Another problem is Dem voters leaving rural GOP states for urban Dem states. If 100k /- voters in swing states could elect DJT, moving from CA/NY to MI, PA, WI, or OH will do much more good than fleeing to Canada or elsewhere. Yes I am thinking about it.
(If you must flee to Canada, first set residency in a swing state and vote absentee!)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/2016-election/swing-state-margins/
2
A comment from a few weeks ago on a different NYT article said all it would take to unseat McConnell is for two Republican senators to switch parties.
Two.
Who are those patriots? This country needs you.
6
I appreciate Paul from Toronto, whose comments precede mine. He clearly demonstrates that our Constitution does not represent the People of this nation.
The 10 most populated cities in America have more people than the 6 least populated states, which gives these 6 states far superior representation in the Senate, which magnifies the unequal representation that is counter to our belief that "we are all equal under the law"!
Until all citizens are represented equally in our governmental structure, we will continue to spiral down in our economic equality problems, our justice system, our health/welfare needs, our biased religious decisions (separation of religion and government is constantly under attack by whom ever is in power), taxation, and foremost of all is the incredible arrogance and ignorance of political leaders of the health of this planet, i.e. Global Warming.
3
At the risk of sounding—or actually being—pedantic, all historical calculations of the voting populace must recognize that “people” counted before the Census of 1870 included slaves, but slaves that slaves were counted, in accordance with the odious Three-Fifths Compromise, as three-fifths of a human being for purposes of apportioning Representatives, Presidential electors, and direct taxes.
The population of Virginia was comprised of 292,627 slaves, a staggering 39% of the total census count, figured as 175,576 human beings or some 23% of the body count for purposes of apportionment. 15% of the population of Delaware were slaves, figured at approx. 10% for apportionment.
This alters the calculus presented in this piece from Delaware having 12x the voting power as Virginia to 9.4.
Tedious, grade school math—and, yes, pedantic—but necessary to keep in mind when counting the populace before 1865, and thereafter with regard to “Indians” (Native Americans), women and if you are trying to figure out what Wilbur Ross is up to.
A lot of people will want to ignore this analysis, doubt it, or try another round of "hope and change." The fact is, as Jamelle Bouie makes very clear, popular democracy in America is terminal. We now can never undo the damage our so-called Founding Fathers did to the possibility of popular democracy, which they feared and made impossible, with the Electoral College. And, speaking of the Senate, it has been almost exclusively in the control of the white supremacist Confederacy since the end of Reconstruction. Make no mistake about it, the Confederacy never ended.
2
Winning control of the Senate is crucial. Very disappointing that high-potential Senate candidates like Beto O'Rourke and Stacey Abrams decided not to run for Senate seats next year. There needs to be a huge push to flip Senate seats in 2020. O'Rourke and Abrams have shown the importance of focusing on registering voters and increasing turnout.
5
Reading the comments and the column, it is clear why the Senate needs to exist. Specifically to protect us from intolerant progressive ideologues for whom no disagreement is tolerated.
5
@LTJ - I agree... disagreement with trump is absolutely not tolerated. He and his cronies find the dirt on his republican "colleagues" and then threaten to use it should they stray from his path.
Look at what they did to McConnell, Cornyn and Graham!
Truly despicable, trumps House Of Frauds...
6
Funny, I think the problem is the do nothing to solve important problems House of Representatives.
1
How hard would to be for some pioneer Democrats to move to small states and invest heavily in winning Senate races there?
1
I just heard a Republican operative parrot the company line of "The majority of Americans don't want impeachment" to Rev. Al Sharpton. His reply, "Most Americans do want laws followed."
As painful as it is to admit, I honestly no longer believe that is the case for Senate Republicans, and by extension their voters. Trump has now been emboldened to obstruct justice blatantly and in plain sight. Senate Republicans simply don't care. It's more than just going along to get along. They simply don't care. In fact, I truly believe most stopped caring the day Mitch McConnell said, in the middle of a devastating recession, that his goal was to make Barack Obama a one term president. At that moment in time, and in many more since then, we can see blatant disregard for the rule of law, and certainly the quaint notion of checks and balances!
4
If the burglars who attempted to break in to the Democratic Party offices in the Watergate, were discovered to be Russian Military intelligence officers, seeking dirt on the Democrats to help Nixon’s presidential campaign, Nixon would have been imprisoned for a long sentence. Collusion or no collusion, conspiracy or no conspiracy, obstruction or no obstruction.
Trump famously said "I could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and not lose any votes". That has now been replaced by "Trump could be caught handing America’s top military secrets to Russia and still not have any Republican votes for impeachment".
Whatever evidence and proof of criminal acts that Mueller could have come up with, it is certain that such evidence and proof could not be as powerful an indication of wrongdoing as the evidence in the public record that Bret Kavanaugh was lying in the senate hearings relating to his confirmation as a Supreme Court Justice.
Once Ford’s account included three people she said were there AND his calendar had them all at Tim Gaudette’s house on July 1, 1982, AND Ford’s description of the interior of Gaudette’s house in Rockville, MD exactly matches that of the actual house, which still exists: the only way that Kavanaugh was not lying is either: Ford somehow obtained access to his 1982 diary/calendar, or Ford has a time machine or Ford stalked Kavanaugh in 1982 and planned for this if he was nominated to the Supreme Court..."
