The Tea Party faction of the Republicans never "took over" the House. That myth was a lot of puffery by a commercial media with right wing libertarian sympathies. In no way was the Senate a barrier to this. The tea Party conveniently freed the Senate from doing the reactionary job itself, as it had to do 2008-10.
The Tea Party faction of the Republicans never "took over" the House. That myth was a lot of puffery by a commercial media with right wing libertarian sympathies. In no way was the Senate a barrier to this. The tea Party conveniently freed the Senate from doing the reactionary job itself, as it had to do 2008-10.
I offered that as an example and didn't say that it was a perfect one; both houses of Congress can be steered askew. But in the future a Senate that is more democratically structured can add stability to the legislative system.
The problem is that there is no way the Senate could ever be democratically representative on the basis of 2 Senators per state, with the enormous demographic variation between the states. And democratically correcting this would simply duplicate the House, raising a second important question: Why do we need 2 duplicate sets of legislatures? When I look at the district map of the state of California, I see "state senators" and "state reps" layered upon each other in districts of more or less the same size. Do we really need 2 sausage factories in series to make legislative sausage?
It's a big waste of resources, but it is useful to the "mother's milk of politics" (money) in that 1) it provides a greater range of "shopping choices" in the search for politicians to get into their pockets and 2) it slows down or stops the processing of legislation money doesn't like, for example affordable universal health care.
The Tea Party faction of the Republicans never "took over" the House. That myth was a lot of puffery by a commercial media with right wing libertarian sympathies. In no way was the Senate a barrier to this. The tea Party conveniently freed the Senate from doing the reactionary job itself, as it had to do 2008-10.
I offered that as an example and didn't say that it was a perfect one; both houses of Congress can be steered askew. But in the future a Senate that is more democratically structured can add stability to the legislative system.
The problem is that there is no way the Senate could ever be democratically representative on the basis of 2 Senators per state, with the enormous demographic variation between the states. And democratically correcting this would simply duplicate the House, raising a second important question: Why do we need 2 duplicate sets of legislatures? When I look at the district map of the state of California, I see "state senators" and "state reps" layered upon each other in districts of more or less the same size. Do we really need 2 sausage factories in series to make legislative sausage?
It's a big waste of resources, but it is useful to the "mother's milk of politics" (money) in that 1) it provides a greater range of "shopping choices" in the search for politicians to get into their pockets and 2) it slows down or stops the processing of legislation money doesn't like, for example affordable universal health care.