Remember that civics vocabulary that gave you heartburn during one of those multiple-choice tests back in junior high school? You may need to rethink the customary definitions of such old-fashioned terms as “majority rule,” “filibuster” and “cloture.” If you leapt to the definition that said majority rule means the winners in a democratic system are those who can get 50 percent plus one vote for their cause, then you may be only partially right, if correct at all.

If you understand why this bedrock belief may not be so certain, you will begin to understand why Democrats are distraught at the prospect of having “only” an 18-seat majority in the 100-member U.S. Senate. Conversely, if you choose to view things from the other side of the aisle, you will know why Republicans are positively giddy at only being on the short end of the Senate party identification contest by a 59 to 41 count. With increasing frequency, majority rule means the winner must gain 60 votes out of the 100 senators to be successful.

Dr. Marty Wiseman is director of the John C. Stennis Institute of Government at Mississippi State University. E-mail him.

The filibuster is a maneuver that has made for interesting political lore in the Senate. In this day of steadfast party discipline and staunch partisanship, it is becoming the order of the day rather than the exception that it once was.

The term refers to a tactic employed by senators and congressmen to delay or buy time by refusing to yield the podium and to continuously speak on the subject in hopes of killing or passing legislation. Anyone who remembers the classic movie “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” certainly remembers the scene where the freshman senator played by Jimmy Stewart stood in the well of the Senate and spoke until he passed out.

It was in 1872 that Vice President Schuyler Colfax proclaimed that the presiding officer could not restrain remarks by a senator that he considered pertinent to a pending issue. In 1957, Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, in an attempt to block the Civil Rights Act of 1957, set a filibuster record of holding the floor and speaking for 24 hours and 18 minutes.

Rules of the Senate have been added and refined to bring us to where we are today. Chief among these modifications is the cloture rule. Members are no longer required to remain in the well of the Senate and speak continuously, but rather debate is scheduled over periods of time and such debate will continue to be scheduled until those who wish to end debate and move toward a vote on a measure can muster a vote of three-fifths, or 60, members to request that debate be ended.

Before last Tuesday’s election in Massachusetts, the Democrats owned a 60-vote majority and had used it to position themselves to pass the nation’s first comprehensive health care legislation. When the sun rose on Wednesday the Democrats could no longer guarantee the ability to end debate.

Given the current conditions of hyper-partisanship, what are the implications? First, party discipline has rarely been as strong as it is now. Republican leadership as well as that of the Democrats is exerting ironclad control over the actions of their members, particularly if there is the least tendency toward bipartisanship. Democrats were outraged at threats made by Independent/Democrat Joe Lieberman to side with Republicans without certain concessions by the Democrats on health care legislation. By the same token, Republicans were incredulous at the prospect of South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham’s flirting with a cooperative relationship with Democrats over climate legislation. If conditions remain as they are, it will be virtually impossible to close off debate and bring any meaningful legislation to a vote. In fact, before the 2008 elections it had been nearly 30 years since either party has had a majority large enough to assure cloture. Thus, if each party continues to insist that none of its members can collaborate legislatively with any member of the other party, then we will have arrived at another breed of gridlock.

Also of interest, thanks to last week’s holding by the Supreme Court in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the stakes of votes taken by members of Congress have been increased dramatically. In that case, the court took all restrictions of corporations and associations such as labor unions away from campaign advertising. As if toeing the party line was not mandatory enough already, imagine what it will be like when a conscientious vote honestly taken results in a multimillion-dollar contribution from a corporation to one’s Republican opponent or a similar contribution from a labor union to the Democratic opponent of a Republican. Things are about to get interesting.