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4216597
3
Oh so simple solutions to this vexed problem. A few left leaning billionaires can pay for left leaning citizens in blue states to move to red states. Register and vote and flip the state to Blue. All of the displaced people from Puerto Rico who went to blue NY and purple FL can be enticed to move to
Wyoming—579,315 people.
Vermont—623,657 people. A blue state so not in play.
North Dakota—755,393 people -
Alaska—739,795. people -
South Dakota—869,666 people -
Tell these people “move to WY, ND, AK or SD and get meaningful representation in Congress” and send the financial relief to Puerto Rico that has been stalled by Trump and the Senate. This will be sweet revenge. The numbers of people required to flip these states is not so great and the cost being born by people soaking in money who are looking for a way to influence Washington will not be exorbitant and it will make some blue billionaire Democrat feel like a genius.
2
This Republican Senate is deep sixing our democracy. The problem isn't only structural. The problem is McConnell and Trump who have turned politics into warfare. The problem is the Trump base which doesn't care how dodgy or treasonous Trump is so long as Obama or Clinton end up in prison. The problem is a Republican party which will do anything at all in order to seize or retain power. The problem is a Trump Republican base that blames all of their problems on other people. The problem is the Republican Senate which has abandoned its Constitutional oversight duties.
2
Being a mostloyal partisan, Mr. Bouie never remember how Migiel Estrada's and Justice Alito's and other GOP nominees lingered forever.
The last Senate Dem Leader (Rein, Watergate Complex, D.C.) was proud of saying 18 months before an election was just too soon for let a GOP president nominate anyone for SCOTUS (or even the D.C. Court of Appeals.)
WHY didn't Barack Hussein O nominate the stellar Merrick Garland the FIRST two times he had aSCOTUS vacancy to fill? Obviously the progressives swear he's the best nominee since the Reagan days.
Temporary Solution for a currently dystopian democracy:
1. Find the best candidates to defeat the miscreant incumbents.
2. Vote them out (deportation optional).
3. Rinse.
4. Repeat.
"The Senate Is as Much of a Problem as Trump"
The Senate is as Much a Force of Good as is Trump
2
The good thing is McConnell, Graham & Cornyn are up for re-election in 2020.
Get rid of them. They're complicit in the destruction of OUR country.
2
Sorry to tell you that Susan Collins has lost many of our votes in Maine after confirming two Trump appointees to the Supreme Court. There is nothing she can do to repair the damage.
5
So to counter a lack of democracy in the senate, we must make equally extreme changes in order to get that "permanent majority", that both parties like to mention when they have a little momentum on their side. As a country we are better off we a divided government.
1
Mr. Bouie needs to face the fact that a majority of the electorate disagrees with him. Those Senators he derides as "a problem" are the democratic expression of the will of the people.
Disagreement with the party line is unacceptable in NYT-land. Fortunately, that's not where we live. We live in the United States of America, a representative democracy. If he doesn't like the representatives the people have elected, he should try to change people's opinions, not complain about it.
3
Question: What incentives do those from small states have for participating in our Republic if they aren't over-represented in the Senate?
2
Mitch McConnell is not the problem but a symptom of the true problem. This will be true regardless of who holds that position, Democrat or Republican.
One man should never have the power of decision to pick and choose what will or will not be dealt with by the Senate. All issues MUST be allowed to reach the Senate, be it committee or the floor itself, for it is the duty of the Senators to decide on its fate, not be blocked by one person.
1
I really think the Democratic Party is missing an opportunity. Georgia is already a purple state. By our demographics, Alabama and Mississippi should be too. Republicans have successfully joined with evangelicals to work over single-issue voters on the abortion (non-liberty) and gun (liberty) issues. That was a great strategy, but it is not going to work much longer.
Women in Alabama are working moms and we expect autonomy. Younger Christians are finding Christian Left churches that are less hateful to gay people, or they are just quitting church altogether. Diversity is just a way of life and friendship and the workplace here.
A message of economic opportunity FOR those who are responsible and work for it, such as the message of Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren, really resonates here. If Democrats will focus on kitchen table issues—AND sell them better—they’ve got a shot here.
1
@Bamagirl Please get out there and work with like-minded people to make it happen. It's all about increasing engagement and voter turnout!
If we cannot make a fundamental change to the constitution of the Senate, i.e reducing the number of Senate seats for a small state like Wyoming and others based on a average and median population by some acceptable measure. For example there are more voters in my County than a few States. Is this fair?
Maybe an interim solution can be to shift the power of legislation and veto power over to the House of Representatives, much like England where the House of Lords cannot overrule the House of Commons.
Two almost current examples would be McConnell would have been unable to stop Obama on Merrick Garland ( I know...) could have happened only after 2018, and Rubio cannot hold up an ambassadorial appointment to Honduras because he wants something else in return.
The current state of affairs cannot continue, ignore voters in large states and they will eventually rebel against it. The constitution was supposed to be a "living" document, not frozen in time.
2
Mr. Bouie is unforunately correct. The United States Senate is the most powerful undemocratic legislative body in the free world. It should be abolished but that is impossible. The people in the United States who still believe in democracy should try to move heaven and earth to replace as many republican Senators as possible.
