Defend the Indefensible: The Undemocratic (and, right now, un-Democratic) United States Senate

1. California -- 1
2. Texas -- 1.6
3. New York -- 1.9
4. Florida -- 2.1
5. Illinois -- 2.8
6. Pennsylvania -- 2.9
7. Ohio -- 3.1
8. Michigan -- 3.6
9. Georgia -- 4.1
10. New Jersey -- 4.1
11. North Carolina -- 4.2
12. Virginia -- 4.8
13. Massachusetts -- 5.6
14. Indiana -- 5.8
15. Washington -- 5.8
16. Tennessee -- 6.1
17. Missouri -- 6.2
18. Arizona -- 6.3
19. Maryland -- 6.5
20. Wisconsin -- 6.5
21. Minnesota -- 7.0
22. Colorado -- 7.8
23. Alabama -- 8.0
24. Louisiana -- 8.0
25. South Carolina -- 8.5
26. Kentucky -- 8.8
27. Oregon -- 10.0
28. Oklahoma -- 10.2
29. Connecticut -- 10.2
30. Iowa -- 12.2
31. Mississippi -- 12.4
32. Arkansas -- 13.0
33. Kansas -- 13.3
34. Utah -- 15.0
35. Nevada -- 15.6
36. New Mexico -- 18.9
37. West Virginia -- 20.0
38. Nebraska -- 21.1
39. Idaha -- 25.6
40. Maine -- 27.6
41. New Hampshire -- 27.6
42. Hawaii -- 28.5
43. Rhode Island -- 32.2
44. Montana -- 39.9
45. Delaware -- 44.9
46. South Dakota -- 46.6
47. Alaska -- 55.2
48. North Dakota -- 57.0
49. Vermont -- 57.9
50. Wyoming -- 71.8

Might as well get stoned and go surfing.

America’s 25 Most Conservative Cities (in descending order)

Rank City State

1 Provo Utah

2 Lubbock Texas

3 Abilene Texas

4 Hialeah Florida

5 Plano Texas

6 Colorado Springs Colorado

7 Gilbert Arizona

8 Bakersfield California

9 Lafayette Louisiana

10 Orange California

11 Escondido California

12 Allentown Pennsylvania

13 Mesa Arizona

14 Arlington Texas

15 Peoria Arizona

16 Cape Coral Florida

17 Garden Grove California

18 Simi Valley California

19 Corona California

20 Clearwater Florida

21 West Valley City Utah

22 Oklahoma City Oklahoma

23 Overland Park Kansas

24 Anchorage Alaska

25 Huntington Beach California

yes, but there are many parts of california and new york state that aren't "very different" from the heartland states at all, and share many of the same problems.

The issue is whether it's more important for "states" to have a say, or for people. Which party it hurts or helps has varied. Right now it obviously helps the Republicans. But it's arbitrary and anti-democratic no matter who it benefits. I guess people accept it because it's what we know (and because 100 is such a nice round number).

xpost: I'm not sure a tyranny of the minority is exactly an improvement.

The issue is whether it's more important for "states" to have a say, or for people.

Obviously I was using "state" as a shorthand for the people of that state, and often the people of different states have very different priorities. For example the loss of manufacturing jobs might be a much bigger issue for people in states that are economically depressed than in states that have benefitted from a tech boom. And there's also the matter of funding for local projects - flood control, road improvement, or whatever else.

If democracy means nothing more than majority rule, why not just make Christianity the national religion, since the vast majority of the country is Christian?

and what i was saying is that the particular pocket of a state where a tech boom is happening may not have a significant economic effect on the whole state. the bay area has tech jobs, but in the central valley (not very far away) there's a lot of rural farmland and isolated exurbia. in new york, once you get out of westchester and the hudson valley, there isn't any of that nyc money and everyone's unemployed. the truth is that greater nyc's economy has very little bearing on the economic health of the whole state.

By what you're saying maybe the real problem is using the arbitrary "state" as a political unit, not non-proportional representation. But there are certainly issues that vary regionally, whether the variances coincide with states or not. Maybe a single-house system would work better but with some kind of weighting for less populous areas.

yes, exactly. a "state" is a geographical delineation, not an all-encompassing description of the people who live there.

