I have a new column this week on OnlySky. It’s about why we should get rid of the Senate once and for all.
Despite their willingness to fight and die for democracy, despite everything they sacrificed for democracy, the American founders didn’t actually trust democracy. They designed America’s constitutional system to create multiple barriers to the will of the common people. The Senate was one of those.
For a long time, it’s hampered the functioning of the legislative branch, preventing the party that wins elections from being able to govern as it wishes. In our time, it’s become worse than ever, constantly creating artificial crises and paralyzing government shutdowns, and blocking legislation that’s supported by majorities of the public. It’s time to scrap the Senate. But is there any realistic chance of that happening?
Read the excerpt below, then click through to see the full piece. This column is free to read, but members of OnlySky also get special benefits, like a subscriber newsletter:
The biggest problem with the Senate is its electoral malapportionment. Each state gets two votes, regardless of size. The most populous American state, California, has almost 40 million residents; and those 40 million people get the same two votes in the Senate as the least populous state, Wyoming, which has a bit over half a million people. In other words, every resident of Wyoming enjoys almost eighty times as much representation at the federal level as every Californian.
To highlight the absurdity, consider that Los Angeles County alone has more inhabitants than forty U.S. states. But Angelenos still get just two votes in the Senate, and they don’t even have those two votes all to themselves; they have to share them with the rest of California.
In theory, the 26 smallest states—which together account for less than 18% of the U.S. population—could control a majority of votes in the Senate. They could veto legislation supported by the other 82% of Americans.
I generally agree with the longer version on OnlySky, but a minor point about this post: I think it’s incorrect to use the Senate as an example of:
If my early civics education (or what this old fart remembers of it) is correct, the bicameral legislature was actually a compromise to get the Constitution ratified at all. The founders were by no means a group of folks who all agreed on this.
@billseymour #1: Specifically, the smaller states demanded equal representation, while the larger states demanded proportional representation, and the compromise was “por qué no los dos?”. The founders, as a whole, weren’t leery about self-governance per se, but a lot of them didn’t like the idea of the under-educated masses overriding the highly-educated elites. And there was a general assumption at the time that if you owned land, you were more invested in the state’s and/or country’s future than if you didn’t. So there were some barriers in play, ones which inhibited poor folk more than rich ones, but the Senate wasn’t intended to be one of them.
One of the big issues is they tried to make the US into an EU-style Federation, but they couldn’t really get it to work, and being a provincial mega-state wasn’t really an option on the table, so they tried to create a hybrid without the benefit of knowing what combination of traits works and what doesn’t, because nobody ever tried to before. Over the past 2½ centuries things have been gradually drifted from the “closer to a federation” side to the “closer to a provincial mega-state” side of the scale, though the US Constitution prevents a full commitment to either.
Getting rid of the Senate is the way to go but also almost impossible. One idea that occurred to me is merging the Senate and House into one body for the purpose of passing bills. The states still get 2 seats in the Senate but their voting impact would be reduced if the Senate and House are considered one body for voting.
The filibuster is it’s own issue. The Senate has made the filibuster too easy, allowing the minority party to filibuster every issue that comes along. Originally the filibuster required occupying the podium and speaking continuously, requiring a lot of physical effort and coordinated action by several members of the Senate to keep it going. In an attempt to reduce the amount of time it occupied they switched to letting somebody just ask for a bill to be filibustered and then the Senate could move to other matters. This let other matters move forward but it without any cost somebody in the minority party simply filibustered every bill.
The Senate needs to reduce the ability to filibuster everything. This is easy because the Senate gets to choose their own rules, there is no other legal barrier getting in the way. There have been a bunch of proposals but I like going back to the rules that a member had to speak continuously and keep control. It gives the filibuster a real cost, makes it hard to sustain and makes it clear that the member of the Senator doing it is willing to crash the country to prevent this one bill.
I agree with the founders.
Case in point: Trumpism is an expression of “the will of the common people,” to the extent that the concept “the will of the common people” actually makes any sense, and IMHO it is a disaster. Especially since Trump and his cronies have managed to smash through a lot of those very barriers.
Ancient Athenian democracy is often held up as a model of democracy, and it was a disaster, because “the will of the people” is fickle, often incoherent, and frequently blatantly unjust. Not to mention foolish. It is vulnerable to demagogues (cf. Trump) It supported the war in Sicily, which was already a bad idea, and screwed it up by frequently changing its mind about how it should be run — it damaged Athens to the point that it was conquered by Sparta. The execution of Socrates was an expression of “the will of the people” — is this how we want our country run? And if “democracy” was such a good idea, why did Athens cycle through other forms of government, such as oligarchy and dictatorship, on a regular basis?
The founders were all too aware of the failings of pretty much any form of government, and they tried to create a “least bad” form. (I’m trying to remember the famous quote about “the worst form of government — except for all the others.”)
See, I disagree with this.
I agree that Trump or someone like him was the thing the founders feared. But the anti-democratic measures they put in place made it more likely, not less, that a corrupt and unfit demagogue would win the presidency. Specifically, the Electoral College is what made it possible for him to win in 2016 despite losing the popular vote. If not for that, we wouldn’t still be hearing about him today.
i’d say demote the senate, but keep them in some capacity – because no state should get steamrollered on issues vital to them. the question is defining the boundaries of those vital issues. they’re probably mostly to do with interstate commerce, distribution of resources shared by states like the (non-tx lol) power grid, etc. human rights, on the other hand, fuck them if they wanna turn fargo into riyadh, jfc.
like i’d favor a technocracy where different cadres and councils within the gov get a say on issues important to their constituents, and the state’s rights council (replacing the senate) would be one of dozens, not well known outside of c-span fans.