7
Why not just give 2 additional seats per 10 million in population in the populous states?. The small states would then still retain ample representation.
Just an idle thought...
2
McConnell is Trump’s enabler. As such, McConnell may be worse than Trump – if that is possible.
5
its past time house dems investigate those republicans who
met with the Russians before, after and during the RNC
convention. they are all obviously complicit with the election interference from their lack of protest about it.
most would permit Putin to land a battalion of soldiers on the east coast if he promised more tax cuts.
Here in Costa Rica our democracy is just as messy as anywhere else, but the government, including the congress is chosen by popular vote of the whole nation. Participatory Democracy. Only the first round counts towards the makeup of congressional seats so you can have many smaller parties with one or more seats. The current president, who won the second round runoff, only has 10 out of 57 seats in congress. We only have one house unlike the US with two. The US system of state boundaries and much of your constitution does not reflect the people and realities of 2019.
2
The real task facing democrats is maintaining control of the House in the face a much larger Trump win in 2020.
The Senate is a lost cause. The democrats lost almost forty states to Trump, and the next time will be worse. And the Democratic party policies play terribly in the center of the country
Spend all your money trying to defend a likely much smaller majority in the House, or accept total irrelevancy
3
It would seem that the feared Republican majority in those states is vulnerable due to the small populations of those states. Rather than change the constitution or other drastic measures, how about if more Democrats move to those states to create more balance?
7
Perhaps they may in the future, but one must realize that the majority of the country have lives to live and is able to think about other aspects of their lives instead of thinking of radical and unpopular schemes in order to control all three branches of government.
In fact Democratic megadonors should subsidize the movement of people from California and New York to Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio and even Georgia, North Carolina and Arizona. Winning California by 3.5 million votes is a waste.
Having read the column, I'm struck by how naive it all seems. As long as the Republicans hold the Senate, none of these ideas will even be debated, much less be passed. Other commenters urging a refocus on taking over the Senate have the right idea. As long as McConnell and the GOP rule the Senate, a Democratic President will be hamstrung.
I wish some of the folks who declined to run for the Senate or have declared candidacy for President would rethink their positions. Their role as a Senator would be far more important in the long run, than a failed run for the Presidency or a Governorship.
10
The states off the coast are populated by people with different values and different interests. They are entitled to fair representation in the Senate. They didn’t make the rules. They merely live by them. All of the dissatisfaction lies with the coastal elites and their minions.
The coastal elites and their minions can do what they can to change the rules to conform to their idea of fairness. Instead, they whine, and sometimes cry, and blame Kansas for the vision of the Founding Fathers, who were the original coastal elites and who probably did not even know where Kansas was.
1
Are you suggesting that the views of Kansans represent the vision of the founding fathers? That would be a good one!
A great idea which hasn't a chance.The chances of our amending the Constitution along these lines is wishful thinking at best, given the leverage small states have in blocking such a change. The Senate is a problem, and your article is a reminder that our Founding Fathers put something together that made some sense at the time but has posed huge problems toward making any structural legislative changes. The only possible way your idea could become law is for there to be a national referendum, and you will never see that with small state leverage in the Senate.
It's a slender reed, but I have some hope that the subpoena for Don Junior is a sign that even a few Republicans see the country slipping away. You can bet McConnell would have shielded junior, if he could have.
3
I just want to stand on the steps of the Capitol and scream “ENOUGH”. Not one us adults in the real world gets to live their working life this way. You were hired to do a job. That job is moving this country forward and keeping us safe. Playing political, obstructionist games is not your job. If any member of Congress had to face an annual review - like every other professional- how would they fare? List your accomplishments? Hmmm. Work as a team? Nada. Demonstrate meeting goals? No way (real goals, not “ make the other guy miserable goals of your own creation). We’ve created a system of lifetime employment for a group of incompetents. That they serve their own self interest is not a key qualification for this job.
10
There is no such thing as a politician who cannot be defeated with enough money, organization and will. Perhaps one of the most important things one could do for our democracy today is to target and DEFEAT Mitch McConnell in a primary. Let some junior, incompetent become the Republican senator from Kentucky.
8
While I concur with other comments as to Mitch McConnell’s malevolence and add my dismal prediction that any Republican replacement will be no better, we need to call out political incompetence of the Democratic Party in the last 15 years. The Senate, the Constitional Amendment process and the electoral college are not sudden rule changes sprung on Democrats. The Obama coalition was also the coalition of people who didn’t vote in midterms. Focusing on the Presidential elections and whining about the system or how Hillary wasn’t a good candidate is all beside the point.
Two points are critically important above all others now:
First Democrats can and must field candidates who know how to win in their state, e.g. Tammy Baldwin won some very rural, counties in Wisconsin and the whole state by 11% and Amy Klobuchar won 43 counties in Minnesota that Trump won.
Second to save Democracy and do the big things that need to be done (way too numerous to list), eg healthcare, rural broadband, voting rights, requires a new bipartisanship - geographic bipartisanship - within a dominant Democratic caucus. Forget bipartisanship with Republicans; that can’t happen until the GOP has been eviserated in multiple elections and rebuilt from scratch. The few bills that get sponsored by Senators of both parties don’t do enough.