It wasn't arbitrary in its design, but it's arbitary in its effects. People don't choose where they live based on whether it's a "big" state or "small" state -- most people don't, anyway -- but where you end up living for whatever mix of personal and professional reasons ends up having a big effect on how much representative power you have in the federal government.

And it doesn't protect against a tyranny of the majority, at least not in any thoughtful way. It was designed to protect the interests of individual states, at a time when those interests were considered distinct enough to need protection. But those differences have eroded considerably over time -- we all use the same currency, we allow largely unfettered interstate commerce, and most significantly we are all subject to a much stronger federal government -- and so what the Senate ends up protecting is the ability of canny small-state senators like Robert Byrd and Ted Stevens to divert massive amounts of federal money to highways in West Virginia and bridges in Alaska. The bizarre allocation of homeland security money, with Midwestern states getting many times the per capita funding as demonstrably more threatened coastal states, could not happen without the Senate.

The other thing to keep in mind is that the Senate's "check" on the House was not a function of its 2-per-state structure, but of the way senators were elected, by elite groups of state legislators rather than by popular ballot. The Senate was supposed to be the educated aristocracy's bulwark against the masses. A lot of its vaunted traditions derive from that. So it's just basically a problematic institution all the way around.

http://www.blackhillsattractions.com/assets/pics/Attractions%20Pics/cornpalace.jpg

not at all! it was just the hokiest thing i could think of.

people in new mexico don't even have the same priorities as people in other parts of new mexico! santa fe and its surrounding mountain towns have some extremely wealthy residents, and with all the tourism there are plenty of opportunities for moneymaking (from minimum-wage service industry stuff all the way up to millionaire real-estate mogul). the weather is beautiful and there isn't a water shortage the way there is down in dry low-desert towns like albuquerque.

arizona faces a pretty similar divide.

And that's what state governments are for -- to decide how to address the relative needs and wants of Santa Fe vs. other portions of the state.

and it's not just economic issues: a lot of NYS has "heartland values".

Notice how, a couple of notable exceptions aside, the senators that people care about/listen to/get the most face time are all in the top half of the population ranking.

(xpost: THE SENATE IS NOT THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.)

I understand that it's not gonna change any time soon, it's in the Constitution and we're stuck with it. But that doesn't make it defensible.

As for which senators have or have had most clout, how 'bout Ted Stevens, Robert Byrd, Joe Biden, Tom Daschle, Patrick Leahy, Olympia Snowe...all from the 10 smallest states.

None of the arguments that have been put forward on this thread justifying the make-up of the Senate really hold water. If you really wanted to protect against a tyranny of the majority, you would create a system that protected meaningful groups of persons who have a real danger of having their rights trampled on: eg., religious, political or ethnic minorities. I don't see any reason to think that Wyomans (if that's the right word) are such a group. I don't see why those who live in sparsely-populated rural areas are such an important endangered group of people that their rights should be so heavily favored over the rights of everyone else who chooses to live in more densely-populated areas.

just b/c there are very conservative places in California doesn't mean that the state votes solidly left of center

yes, the Senate is undemocratic in its overrepresentation of small states, but the impact of that overrepresentation (aside from whether it's justified) is somewhat complex. many of those small states are rural. does that mean that, for instance, farming interests are overrepresented? yes, probably, but the identity of those itnerests changes over time, and it's worth considering whether that is necessarily a bad thing (compare the antitrust exemption for baseball, though that certainly has much less serious political consequences). does it give the body a general political/ideological slant? yes, probably, again, but again that slant also has probably changed over time, going in different directions.

as above, it's state boundaries themselves that are in part the problem, but i don't see how you go about fixing it (though there might come a tipping point where enough people decide that they're sort of silly) or fixing it without a serious risk of making things worse.

tipsy is trying to reverse-engineer tyranny of the masses. will explain later.

tipsy as fair and good as your plan might be i think it would run into something called "politics". proportional representation in both houses would be a massive power giveaway from the rural states to the metropolises (metropoli?) -- isn't this actually the very issue involved in "the great compromise"? southern states wanted a unicameral legislature, with two representatives from each state; northern states wanted a unicameral legislature with members distributed according to population; the compromise is what we have today. it's hard to imagine any other solution being agreed to, really.

