Comment by ericmay
1 day ago
There are a lot of issues in the American political system but the structure of the Senate is not one of those.
It was explicitly created as a way to balance sovereignty of the states against populism, such as that enacted by MAGA or leftists.
If you are a small state like Vermont, you don’t want to just have California, New York, and Texas dictating all rules and laws for the country by sheer weight of their population sizes. That is expressed in the House, but the Senate serves to balance that and ensure that populists don’t run roughshod over the country.
Without such a structure states with less population would either band together and create their own super states - and you can see where this leads, or they wouldn’t have agreed to join the US in the first place.
> That is expressed in the House, but the Senate serves to balance that and ensure that populists don’t run roughshod over the country.
Yet that is exactly what has been happening twice now.
Well, dissolving the Senate would just make that problem even worse if that's your viewpoint. "Twice now" seems to be a dig at Trump as though MAGA is the only populist movement, but ANTIFA/BLM and other, similar populist groups have taken hold of power in various forms as well, primarily in certain west coast states and cities.
Antifa and BLM have the political power of a mouse fart. Please don't compare them to the elephant in the room.
3 replies →
> It was explicitly created as a way to balance sovereignty of the states against populism, such as that enacted by MAGA or leftists.
that only works if the smaller states are not representative of the larger majority of the population.
instead, nowadays the smaller states are actually over-representative of the populist mass - e.g Wyoming is 80% white.
You're misunderstanding the purpose of the Senate, whether Wyoming is 80% white or black or any other random race. The point is that it exists as a sovereignty vote. To take it away would be to cause a civil war or at least a dissolution of the United States because smaller states will walk away.
A lot of the anti-American, anti-Senate, &c. stuff is Russian propaganda precisely because to continue to sow division and encourage populism is to invite destruction and disunity upon the United States.
i understand the purpose of the senate and believe that bicameralism is a good idea and populism is generally bad.
you seem to not understand my point so ill give it one more try:
senate was indeed formed as a bulwark against populism, but the founders didnt anticipate a 68 to 1 population difference between the largest and smallest states (california vs. wyoming), nor the vast differences in composition of their populations. when a tiny fraction of the population holds that much disproportionate veto power, the senate no longer checks populism, it actively empowers a specific, rural populist minority to override the majority.
Yes, if anything the issue is that the House was capped in seats in 1929 and the population has tripled. Smaller states have an outsized representation in Congress currently.
I'm strongly in favor of expanding the House. I failed to mention that in my original post.
Vermonters might not want that because they hold outsized influence on the direction of the country, but then they shouldn't pretend to believe in Democracy.
So, yes, 50 million people should have more say over the country's direction than 1 million. We should stop pretending we have 55 mini countries, because the Supreme Court has stopped pretending we have a 10th Amendment.
> Vermonters might not want that because they hold outsized influence on the direction of the country, but then they shouldn't pretend to believe in Democracy.
A Republic is a form of democracy. Having a Senate in the structure that we do is entirely consistent with democratic principles. To suggest otherwise is incorrect and counter to established definitions in the realm of political philosophy.
> So, yes, 50 million people should have more say over the country's direction than 1 million. We should stop pretending we have 55 mini countries, because the Supreme Court has stopped pretending we have a 10th Amendment.
Right, like how Donald Trump and his 75 million voters get to have more sway of Kamala Harris' voters (I don't recall the exact losing number)?
Nevermind that the state of Vermont is a sovereign entity in our constitutional republic. To modify this existing arrangement you give opportunity for certain states to leave (pro-Russian viewpoints try break up the US - don't fall for them!) since they are deciding as sovereign entities whether or not to participate in the Republic. If you are upset about the 10th Amendment or whatever then you're throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and inviting a Civil War or something similar. I say nah to that. We'll keep the existing system because it's pretty damn good.
This might have made sense for the original 13 colonies but after westward expansion, it clearly does not. Most of the western state borders were formed for administrative reasons
It still makes sense today. It's not perfect but it's a pretty good balance most of the time.