It wasn't really the party politics I was getting at. It was a system which makes filibustering quite so easy in the first place. I tend to think that the British system makes it too easy for a government to force things through, but that the US one makes it too hard. Michael Tomasky thinks (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/dec/13/america-broken-political-system-obama) that the big increase in the insistence on 60 votes in the last couple of decades, together with the bloc-like nature of opposition, has made the Senate close to dysfunctional.