This idea that the senate will never switch over to the democrats is ridiculous. People change, states change, demographics change. The world isn’t static. People in states getting perpetually left behind change to catch up or get forced to catch up because their land is so cheap people end up moving there.
The increased urbanization of this country has been going on for like 200 years, not sure why you think that's changing.
OT: I was watching 40 year old virgin. Steve Carrell pops in a video from Paul Rudd’s giant box of porn. The video he’s watching features Stormy Daniels. Google confirms. https://www.pornhub.com/view_video.php?viewkey=ph59b59f79902e2
I believe urbanization will continue. Cities are far more liberal than rural areas. People in the middle of bumfuck Kansas will move to cities inside Kansas and trend more liberal. People in bumfuck North Dakota will do the same. This country has a history of changing and evolving and will continue to do so.
Rural areas are being squeezed out by corporate farming. I would still appreciate a blue wave actually moving from the coasts to the upper and middle plains to aide in the effort to resume our progress.
Regardless of the party they vote for, it will still be undemocratic as the majority of senators will represent an increasingly smaller minority. That’s a problem.
Is that a major problem? Increased urbanization likely will force higher concentration into the states that are currently more urbanized, but it is also likely to increase urbanization in the more rural states. If the more rural states become more similar in thinking to the urban states (as is likely to happen as populations become more concentrated in cities), the views of those rural states are more likely to be similar to the entire country. The idea that the ideology of the Senate will be vastly different than the ideology of the nation over large time periods only holds up to scrutiny if all red states avoid the huge, centuries long trend of urbanization. Currently, we have a 51/49 split, which isn’t statistically significantly different than the presidential election popular vote. Democratic political pundits should be loudly proclaiming the current differences are long term in nature and we need to do everything to stop the trends. It is their job to excite their constituency and encourage voting and changes to the system that benefit a more progressive world.
In today's issue of "Ben Sassy is a pussy" he throws out some hot both sidesisms while hawking his book
It’s migration for opportunities. Opportunities are concentrating in fewer areas. You aren’t getting that population redistributed without major federal incentivizing to force it. And yes as the government becomes more undemocratic, the more likely it is to lead to violence or dissolution of the union. People want their governments to actually represent them.
People much smarter and more educated than either of us on this issue disagree with you, aggressively. It still doesn't change the increasingly undemocratic nature of our democracy, even noted on international scales as flawed, the founders did not anticipate things like a single state having one of the largest economies in the world or individual states having population 40x that of others and growing which also sets aside that Dems have to win the House by ~7% to have a majority in the house which is supposed to be the most egalitarian 2 of the last 3 presidential elections won by republicans have been non-majority OR plurality (and going to be increasingly likely as time moves forward) and again, going to get worse, regardless of the partisan make up
people shouldn't be surprised when a state like California who gets politically marginalized by a bill like the recent tax bill and after a few decades of it happening after the majority of the states passing those laws largely just takes from the tax revenue california generates says fuck this
https://www.icip.iastate.edu/tables/population/urban-pct-states In that data table, I believe only 4 states were approximately flat or down on urbanization. The trends are in democrats’ favor. Do you have a study indicating that the Democrats have to win by 7% to take the House if you use non-gerrymandered districts or 2010 districts? We are in an extreme environment right now because the Democratic Party was caught extremely offsides following unrestricted corporate donations. It will reverse over time.
It isn’t about party affiliation. It’s about a failure of representative government. The Senate is an inherently undemocratic institution and its only getting more so. Unicameral legislature now.
No one can agree on what non-gerrymandered even means so no on that one. Which again, you're basically saying "just wait" instead of advocating for the mechanisms we have now to address a system that isn't representative. I don't really know what you mean by extremely offsides either
Even an urbanized low population state’s citizens will have different interests from an urbanized large state. I think it’s a legitimate question as to whether the state as an organization plays an ultimately anti-democratic role in U.S. government. I think they do, but only because the federal judiciary is increasingly weak in terms of enforcing federal civil rights, not because of disproportionate representation in the Senate.
It’s both. The Senate has enormous legislative power - especially with the existence of the filibuster. It and the electoral college are both undemocratic.
People in other countries don't understand how Hillary Clinton won by 3 million votes but Donald Trump was elected president.
Both of those institutions are more democratic now than they were in 1789. I don't take majority rule to be the sole defining characteristic of a liberal democracy - an overwhelming number of which currently have bicameral legislatures.
Agreed. It is also ridiculous to assume that there is a possible solution to the Senate issue that doesn’t involve a much better ground game by Democrats in existing red states. Any path to amending the constitution requires a significantly higher number of states voting for the change than Democrats currently have under control.
In 1790, the largest state had 11.7 x as many people as the smallest state. In 2010, the largest state had 66 x as many people as the smallest state. Now more people have the legal right to vote, but the degree or disparity between “big” and “little” now is ridiculous.
Democratic or Republican, small states aren’t going to be willing to cede their current advantage to the large.
bwi2 If everyone in the country who was at least 18 had equal access to voting, I'd agree that this wouldn't be as big of a gripe, but we both know that isn't the case.You cannot ignore majore voter suppression and disenfranchisement in all of this.
That’s actually the argument he is making - that the failure of the federal judiciary to protect voter rights is the threat to democracy - not the structural failings of the senate and the electoral college.
In 1790, we didn’t have direct election of Senators and state legislatures chose electors at will. There are a lot of things the founders couldn’t possibly contemplate about today but the entire purpose of the Senate was the protection of small state interests against majoritarian ones. It isn’t less of a democratic institution because small states have less influence in the House now than they did in 1790.
Yup. I’m a bigger Roberts fan than most (probably all, for one reason or another) ITT but the evisceration of the VRA is just an abysmal decision in principle and effect.
Virginia was the largest state and a slave state. The senate wasn’t to protect “small” states. It was to protect slave states. That was the purpose.
I think his decision in Hobby Lobby was tortured and logically inconsistent with his decision in Sebelius.
The Senate is undemocratic and was always constructed that way. The early 1900s saw the movement to the popular vote selecting senators, but the worsening separation between ‘large” and “small” is making it less representative than it had ever been.
Virginia proposed representation in each house to be apportioned by population. New Jersey, backed by Delaware, wanted apportionment by state. Reading directly from Wikipedia at this point, but the slave States backed Virginia’s plan because they were all growing faster and they presumed that the Virginia plan would grant them more power. It wasn’t until the antebellum period that you get the alignment of slave and small states.
The very fact that the Senate confirms lifetime SCOTUS skews the influence of the body, even if the power of smaller states in the House dwindles.