The Senate should not be under the control of one man. Why do we have 100 Senators , and one man holds all the power. Our government is not working like it is supposed to , and there are no checks and balances. It seems the executive branc , consists of federal courts , the Supreme Court the Senate , the Attorney General ,and the justice Dept. Who's doing the checking and balancing?
Excellent article! I was taught in civics class that the House representation was based on population, but the Senate representation was equal for each state so that small states would not be under the thumb of large states because they had so little power in the House. At the time the Constitution was written that seemed like a reasonable compromise when forming a federal government from a collection of independent states. I suspect many rural states today would say that it is still important, but clearly the Senate is primarily functioning as a tool for the wealthy to hold onto power which I see as a much bigger problem than the rural/urban divide.
That's the story they would like to tell. Back then, rural states = lots of plantations = slavery. So, "rural state interests" was code for "protecting the landed gentry"
Our Government would have a better chance of actually serving the People if the Senate was abolished. As things are the Senators or at least most of them serve their Rich Masters.
The Senate could be reformed yet again. Their rich masters have enough control already over the election process and all the media, so they don't need any more help from an artificially biased Senate.
So the disproportionate representation must be replaced by something closer to the house of representatives, but still be representative of each whole state. It should ideally not be all-or-nothing based on the dominating party. Approval voting is the best way to get the approval of the vast majority of voters, and the winner will send to be more of a moderate.
No matter how the senators are elected, and no matter how many there are, they should have voting power in the Senate that is proportional to the population that the represent in each state.
But there is probably value in having some long term persistence, as long as it represents wisdom rather than mere power. Term limits also make sense, so how about max of 2 terms of 6 years?
How about 3 senators per state, 1 elected every 2 years?
Wow! I didn't realize how explicitly elitist the Senate was, designed to protect not just smaller states but wealthy landowners.
So was curious how bad it could get, how undemocratic the inequality could become. If we add up the population of the 25 smallest states, we get about 20% of the total population. So if for some reason those 25 smallest states were dominated by Republicans but only by a mere 50% in each state, that would mean half the Senate could be elected by a mere 10% of the population.
But it could be even worse: If the largest 25 states had close to 100% Democratic support, then 90% of the total population would be Democrats, but nevertheless, the 10% of the total population who are Republicans being concentrated in those smaller states would still dominated the Senate.
This seems like an unlikely extreme, but we're already trending in that direction. How bad does the undemocratic imbalance need to get before there is an uprising?
The Electoral College for the Presidential election is similar, by the way, but not quite as extreme because at least the number of electors is proportional to the population in each state. Most states switched to a winner takes all mode, so the popular vote can be overruled by the vote of the electors. A clear majority for one party or the other (there can only be 2 because of plurality voting) means only a small number of battleground states matter.
That's already bad enough. But how undemocratic could the Electoral College be? If half the total electors are chosen by 50% of the popular vote in those states, then assuming they are all of one party and everyone else is in the other party, that means only 25% of the population can win over the opposition by the other 75%.
I've always wondered is there a mathematical optimization: What is the smallest percentage of popular votes can you win and still win the electoral college?
Economics professors Michael Geruso and Dean Spears from the University of Texas at Austin ran several simulations of possible U.S. election outcomes in 2019. They found that when Republicans lose the popular vote by a margin of 2 points, they will win 30% of the time. When Republicans lose by 1 point, that probability goes up to 40%. In other words, the narrower the total vote loss, the higher the chance they will win.
Here’s one extreme scenario in today’s political map:
“If Democrats narrow Trump’s margins in [Texas and Arizona], while Trump barely holds onto states like Florida or Wisconsin, the next Democratic candidate could win the popular vote by 5 million votes or more — and still lose the Electoral College.”
Keep up the good work! In my view, the US Senate is the basis and linchpin of the "British" Whig conservative Iron Triangle of Senate, Supreme Court and Executive. Eliminate the Senate and the Court must be directly elected by popular vote, the election for President is much more democratic even with the EC still in place, the House can enact legislation without Senatorial veto, and House and Executive can conduct a far more coherent foreign policy.
Really, it is long past time we got rid of the anachronism of a nearly 240 year old 18th century British Whig constitution that allowed a TV reality character into the highest office in the land.
This rightly exposes a flaw in the constitution which was devised as a compromise among the framers who were dealing with concerns, many of which that no longer exist and others that were and remain unenlightened. But a constitutional convention to rewrite it might make it worse unless it were done with more intelligence and sense of fairness than seems to be the norm.
Bolivia also had a great process for their new constitution. They held a constituency assembly like they went from town to town with people drafting provisions.
This constitution is deeply reactionary because only 55 people were part of the convention.
I don't see any problem with the senate that can not be addressed by decent campaign finance reform. A senate seat is a state wide election, and such are ex$pencive.
A good explanation of why Republicans dominate is that they usually have more campaign cash--and often a lot more. If the wealthy are allowed to continue to do the lion's share of campaign finance, they will continue to be allowed to set the agenda.