While Bernie and AOC can get people excited, the tip of the spear politically are people who take seats from Republicans. Speaker Pelosi makes that very clear.
4
Instead of structural changes, perhaps we need to focus our efforts on ending the hegemony of hateful half-wits that vote against their own interests because Republican hatemongerers have ginned up their baser instincts with perverse distortions, outright lies and rabid hostility to the truth. I don't know if the best-intentioned structural reforms can overcome the ignorance that's rotting our body politic.
"The cornerstone of democracy rests on the foundation of an educated electorate." Thomas Jefferson
And here's another relevant TJ quote to chew on: "The end of democracy and the defeat of the American Revolution will occur when government falls into the hands of lending institutions and moneyed incorporations."
Get the Republicans to buy into those timeless ideals and we might have ourselves a country again.
6
"Without the Senate in hand, Democrats could win the immediate fight against Donald Trump in 2020 but lose the larger battle against the Republican Party that supported and enabled him."
This is only the beginning of the Democrat problem. They have also not paid attention to statehouses across the country which have gone to Republican control. For years, for the most part, they haven't paid attention to anything except the Presidential elections. They need the Senate, statehouses, county elections, and more.
9
Yes, yes I see these problems and potential problems but then again hey, thank God, things are often not as they seem or turn out like you thought.
Register, contribute, do your homework, no apathy, get out and vote! Dump Trump, Ditch Mitch. Identify Tea Party types and get them out of Washington. Members of Club for Growth, Freedom Caucus, and other ideological caucuses need to be removed from all politics, at all levels. Take our country back.
6
Having read a number of books about the founding of tghe US it becomes apparent that many do not understand why we have the government structure we do. One of the first proposal was to have on legislative house based on population (variously determined). The smaller states objected because it would put them at a disadvantage in representation. The compromise was to add a second legislative house with equal representation, hence the senate with two Senators from each state. In order to tilt the power in their direction S. Carolina got the 3/5 person designation in the Constitution. This gave S.C. a much larger house delegation than their actual population size.
To suggest that a small state has X% more power with their vote than a large state is misusing statistics in your argument to bias you argument.
Historically the party in power worked with the opposition. It is a late development where the majority vilianizes the opposition causing reluctance to compromise, or make compromise an evil to avoid. How do we remove partisanship which is destroying our willingness to compromise?
3
I wholeheartedly agree. The issue is not now nor has it ever been the recalcitrance of one party or the other. It is always the problem is the virtually every politician of both parties thinks that their reelection is more important than the good of the country. As a life long independent who votes for individuals and not the party, I say we need term limits. A plague on both their houses. The missteps of the Democratic Party during the early Obama year’s emboldened the recalcitrance of the Republicans. All of Washington needs to stop acting like children. If the Dems choose a left wing candidate, we have no hope of ridding the country of Trump.
The BIG Picture:
Win back the Senate -
Concentrate on low population Red States.
Hammer them until they cave.
Win back the White House -
The intense Senatorial Campaigns in low population Red States will give us the Senate, more majority in the House, and of course - the Presidency !
Indict and Prosecute Trump and his Family for Tax Fraud, Conspiracy, Obstruction of Justice, and as many RICO violations the Southern District of New York can prosecute.
Orange Jump Suits for the entire Trump Clan.
RICO confiscation of everything with Trump's name on it.
Indict and prosecute Mitch McConnell for treason.
The death penalty "should" be on the table - but life in prison will be fine.
Constitutional Overhaul -
Electoral Congress - GONE !
Gerrymandering - GONE !
Create a fair and affordable Healthcare System for All
Make our Environment the critical crisis it is.
Create a Strong Public School System with FULL separation
of Church and State.
Increase Social Services.
Take a strong look at military spending.
Design and implement a solid immigration law.
Build the strongest infrastructure on our planet.
"Take a very careful look at our 2nd amendment and put it
into the context intended by our framers !"
North Dakota - 2 Senate Seats - only 800,000 people !
"Let's Get 'em"
13
"We the people" need to educate Red State people how Republican policies harm them more than Blue State people, See
https://www.fairwarning.org/2017/02/top-traffic-death-states-support-trump/
5
Correction, the Senate is a problem for America.
There should be a constitutional amendment to add 100 new senators to the Senate to be elected by district based on population with districts drawn by a national districting commission.
We could call it "The Democracy Amendment."
92
@Paul A Myers - we have that already, it's called the House of Representatives.
4
@Paul A Myers
That would result in two Houses of Representatives.
It would be pointless.
Best to eliminate both the Senate and the Electoral College at one stroke.
6
@Paul A Myers Mr. Myers wrote what I was about to write: ""The Senate is a problem," Their supporters are a dangerous problem. R.I.P., American democracy. We get that for which we vote.
3
Well, it’s ABOUT TIME someone at the Times said it!
I see no good way forward for this country! We are at impass that cannot be solved by winning the senate or the presidency. Fundamentally, there are two very different population living under the same roof and increasingly making this country survival as one nation extremely difficult. The multicultural left will not agree to live in a white nationalist apartheid state and the ultra right will not accept to lose their majority and grasp on power. Any solutions within the frame of the existing constitution is like using an aspirin to cure cancer. We need a fundamental revision and update to the constitution which is very unlikely to happen in the current status. This citizen is very pessimistic about the state of the union.