I think the fifty stars on the flag should be sized according to its representative state's population.

Cuz then that flag would look CR@ZZZZZzzzzY!

for all the rhetoric, i still haven't seen anything posted that convinces me that a rural vote should be worth five times an urban one, or whatever the ration is.

New York City secession, plz

ok here's a really simple and obvious hypothetical

say a bill was proposed to levy a new federal tax on farmland. would it be fair to have this vote determined solely by a chamber with representation proportional to population? er no.

say i was made of straw, just to suit your argument.

is a farm tax really so outlandish a hypothetical??

with strictly proportional representation you basically have new york, california and texas deciding on every federal law, for everyone.

the point of the arrangement of the us senate is to make sure that a bill isn't just popular, it's WIDESPREAD in its popularity

give rural votes huge weighting on all issues, just in case there's a proposal on agriculture? how arbitrary is that?

everyone in new york, california and texas agrees on everything?

lets split california and texas into two states each and combine montana, wyoming and alaska and then everyone would be happy

IIRC abraham lincoln was very dubious of the senate structure too - it arrogated way more power to his southern enemies than he would have liked; abandoning it, however, would likely have improved the chances of another secession - or series of secessions - as rural states repeatedly found themselves out of the loop

i like how the pro-proportionality contingent here thinks that actual politics are unnecessary to the formulation of political structures

splitters!

xpost yeah i appreciate the necessity of the system, particularly at the time of the formation of the political structures tracer, that doesn't mean that you can defend them as fair or necessary today, just probably unchangeable.

I find the idea that the States are just some 'arbitrary historical accident' downright gross.

an example from elsewhere: what if you had a student government association for a middle school comprising 6th, 7th and 8th graders? let's say that for some reason the 7th grade was much bigger than the other two groups. in voting, 7th-graders win every position (treasurer, vp, etc). is that fair?

give rural votes huge weighting on all issues, just in case there's a proposal on agriculture? how arbitrary is that?

-- darraghmac

senate was *invented* just for that purpose!

i HATE the seventh graders!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

basically, i think anything that gives representation to states rather than people is on shaky philosophical ground, at least from the standpoint of democracy. if the goal is something other than democracy, then maybe you can make a case for representing the interests of "states," but i'm not sure what it would be.

House of Representatives is weighted towards interests of democracy, Senate is weighted towards interests of federalism. Sure, the Senate seems peculiar if you just flatly disregard the sovereignty of the individual states, but first you ought to win that debate.

an example from elsewhere: what if you had a student government association for a middle school comprising 6th, 7th and 8th graders? let's say that for some reason the 7th grade was much bigger than the other two groups. in voting, 7th-graders win every position (treasurer, vp, etc). is that fair?

-- Tracer Hand, Monday, December 17, 2007 5:43 PM (36 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

i dunno- did they get the most votes?

again- assuming all seventh graders vote the same, and by extension all inhabitants of highly populated areas? how come there's more than one candidate in new york, if all seven million or whatever voters always go FOR THE SAME GUY?

the point of the arrangement of the us senate is to make sure that a bill isn't just popular, it's WIDESPREAD in its popularity

widespread geographically, maybe. you get the support of montana and utah, you're covering a lot of land. but so what? why do all those acres in montana and utah weigh equal to all those people in new york and florida (which have a lot of acres themselves, anyway)?

and the rural-urban split is the wrong way to think about this. vahid noted that california has maybe as many farmers as iowa. i grew up in total rural farmland in western new york. but new york farmers have a lot less political pull in the senate than iowa farmers. wyoming ranching interests are way more represented than texas ranching interests. it's true that smaller states tend to be less urban, but a lot of more populated states have plenty of rural areas, rural residents and rural interests. plus also this invocation of "rural interests" seems rooted in some sentimental ideas about farmers vs. city slickers that doesn't have much to do with modern agribusiness.