Senate seats cannot be gerrymandered like house seats can.
I believe there are actual working class people in these smaller states. Maybe I'm imagining things. But if there are, I also imagine they make up the majority of the population there.
If we were to be as bold as to have effective campaign finance reform, a lot of the political gravely train would be derailed. House and senate seats would likely change hands more frequently - - something almost all incumbents would likely detest.
But it would look a lot more like democracy than what we have now.
Since they are to represent wealth let us assign them by state according to population within the top 5% of income earners as measured by income reported on their 1040
If the numbers are correct, the Senate is elected by the people and we should be able to make our will known through our vote. I believe that only a minority of people usually vote. If most people support Medicare for All and the Green New Deal, as the graph indicates, and they voted that way, we could make it happen. It takes persistence, determination, and the willingness to be engaged.
Shame to have hillbillies running our lives. Kansas gets two senators. That's about the average IQ of the rural counties, eg 2. This remanent of the Slavers and Enablers Club of 1789 has to go. Unicameral is what we need.
Stunning numbers. That small state, big state argument of the Slavers and Enablers Club of 1787 really came back to bite us. Hard to believe my life is controlled to some extend by a couple of 100K rubes in the former and new Confederacy. But that is a fact. Kill the Senate.
Funny how the most populated states are also the wealthiest and are where the most wealthy people live. Seems like the wealthy would still end up controling the Senate.
The US needs a bi-cameral legislature as a check against a stochastic and actually unrepresentative take over. For example, if an unrepresentative Tea Party briefly were to take over the House again, a more stable Senate (if more representative of the populace than the House at that moment) could hold it in check. Constitutional amendment has already revised the appointment of senators from what was originally conceived. And to become democratic and reflect the nation's modern demographics, the Senate certainly needs further constitutional reform both in its composition and in its internal operation. Abolishing the Senate is a bad idea; but its thorough reform is necessary.
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 Senate should not be under the control of one man. Why do we have 100 Senators , and one man holds all the power. Our government is not working like it is supposed to , and there are no checks and balances. It seems the executive branc , consists of federal courts , the Supreme Court the Senate , the Attorney General ,and the justice Dept. Who's doing the checking and balancing?
You are absolutely right. The Senate's internal rules seem to give the majority leader undue power. I should research how it became that way!
Robert Caro’s book “Master of the Senate” has a good history of the development of the Senate although he rationalizes it's anti-democratic nature.
Excellent article! I was taught in civics class that the House representation was based on population, but the Senate representation was equal for each state so that small states would not be under the thumb of large states because they had so little power in the House. At the time the Constitution was written that seemed like a reasonable compromise when forming a federal government from a collection of independent states. I suspect many rural states today would say that it is still important, but clearly the Senate is primarily functioning as a tool for the wealthy to hold onto power which I see as a much bigger problem than the rural/urban divide.
That's the story they would like to tell. Back then, rural states = lots of plantations = slavery. So, "rural state interests" was code for "protecting the landed gentry"
Our Government would have a better chance of actually serving the People if the Senate was abolished. As things are the Senators or at least most of them serve their Rich Masters.
The Senate could be reformed yet again. Their rich masters have enough control already over the election process and all the media, so they don't need any more help from an artificially biased Senate.
So the disproportionate representation must be replaced by something closer to the house of representatives, but still be representative of each whole state. It should ideally not be all-or-nothing based on the dominating party. Approval voting is the best way to get the approval of the vast majority of voters, and the winner will send to be more of a moderate.
No matter how the senators are elected, and no matter how many there are, they should have voting power in the Senate that is proportional to the population that the represent in each state.
But there is probably value in having some long term persistence, as long as it represents wisdom rather than mere power. Term limits also make sense, so how about max of 2 terms of 6 years?
How about 3 senators per state, 1 elected every 2 years?
Or maybe we have ranked choice voting so senators get seats based on proportion of the total state!
It would also encourage third parties.
Wow! I didn't realize how explicitly elitist the Senate was, designed to protect not just smaller states but wealthy landowners.
So was curious how bad it could get, how undemocratic the inequality could become. If we add up the population of the 25 smallest states, we get about 20% of the total population. So if for some reason those 25 smallest states were dominated by Republicans but only by a mere 50% in each state, that would mean half the Senate could be elected by a mere 10% of the population.
But it could be even worse: If the largest 25 states had close to 100% Democratic support, then 90% of the total population would be Democrats, but nevertheless, the 10% of the total population who are Republicans being concentrated in those smaller states would still dominated the Senate.
This seems like an unlikely extreme, but we're already trending in that direction. How bad does the undemocratic imbalance need to get before there is an uprising?
I don't know if undemocratic imbalances ever create uprisings. Usually, uprisings happen from extreme income inequality.