7
This writer has said it best. Perhaps we need to be two countries. Whites in one and everybody else who loves liberty and their fellow human beings in another. The two coasts make up the first country and middle states will be Whiteland.
3
Why stop at spliting up the large states? Is there really a need for North and South Dakota being two states, join them together. Why are Vermont and New Hampshire two states, join them with Maine freeing up 4 senate seats. Why does New England with approximately the same population as California get 12 senators? Wyoming, well they can become a county in Colorado or split it in half with we Utahns getting the western half since they get all of their services from us anyway.
5
Collins' cowardly cynical votes do not reflect the views or interests of Maine residents. She's been in office too long. Vote her out.
6
Sorry, Jamelle, you got it wrong.
The Senate, and Mitch in particular, are the problem.
If these laggards, crooks, and perverts would do even the bare basics of their constitutionally-mandated jobs Trump would have been gone long ago, or confined like a two-year-old in his White House crib.
Without Republican complicity Trump would be exactly what he is...nothing.
6
An historic Blue Wave that retakes Congress is our civic & moral responsibility.
As McConnell & the R's know well, the key to power is winning elections by any means. The success of decades of Clinton, Obama, centrist democrat derangement syndrome propaganda from the the right, the Russians, & the puritanical left gave Mitch, Trump, & their authoritarian grifters the keys to the kingdom.
We must take back the keys.
1
Statehood for D.C. and Puerto Rico is certainly a good idea, but California being divided? Take a look at the map of counties in California that are red and voted for Trump.
The concentration of blue counties is in the greater L.A. area and up north in the Bay area. I can't see how dividing California into six states would help Democrats. It could easily give Republicans more Senators.
4
What makes you so sure that McConnell will run again? Eighteen months is a lot of time for this administration’s actions to change Mr. McConnell’s mind.
1
Another growing obstacle to the Democrats' agenda is the packing of the judicial system with conservative ideologues, at every level up to the highest court. These two problems are related as Mitch works at fever pitch to confirm as many obedient judges as his Senate can manage.
5
Could not agree more with what you said in this op-ed, Mr. Boule.
Although the immediate focus is, understandably, on removing Trump, replacing McConnell and Graham, to name but two of the many Trump apparatchiks in the Senate, should also be priorities. Of course, more than these two need to be retired from service in the Senate.
As long as we have McConnell leading a Republican majority in the Senate, the Democrats will get nothing of value done. With continuing Republican control of the Senate, the electing of a Democrat for president in 2020 will mean more futility in trying to do the right thing for the American people. McConnell and the Republicans are experts in sabotage and little else, and this became clear during the Obama presidency. Let's not have a repeat of that.
2
This article argues for a tyranny of the majority: End the filibuster so the majority can tell everyone else how to live. Change the Senate to minimize the influence if the minority. The filibuster and Senate makeup were designed to force compromise. Unfortunately, neither party seems interested in doing so. Instead, we ping pong back and forth between extremes and nothing constructive gets done. Maybe it’s time to return power to the states so both CA and TX can make their own rules and citizens can vote with their feet.
3
Representation in the Senate was a result, in great part, of a great compromise to protect the interests of the agricultural, low population states from the tyranny of the majority that populated the industrial states. At the time it was not a partisan process. That has evolved over the last 230 years and is now highly partisan. What we have now is not tyranny of the majority in the Senate and Electoral College, but something worse - "tyranny of the minority." Among all the things the Democrats need to do, repeating that, or some similar mantra, is one of them, and has little or no political risk for them (unless Wyoming and Idaho become Democratic strongholds and California veers to the right, but at least that would be fair).
1
As this column points out, the existing state of affairs is unsustainable in the long term. We cannot have a situation where, thanks to the Electoral College, gerrymandering and arbitrarily-drawn 18th and 19th century state boundary lines (why are there two Dakotas and only one California?), we are ruled by a minority population of rural inhabitants.
The US Senate as it is now constituted is perhaps the least representative democratic body in the world and its current behavior demonstrates that fact. It is a legislative Black Hole, where McConnell openly blocks Supreme Court nominees and refuses to bring up legislation duly approved by the House.
This behavior undermines our faith in representative democracy and creates an atmosphere of cynicism and despair.
At a certain point in the future a crisis will occur where a group of states will say enough of paying in to support a country and not getting proportionate representation in return.
For example there is no logical reason for California, Oregon and Washington not to band together and create a new country of Pacifica, which would immediately become a world power, strategically located on the Pacific Rim, and be freed from the burden of having to support economically backward states.
We need to act now to protect the future of our democracy before it fragments any further.
4
This is why I hope that many of the Senate candidates will lose the nomination.
We need them where they are.
It's sad that a person like Trump is such a problem.
But it says a lot about the general ignorance of our country as a whole.
2
Since the GOP Senate enabled Trump's nomination, and carried on shockingly with his administration's every whim from the start, while simultaneously serving McConnell's damaging agenda, the corrupt Senate majority seems a much bigger problem than even the monsters they create, including their own colleagues-gone-rogue like Graham. However, we might well be rid of Trump before long, while any of the corrupt Senators left in power come 2020 will probably continue pressing their anti-Constitution agenda, if a bit more slyly and a bit less effectively. To raise the government operational standard now, we desperately need more investigative journalism.