Sure, the Senate seems peculiar if you just flatly disregard the sovereignty of the individual states, but first you ought to win that debate.

this doesn't have to do with the sovereignty of states, it has to do with the representation of states at the federal level. new york is just as sovereign a state as alaska. the division of power between state and federal levels of government is a fine check against overweening federal power, and it functions the same way in big states as in small states. the issue is that in representing the interests of constituents at the federal level, small states have disproportionate power. you could make a case that this actually impinges on the sovereignty of more populated states -- by virtue of having more people, the states are less able to represent the interests of their constituents at the federal level.

in any case, it's not a sovereignty issue.

I find the idea that the States are just some 'arbitrary historical accident' downright gross.

there are a lot of things about american history that are downright gross. the haphazard organization and delineation of state boundaries is sort of the least of them.

but again, going back to my example of the n.y. state senate, there are various historical and political reasons for the drawing of new york county lines. they didn't just arise out of nowhere, they were done to satisfy one political purpose or other. and they function ok -- each county government is larger or smaller depending on the size and resources of its population and so forth. which is true also of the states. but if you tried to make the argument that yates county (where i used to live) should have the same representation in the state senate as queens county, which has nearly 100 times the population, on the grounds that you needed to protect "rural interests" or something, i don't think you'd find many people outside yates county willing to make that case. even if you assured people in the larger counties that, don't worry, the general assembly will still be proportionately representative.

this also doesn't have to do with the tyranny of the masses. there are other checks in the constitution against that. if anything, what the senate structure makes possible is a tyranny of the minority, which is preferable to "tyranny of the masses" exactly how i don't know.

(i.e. even in a more fairly representative senate, you could maintain the 60-vote cloture rule, which is the senate's biggest hedge against majority tyranny. but you'd need to actually represent 40-plus percent of the electorate in order to stop cloture.)

they didn't just arise out of nowhere, they were done to satisfy one political purpose or other.

So, like, the opposite of arbitrary historical accidents?

The Senate wasn't created to "protect rural interests." It was created to protect the interests of SMALL states, and balance the power of states with different sizes and populations. Large population states (irrespective of size or population density) have lots of representatives in the House. The existance of the Senate has nothing to do with rural/urban differences, or to unfairly "increase" the power of empty acres in big, empty states. Delaware in particular was afraid that its interests, as a state, would be overrun by big states with lots of people, and lots of room for more people.

i appreciate the necessity of the system, particularly at the time of the formation of the political structures tracer, that doesn't mean that you can defend them as fair or necessary today, just probably unchangeable.

yeah this is really all i mean. and there were several compromises made to get the constitution ratified in the first place, most obviously and horribly on slavery. that one at least was eventually rescinded. and the senate as devised was way less democratic than it is now, obviously, since senators weren't even popularly elected until 1913. so there's plenty of precedent for us not being forever bound to 200-year-old ugly compromises. but i agree there's no way this one's going to change.

The United States is a Republic not a democracy. It was never set up to be particularly democratic.

i love this meme or whatever you call it. as if there's some contradiction between a republic and a democracy. a republic can be democratic, a democracy can be republican. the u.s. was established as a democratic constitutional republic, and has become progressively more democratic as we've gone along, with the abolition of slavery and the expansion of voting rights. (i mostly hear "it's a republic not a democracy" from republicans, i guess because they don't like the sound of anything with democrat in it.)

So, like, the opposite of arbitrary historical accidents?

no, i'd call the particular confluences of politics, geography and economics that produced the various state boundaries at various times "historical accidents." that is, they weren't predestined by anything, and their rationale was contingent on the context of the particular moment when they organized as states.