The Electoral College for the Presidential election is similar, by the way, but not quite as extreme because at least the number of electors is proportional to the population in each state. Most states switched to a winner takes all mode, so the popular vote can be overruled by the vote of the electors. A clear majority for one party or the other (there can only be 2 because of plurality voting) means only a small number of battleground states matter.
That's already bad enough. But how undemocratic could the Electoral College be? If half the total electors are chosen by 50% of the popular vote in those states, then assuming they are all of one party and everyone else is in the other party, that means only 25% of the population can win over the opposition by the other 75%.
I've always wondered is there a mathematical optimization: What is the smallest percentage of popular votes can you win and still win the electoral college?
Economics professors Michael Geruso and Dean Spears from the University of Texas at Austin ran several simulations of possible U.S. election outcomes in 2019. They found that when Republicans lose the popular vote by a margin of 2 points, they will win 30% of the time. When Republicans lose by 1 point, that probability goes up to 40%. In other words, the narrower the total vote loss, the higher the chance they will win.
Here’s one extreme scenario in today’s political map:
“If Democrats narrow Trump’s margins in [Texas and Arizona], while Trump barely holds onto states like Florida or Wisconsin, the next Democratic candidate could win the popular vote by 5 million votes or more — and still lose the Electoral College.”
Source: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/9/17/20868790/republicans-lose-popular-vote-win-electoral-college
Keep up the good work! In my view, the US Senate is the basis and linchpin of the "British" Whig conservative Iron Triangle of Senate, Supreme Court and Executive. Eliminate the Senate and the Court must be directly elected by popular vote, the election for President is much more democratic even with the EC still in place, the House can enact legislation without Senatorial veto, and House and Executive can conduct a far more coherent foreign policy.
Really, it is long past time we got rid of the anachronism of a nearly 240 year old 18th century British Whig constitution that allowed a TV reality character into the highest office in the land.
It's almost like a bad copy of the "House of Lords" without Lords :)
This rightly exposes a flaw in the constitution which was devised as a compromise among the framers who were dealing with concerns, many of which that no longer exist and others that were and remain unenlightened. But a constitutional convention to rewrite it might make it worse unless it were done with more intelligence and sense of fairness than seems to be the norm.
Listen to our episode on Venezuela https://historicly.substack.com/p/ep-20-if-you-like-socialism-look-c03
Bolivia also had a great process for their new constitution. They held a constituency assembly like they went from town to town with people drafting provisions.
This constitution is deeply reactionary because only 55 people were part of the convention.
I don't see any problem with the senate that can not be addressed by decent campaign finance reform. A senate seat is a state wide election, and such are ex$pencive.
A good explanation of why Republicans dominate is that they usually have more campaign cash--and often a lot more. If the wealthy are allowed to continue to do the lion's share of campaign finance, they will continue to be allowed to set the agenda.
Senate seats cannot be gerrymandered like house seats can.
I believe there are actual working class people in these smaller states. Maybe I'm imagining things. But if there are, I also imagine they make up the majority of the population there.
If we were to be as bold as to have effective campaign finance reform, a lot of the political gravely train would be derailed. House and senate seats would likely change hands more frequently - - something almost all incumbents would likely detest.
But it would look a lot more like democracy than what we have now.
Since they are to represent wealth let us assign them by state according to population within the top 5% of income earners as measured by income reported on their 1040
What source do you provide for these charts? Or did you just make them up?
Pew research: https://thehill.com/hilltv/what-americas-thinking/494602-poll-69-percent-of-voters-support-medicare-for-all
As for the wealth of senators go to : opensecrets.com
If the numbers are correct, the Senate is elected by the people and we should be able to make our will known through our vote. I believe that only a minority of people usually vote. If most people support Medicare for All and the Green New Deal, as the graph indicates, and they voted that way, we could make it happen. It takes persistence, determination, and the willingness to be engaged.
Then it was never intended, by Madison, to be a democracy, but an oligarchy. restructure the whole system.
Shame to have hillbillies running our lives. Kansas gets two senators. That's about the average IQ of the rural counties, eg 2. This remanent of the Slavers and Enablers Club of 1789 has to go. Unicameral is what we need.
Stunning numbers. That small state, big state argument of the Slavers and Enablers Club of 1787 really came back to bite us. Hard to believe my life is controlled to some extend by a couple of 100K rubes in the former and new Confederacy. But that is a fact. Kill the Senate.
Funny how the most populated states are also the wealthiest and are where the most wealthy people live. Seems like the wealthy would still end up controling the Senate.
The US needs a bi-cameral legislature as a check against a stochastic and actually unrepresentative take over. For example, if an unrepresentative Tea Party briefly were to take over the House again, a more stable Senate (if more representative of the populace than the House at that moment) could hold it in check. Constitutional amendment has already revised the appointment of senators from what was originally conceived. And to become democratic and reflect the nation's modern demographics, the Senate certainly needs further constitutional reform both in its composition and in its internal operation. Abolishing the Senate is a bad idea; but its thorough reform is necessary.
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.