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Originally, the Senate had a rule to simply move to a vote with a majority - the so-called "previous question motion." But under Aaron Burr's leadership, they got rid of it because it had never been used. Some decades later, senators began to realize they could just refuse to grant unanimous consent to move onto a vote - since the Senate runs on the principle of unanimous consent, without it, nothing can be done.
Gradually filibustering increased post-Civil War, but they used to remain short because people had to actually just keep talking AND there was an implicit assumption that if senators didn't eventually yield the floor, a majority would act to cut off debate by changing the rules. However, when a block of antiwar senators threatened to prevent war funding during WWI, the Wilson Administration and Senate leadership broke the filibuster and instituted a new rule allowing 2/3 of the Senate to waive unanimous consent and override a filibuster.
Paradoxically, this actually increased the frequency because whereas before the implicit assumption had been that a majority would get rid of a filibuster, now there was an institutionalized supermajority requirement. It got used in the 1920s to kill civil rights legislation and anti-lynching bills (which would otherwise have passed that early on). From that point on up through the 1960s, the filibuster was mostly used by Southern Dems to kill civil rights legislation.
Once Civil Rights legislation passed, however, the filibuster lost its association with segregationists and came to be used more frequently. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, reformers tried to abolish it altogether, and they finally managed to force a vote reforming it in 1975, but the filibuster supporters backed down and supported a compromise that changed cloture to just 3/5 of the vote (60) while also putting the onus on the MAJORITY faction. (Used to be 2/3 of all senators present-and-voting).
Other reforms, such as dual-tracking, also meant that people no longer had to actually talk a bill to death - they only had to deny unanimous consent. If anyone tried to "call" a "real" filibuster, nobody would have to actually talk - there would just need to be one Republican occasionally suggest that the Senate lacks a quorum to succeed.
NOW, would restoring the "talkathon-style" filibusters work? Probably not - the truth is, the reason they actually changed the rules was that while talkathon-style filibusters were rare, they WORKED. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the first time a filibuster had ever been broken. That's because talking a bill to death was possible - eventually, the majority party had to pass appropriations bills, keep the government working, and the filibustering party suffered no repercussions.
The reason the filibusters have gotten SO common is that the parties have sorted themselves into much more ideologically unified caucuses. So there's very little room for compromise, and the two parties - the Republicans more so than the Democrats - realize that politically, obstructionism works. You stop the majority from doing anything, and most voters blame the majority party, because they're the ones in charge. So it's gradually risen and has no come to an all time high.
How can it be changed? At the start of each session, the Senate can set new rules with 51 votes. If they change it mid-session, though, that requires 67 votes. Unless they pull a "nuclear" option, and have the Vice President (as President of the Senate) rule the filibuster unconstitutional with the support of a majority. The problem is that a lot of older senators, even liberal ones, LIKE the filibuster because it increases their power and because it's "tradition." So I think it'll take a while to get rid of it.
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