“When the U.S. Senate was created, the most populous state, Virginia, had 10 times as many people as the least populous, Delaware…Now the most populous state, California, has 69 times as many people as the least populous, Wyoming, yet they have the same two votes in the Senate. A similarly inflexible business organization would still have a major Whale Oil Division; a military unit would be mainly fusiliers and cavalry. No one would propose such a system in a constitution written today, but without a revolution, it’s unchangeable.
Similarly, since it takes 60 votes in the Senate to break a filibuster on controversial legislation, 41 votes is in effect a blocking minority. States that together hold about 12 percent of the U.S. population can provide that many Senate votes. This converts the Senate from the ‘saucer’ George Washington called it, in which scalding ideas from the more temperamental House might ‘cool,’ into a deep freeze and a dead weight.“
In a worthwhile cover story for The Atlantic on the long history of American declension and jeremiads, James Fallows — recently returned from China — make his case for the biggest problem facing our nation right now.”That is the American tragedy of the early 21st century: a vital and self-renewing culture that attracts the world’s talent, and a governing system that increasingly looks like a joke. One thing I’ve never heard in my time overseas is ‘I wish we had a Senate like yours.’”
Yes! There was an article in Mother Jones years and years ago about how undemocratic and oppositional the Senate is. It’s only gotten worse.
If they fuck up enough, I suppose the states could call a Constitutional Convention. But short of that, I don’t see how we get rid of them. And weirdly, the Connecticut Compromise is enshrined in our national consciousness as evidence of our Founders’ wisdom, rather than the unavoidable political evil it undoubtedly was.
Fascinating article.
The senate is a mess, especially as “moderate” Democrats from sparsely-populated states (think Ben Nelson) are the biggest corporate whores in Congress. There’s nothing new about that, but the insane monolithic approach of the GOP is new, and scary. The extreme right — and I do mean extreme right, not just “conservative” — has every elected Republican by the huevos and tolerates no departure from an illogical, negative, petty, and hateful program.
What is to be done about the filibuster rules? Can that be change? Can a social movement have any effect on that?