If I recall correctly, the original filibuster rule called for actually continuing debate, far into the night sometimes, with someone holding the floor, and actually having to debate.
As I understand, nowadays, they take a cloture vote, and if 60 senators don’t vote for cloture, then everyone goes home. And this can happen indefinitely, with no cut off, so that legislation never gets to the cloture vote. In the old days, filibusterers eventually had enough of actually holding the floor, and then legislation would proceed to the final vote.
The filibuster was intended to ensure that legislation doesn’t get rammed through, and that everyone gets to have their say. The intention was not to indefinitely derail legislation by never bringing the issue to a final vote.
You are correct. The filibuster vote was for ending “debate” , rather than the actual vote on the bill itself. Even so it was quite effective at killing bills. You can have a tag team of opposed senators for days slowly reading all the works of Shakespeare.
From the senate website...
“Three quarters of a century later, in 1917, senators adopted a rule (Rule 22), at the urging of President Woodrow Wilson, that allowed the Senate to end a debate with a two-thirds majority vote, a device known as “ cloture .” The new Senate rule was first put to the test in 1919, when the Senate invoked cloture to end a filibuster against the Treaty of Versailles. Even with the new cloture rule, filibusters remained an effective means to block legislation, since a two-thirds vote is difficult to obtain. Over the next five decades, the Senate occasionally tried to invoke cloture, but usually failed to gain the necessary two-thirds vote.”
Again I would not mind having some type of supermajority needed to pass a bill. Great way to keep the federal government small and out of our lives and pass more power to the states. States could choose individually whether to have it or not and in doing so would act like a living laboratory in governance.