1
@Michele: The whole Republican delegation to Washington consists of children who claim that God runs the US.
1
The solution is simple. Large states need to break themselves up so they get more representation in the senate. An added benefit would be better local governance as large states are getting increasingly unmanageable.
Gerrymandering? More a House issue perhaps.
2
Bouie's cogent argument shows why so much of the progressive left's shopping list of "Big Ideas"--Medicare for All! Free college! Forgive student debt! etc etc--is just a Big Fantasy. Remember, it took a 59 or 60 seat Democratic majority to pass the stimulus package, the auto bailout, Dodd-Frank financial reform and most importantly the Affordable Care Act. And they needed compromises, even with Democrats, to pass. That's why progressive candidates shouldn't be running on ideas that can't happen in any conceivable real world that will emerge from the 2020 elections. American voters, even Democrats, just won't buy what they're selling.
3
Want to add that the senate Republicans are not only a problem for the Democrats, they are a serious problem for the United States.
6
So if the Democrat wins the Presidency, probably RBG would leave the Supreme Court in the next 4 years. I find it incredibly easy to imagine Mitch preventing confirmation yet again, even if the nomination is made in year 1 or 2 of the new President's term.
The Democrats MUST take control of the Senate.
3
Unfortunately, the GOP is filled with as many ammoral or immoral people as we have in Oval Office. Without a return to the admiration for a representative republic among them, we are likely to continue our trouble. Much of the GOP has a great disdain for our traditional form of governing.
4
This is the most depressing editorial I have read in a while. Control of the Senate is for now enshrined within the conservative rural base. I kind of think we should just redo the Civil War and allow this conservative base to secede, and then they can be hoisted from their own petard. Is that less likely than beating Mitch McConnell in Kentucky?
86
@Phaedrus
What we should be talking about is the secession of California and other progressive states, with the aim of creating a new nation based on truly democratic principles.
3
I really don't care who becomes the next president as long as it isn't Trump. I can't look at him or listen to his voice. He makes me physically ill.
7
Candidates like Beto O'Rourke, Stacey Abrams, and Joachim Castro have an opportunity to do invaluable service to our country and democratic principles, by running NOW for the senate in 2020, instead of hoping just to increase their own prominence in the political arena by either having declared their candidacy or considering doing so.
4
Mitch McConnell himself is up for re-election in 2020.
Mitch McConnell has, at present, about a 35% popularity in Kentucky.
Mitch McConnell should be target number 1 in terms of flipping a Senate seat.
9
Mitch McConnell and his Senate GOPers are allowing Trump to strip them of their constitutional powers as Trump orders his staff to defy all congressional subpoenas.
Isn't this Trump attempting a coup on Congress?
3
The party is over. Republicans will kill any way to stop climate change. We are doomed. Have a nice day.
4
Whoa. Hold on there Jamelle.
There was a great argument in here - that we are heading toward a deeply undemocratic system, where 84% of the Senate seats will be voted on by only half the population, with the other half, comprised of population-heavy states, holding only 16%. Where the weight of voters in Wyoming and Alaska will be more than 67 times the weight of voters in, say, California.
But that case shifted, and was in fact lost, as soon as you made it partisan, as a problem FOR DEMOCRATS, rather than a problem for any fair-minded person, regardless of party.
A similar problem is occurring with impeachment, which has now become mired in partisanship too. If you start arguing that Trump should be held accountable, simply because he is a scofflaw, and any scofflaw should be held to account, regardless of party affiliation, and then shift into making the issue one of partisan advantage, you just lost the high ground. You just turned a matter of universal principle into a matter of tribal affiliation.
Please recognize the difference.
3
@M Peirce: That difference doesn't exist any more. The Republicans obliterated it.
1
What about tying the number of senators each state has to population?
3
There are voiceless California Democrats and voiceless Texas Republicans. There are favored voters in both Wyoming and Rhode Island. 100% of Democrats use the California/Wyoming disparity. They claim that it’s because that disparity is the most extreme. Who do they think they’re kidding? I think they’re mostly kidding themselves. They honestly are unaware of their own biases. Not so so smart.
Isn't there another possibility? For each Senate election, several tens or hundreds of thousands of voters from overwhelmingly red states could temporarily move to marginally-red or purple states, and vote there. The rent they pay would be low compared to the cost of living in New York or California, and it would help economically-depressed places in the red states. The ones that could move temporarily would likely be retired and underemployed young people, and those that couldn't move could send mail to the movers, which they could use to prove their residence and eligibility to vote. Afterward, everyone could go home again, and we'd all be better off.
@Eddie M. That should have said, "...voters from overwhelmingly BLUE states......"
Democrats held both houses of Congress and the WH in 2009-2010. Other than the arm-twisting passage of the unaffordable Affordable Care Act, Congress and the Executive Branch accomplished nothing. It’s not clear then why a GOP Senate is more problematic.
As for the rich white member complaint, I hope Mr. Bouie understands that the wealthiest US Senators are Democrats including Feinstein, Warner, and Blumenthal. Clearly Mr. Bouie should agree that if rich white people are a stain & blight on the Senate, then these Democrats should go. I have no problem breaking up California into several states either. Several regions of the state are conservative and would welcome escaping the idiocy of LA and Sacramento.
