But it will look good to the progressive base, even if it means absolutely nothing.

Via Hot Air:

When is a filibuster not a filibuster? Senator Jeff Merkley has offered up a demonstration of the answer to this riddle by talking non-stop overnight in what he calls an attempt to stop the confirmation of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. It won’t work, but it certainly gives Merkley an opportunity to soak up some attention from extremists pushing obstructionism on Senate Democrats.

A filibuster isn’t just non-stop talking, not even in the US Senate. Amber Phillips explains why at the Washington Post:

While you slept, for the past 12 hours and counting, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) has seized the Senate floor in an attempt to launch an old-school filibuster to block Judge Neil Gorsuch from getting on the Supreme Court.

But his filibuster comes too late to be able to derail or even delay Gorsuch’s confirmation. In fact, it may not even technically be a filibuster. That’s because procedurally there’s nothing he nor his colleagues can do to stop Gorsuch from getting a vote on Thursday to advance his nomination — and, ultimately, not much they can do stop him from getting on the court.

And why is that? Because Merkley didn’t start talking until after Mitch McConnell scheduled the cloture vote, the procedural step before taking the floor vote on Gorsuch. As the Congressional Research Service noted in 2014, the cloture vote once scheduled has privilege over any action on the floor:

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