The Senate wasn't created to "protect rural interests." It was created to protect the interests of SMALL states, and balance the power of states with different sizes and populations.

yes i know. i'm not the one invoking rural interests here. i'm the one saying rural interests in big states get sort of screwed vs. rural interests in small states. as for the rationale of balancing the power of "states," that's exactly what i don't buy, on any grounds except "well we needed to do this in 1789 to get the thing signed."

i think gerrymandering and the total uncompetitiveness of most House seats is a bigger problem than the existence of the Senate.

i think that may be true.

but i can only obsess over one wonky constitutional pet peeve at a time.

the best thing going for a bicameral leg branch is that the fucked-up nepotistic bureaucracies of the two can usually be counted on to cancel each other out. the best explanation I ever heard for the structure and rules of congress was "do you really want these people to be able to get a lot of stuff done? - no"

The United States is a Republic not a democracy. It was never set up to be particularly democratic.

this is the lamest political myth ever. a republic is an institution of government, and democracy is a MEANS of government. the two aren't mutually exclusive.

what he said:

There is much grousing on the left about the filibuster, the threat of which has taken such hold that routine bills now need 60 votes. Getting less attention is the undemocratic character of the Senate itself.

Why, for example, have even Democratic senators been resistant on health-care reform? It might be because so many of the key players represent so few of the voters who carried Obama to victory -- and so few of the nation's uninsured. The Senate Finance Committee's "Gang of Six" that is drafting health-care legislation that may shape the final deal -- without a public insurance option -- represents six states that are among the least populous in the country: Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, Maine, New Mexico and Iowa.

Between them, those six states hold 8.4 million people -- less than New Jersey -- and represent 3 percent of the U.S. population. North Dakota and Wyoming each have fewer than 80,000 uninsured people, in a country where about 47 million lack insurance. In the House, those six states have 13 seats out of 435, 3 percent of the whole. In the Senate, those six members are crafting what may well be the blueprint for reform.

i've been meaning to recalculate the party math in the senate to figure what percentage of the population the gop senators actually represent at the moment. i'm guessing it's somewhere in the 30-35 percent range.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/07/us/politics/new-yorks-junior-senator-doggedly-refusing-to-play-the-part.html?hp&_r=0

you would think that a deliberative body where everyone's vote is equal in a country that is a democracy would not be all wah wah wah deference wah wah wah structural protocols of seniority, sheesh

gillibrand otm

Supreme Court fight is a chance to revisit my peeve.

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2016/02/17/3750223/here-are-20776265-reasons-why-the-gop-should-shut-up-and-confirm-obamas-supreme-court-nominee/

The 46 members of the Senate Democratic caucus represent over 170 million people. The 54 Republican senators represent less than 150 million.

Would also be interesting to see that in terms of total votes received in last election -- not sure that would be more or less valid, but another interesting way of looking at it.

Yeah, they looked at that, too:

According to the voting reform group FairVote, “the 46 Democratic caucus members in the 114th Congress received a total of 67.8 million votes in winning their seats, while the 54 Republican caucus members received 47.1 million votes.”

Abolish the Senate. https://t.co/rlsyg3kIrS

— corey robin (@CoreyRobin) July 11, 2018

that is not going to happen

It could happen around the time Ornstein’s numbers come true, by various hooks and crooks.

the nerve of residents of 75% of the landmass having a 70% say in the senate

By that logic, the morbidly obese should be allowed to vote twice.

Cool concern troll, Adam.

lol Adam

Constitutional amendments are ratified by supermajorities of states and it’s hard to imagine depopulated states are going to vote to give up their disproportionate federal power

I don't think anyone really thinks you're getting rid of the Senate without an actual revolution.

sounds good to me, let's burn down South Dakota

it's all rocks, what're you gonna burn

frack 'em

By 2040, according to a University of Virginia analysis of Census population projections, about half of the country will live in just eight states — which means 16 senators for one half of America and 84 for the other half. Meanwhile, according to Stanford political scientist Jonathan Rodden, partisanship closely correlates with population density — “as you go from the center of cities out through the suburbs and into rural areas, you traverse in a linear fashion from Democratic to Republican places.”

So America is fast approaching a tipping point where one party will enjoy a permanent supermajority in the United States Senate — and with it, permanent control over the federal judiciary.

https://thinkprogress.org/how-abraham-lincoln-rigged-the-senate-for-republicans/

(More or less the same statistic as the last time this thread was bumped, but worth a reminder.)