5
Susan Collins will have a hard time getting reelected. People in Maine were disgusted by her speech in the confirmation of Kavannaugh.
7
I am a California native, and there is no way on God's little green earth that we will split our state. That is an idea that a few individuals have pressing for, but they are nuts! I have discussed this issue with a number of my friends, and they laughed at it's stupidity.
2
Conservatives in the Central Valley would probably disagree with you.
@Once From Rome: It's a good thing California does not have a senate that mirrors the US apportionment of seats, or the Central Valley and Rural North would be running the place.
America is a farm. The citizens are the animals to be milked and bled and slaughtered for the profit of the corporations and the rich. The politicians are paid by the corporations and the rich to make sure the animals stay in their places and obey.
2
Wouldn'y it be much easier to get rid of the electoral vote once and for all ? This ugly thing is an anachronism. It has to go !
2
So long as statehood is on the table I suggest we grant statehood to all the countries in Central America, heck, grant statehood to Canada also. Be bold!
Gosh!! Maybe people will have to tear their eyes away from their social media feeds long enough to (GASP!!) vote!! How uncool.
3
If Trump causes democracy to collapse in this country, much of the blame should be placed on Senate Republicans. In this sad scenario, Mitch McConnell will be remembered as the Marshal Petain of 21st Century America. The remainder of Senate Republicans run from the supreme opportunist Lindsey Graham to ineffectual cowards such as Susan Collins and Mitt Romney.
7
No. It’s part of what ensures we don’t become France.
We are not a democracy. We are a republic.
Repeat after me--Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.
4
Well there is another option: sufficient Democrats could move to the less populous states to equalize the population in what would be the gun-toting, rural resident's worse nightmare: the zombie apocalypse.
2
My goodness, an opinion piece that’s rational and actual. Highly recommend civics courses for Americans. Maybe geography.
Thank you.
From the North it appears Mitch the Knife McConnell has pretty much taken apart your ‘democracy’ for partisan reasons. Then there is the rest of the Republican millionaire know nothings.
Very difficult to have a semblance of order when the whole idea is a con.
1
The problem is the disgraceful Mitch McConnell. Over the last 200 years he is among the 5 most serious domestic threats to our democratic republic.
He has the lowest Popularity-Above-Replacement of any senator (https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-every-senator-ranks-according-to-popularity-above-replacement-senator/) which indicates that even the people in his own state of Kentucky can no longer stomach his behavior.
What needs to change is how the leadership in the Senate is structured. One malevolent political hack in service to a vengeful underhanded president with dictatorial tendencies should not be able to serve as dictator of the Senate to distort the balance of power and negate the Constitution's checks and balances.
5
Not to be argumentative but Susan Collins is incredibly UNPOPULAR in my area of southern Maine.
3
The main problem with the senate is Mitch McConnell
4
This is so true. Rather than focusing on the Presidential race to such a large extent, all will be for naught if the Democrats gain the White House, but lose the Senate. Every issue must be made to get Stacey Abrams and Beto O'Rouke or Juan Castro to run for the Senate in their States. Their chances of getting the nomination for President are too slim. Running for the Senate makes more sense. The odds are MUCH higher.
4
Is there no chance a couple of republican senators, recognizing that our democracy literally hangs in the balance, assert their loyalty to the constitution over their quickly morphing party, and switch parties?
3
Preach!
Surely the solution is staring us in the face: We need targeted waves of Blue Migrants to a couple of sparsely populated deep red states. California could easily spare 800,000 Democrats who could move, say, to Wyoming and North Dakota in time for the 2020 election. Think of all the folks on the West Coast with Internet-based jobs -- they work from anywhere. And it wouldn't have to be forever, though who knows, maybe all that fresh air and open space would grow on them. So let's start some hashtags: #BluewaveWyoming, or #MakeRedAmericaBlue !
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@marlowehood
GREAT IDEA ! . . .
But why just "think" Blue Migrants ?
Red States are Notorious for Disenfranchising Votes - especially Non-Republican voters.
Let's find out some Facts -
How Long to Establish Residency ? ?
We need to start today.
How much do Senatorial campaigns cost ?
The average is $10 million - so with 2 "Red" Senators to topple - that's $20 million to put towards re-location.
Many corporations pay relocation fees to their employees when the company moves from a high tax region to a more economical region.
The Democrats can do the same -
Rather than pay millions upon millions of dollars for TV ads which only "sing to the choir" - we can make a real difference and tip the scales FOR EVER.
Hey, the GOP brought this on themselves - they play dirty and will lie and cheat and turn their backs on their sworn oath of duty to uphold the Constitution to win.
Democrats do not have to behave in a treasonous manner as the GOP does - we just have to be smarter.
"Stocking the Pond" with viable Blue voters in sparsely populated Red States is a great way to win back the Senate and also add a larger majority in the House.
17
@Leonard Dornbush
Good morning:
Now watch the Republicans get wind of this interesting idea and require in all Red or gerrymandered states that all of the state voters have a birth certificate certifying voters were born in the state.
We have to learn to think and act like predatory crooks to meet them at their game. It is challenging to be innovative, fair, compassionate when it is required for survival to be carnivorous and predator to meet the current national standard: Trumpican or Republican.
