As I understand it, what Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) did today was not exactly a filibuster. He spoke with limited interruption for what various press sources will tell you was eight hours, eight-and-a-half hours, nine hours or some other total…but it was not technically a filibuster because he was not delaying a specific vote or act of the Senate. So just call it a long speech and maybe a stunt, as well. I thought it was great. I didn't listen to more than about a half-hour of it and I'm not sure what 90% of what it was about. But hey, isn't it a lot more interesting than 8-9 hours of pointless, self-serving speeches that no one ever cares about?
I note some right-wing websites are admiring the Senator's spunk and determination, even if they say they disagree with his every syllable. And they're wrong about that last part. I don't care what your political beliefs are. Someone could type up a transcript of the whole thing and then find a couple of pages that, if you didn't know the identity of the speaker, would cause you to yell, "Right on!" I heard about five minutes about how the government often wastes money on stupid mistakes…five minutes that, as the song says, nobody can deny. There were other chunks that sounded like some guy addressing a Tea Party rally to resounding cheers.
Is it going to change the bill he's protesting? Probably not. Did he even achieve his stated goals, laid out in his opening paragraphs where he said, "I am simply here today to take as long as I can to explain to the American people the fact that we have got to do a lot better than this agreement provides."? I dunno. You can't explain something to someone who isn't listening and even if some of us peeked in at C-SPAN to watch a bit of the marathon, even the Senator's own family probably didn't catch a whole lot of the oration. But I guess he got himself some attention and got a few more folks talking about some issues. That ain't bad. It's about as much as any of those speeches ever achieve. Good for him…and I hope when I'm 69 years old, I have that kind of energy.