up in public and explain to their constituents why there's this dirt all over them, we simply back down? I can't decide if this is more like medieval warfare while the knights salute each other and sit on their horses, watching the peasant foot soldiers kill each other, and then go home, or the Star Trek plot device about the people that climb into the disintegration chamber voluntarily by lottery, as a more civilized alternative to actual warfare.
What am I missing here, folks?