A "filibuster" is an effort by a minority of lawmakers to delay or block the Senate from voting on a bill or a confirmation. By exploiting the chamber’s rules for full debate on an issue, the minority can indefinitely obstruct something that has majority support.
Using the filibuster to delay or block legislative action has a long history. According to the U.S. Senate, the term filibuster was from a Dutch word meaning "pirate". It became popular in the 1850s when it was applied to efforts to hold the Senate floor in order to prevent a vote on a bill.
In senate news, the conventional political narrative as Judge Neil M. Gorsuch’s Supreme Court nomination nears its endgame is that liberals want at least 40 Senate Democrats to follow through on their threat to stall him with a filibuster, daring Republicans to carry out their vow to change the chamber’s rules and confirm him anyway. Conservatives, meanwhile, are outraged — outraged! — that Democrats might precipitate such a crisis.
But some observers on both sides of the ideological divide say that the long-term strategic interests of each faction are the opposite of what their leaders are indicating in public. If so, the surface appearance of the partisan fight unfolding this week is really a tricky inversion of what is actually in play. Read more at The New York Times.