Even at the time, the filibuster seemed a somewhat unlikely palladium to defend -- a thunderbolt wielded in the party's heroic age by such Olympians as Theodore Bilbo, to preserve fine old American values like lynching.
One thing you've gotta say for the Democratic Party: it's always good for a laugh. After all the hysteria, after the October Surprise that pickled the filibuster like a foetus in formaldehyde, it turns out that the filibuster is too precious to risk using it.
So there it is, hanging above the mantelpiece, like great-granddad's Klan hood, a family heirloom. Every so often the Democrats can take a look at it and sigh, Ah, there were giants in the earth in those days.