10
@marlowehood I have long thought this was a great idea and much more wise than spending buckets of money on wasted advertising (whose mind is going to change anyhow?). Identify cities like Austin (may be a bad example), Bozeman, Grand Forks, other university towns where lifestyles are compatible, determine residency requirements and play the game.
If you can't bring gerry to the mander, bring mander to the gerry.
11
What we really need is for the people of Kentucky to step up to the plate and vote Mitch McConnell out of ofiice.
6
A progressive capitalist can do nothing without the Senate
Time for a major rewrite of the Constitution. The founders got a lot wrong—slavery, women’s rights, guns, the Electoral College, the Senate...
1
"If Democrats Don't Do Something About It" they will lose.
The problem is the extreme views supported by too many Democrats and considered nonsense by the majority of Americans.
These include
1. Men are toxic
2. Nearly all Americans are racist
3. mass incarceration is due to racial injustice rather than criminals
4. the American Dream of rising to success and prosperity is no longer possible
5. Americans should cast their vote for President based on identity groups rather than the character and ability of the candidate
6. reparations for Black Americans are deserved and should be paid by all other Americans who have no responsibility for slavery 150 years ago
3
@jck
Your post is a list of falsehoods. #1 and 2: The majority of the electorate, many male, is Democratic, and deplore racism. #3: 40% of whites accused of killing blacks are acquitted, while only 3% of blacks accused of killing whites are acquitted. Conviction and incarceration rates overall are much higher for people of color than for whites. #4, 5 and 6 are too ridiculous to even try to respond to.
The Senate IS the problem.
1
Please? Let’s get serious. The single biggest threat to America is Mitch McConnell, or Robespierre/Rasputin/Machiavelli by another name. Why does this traitor, who has foresworn his oath, get a free pass. This evil human being has done more damage to our country than anyone in the last 70 years, reaching back to Joe McCarthy.
Stop trying to rearrange the deck chairs. This monster is steering us into an iceberg, while we worry about the optics of impeachment and other political ‘considerations’. Get over it.
If McConnell is gone, so is Trump, Mnuchin, Barr, Bolton, and the rest of the lot.
Tom Steyer, Michael Bloomberg, Howard Schultz are you listening? Service to our country used to be a noble endeavor.
Get to it.
1
A few million Alabama voters are worth more than everybody in California. This only seems reasonable if you live in Alabama.
1
Actually merge Montana, both Dakota's, Wyoming, and Idaho into one state two Senators! Problem solved.
Middle-of-the-road American voters simply don't trust Democrats sitting in thei Senate seats.Democrats lie, depend on emotions for their decisions, and never appea to love the country.
The issues of abortion and firearms will probably keep Dems from gaining a Senate majority for a generation. the hatred of Jews, Israel, and the place of the U.S. in the world all work against Democratic Party candidates.
The one thing helping Dems is what happened to put Sen. Sinema in office - economic refugee family members from strongly socialist, big-expensive-government states move to traditional states and the poorly-educated, emotion-driven family members also making that move end up voting socialist while their business-owner parents stick with the GOP.
@The Observer
"Democrats lie, depend on emotions for their decisions, and never appea(r) to love the country."
There you have it. Trump has told over 10,000 documented lies, makes impulsive, "gut" emotional decisions, and seems to absolutely despise over half the country, yet @The Observer seems not to be very observant, or perhaps, just sees what he/she wants to see.
1
@Michael Banks
Yet, should you poll the red-voting 3,000 counties of the U.S., you'll find American convinced that Trump tells truths and fixes problems intentionally ignored by BOTH parties in Washington, D.C. forthirty years.
Remember how assiduously the progressive majority of the media ignored Mr. Obama's and Hillary's knee-slapping lies and misstatements?
The red states simply mirror that fealty to the one president capapble of speaking truth to trading partners and our allies overseas.
U. S. Constitution, 4.3.1:
“[N]o new states shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other state . . . without the consent of . . . the Congress.”
What are the odds a Republican Senate would consent to the formation of six new states from the present territory of California? Dream on.
1
Ron Johnson of Wisconsin will be replaced by a Dem!
3
Necessary reading. I’ve been telling people for the last year that Trump would be well on his way to at least censure but for his accomplices in the once-noble, now degraded Senate, ruled by braying dictatorettes like Lindsey Graham and the malodorous McConnell.
3
The Constitution does present a problem for radical Democrats, doesn't it?
Mr. Bouie needs to read the New York Times! It’s the paper he writes for! A simple perusal of articles about Senator Susan Collins of Maine, would reveal that in actuality, the Senator has been losing her popularity with her constituents these past few years! Otherwise, it’s a thoughtful analysis!!!
2
The Roosevelt proposal is a pipe dream. Get real.
There is one measure not mentioned: take McConnell down. He's up for several, um, wrong doings thanks to his wife. Dems should put all their weight to making them stick and busting McConnell down so he couldn't be elected for dog catcher.
3
Unequal representation in the vetting of executive and judicial appointees, and treaties with foreign nations, is the most outrageous unequal protection of law in this whole psychopathological cobble-up of liberty to enslave.
1
Trump is seriously mentally ill. The Senate Repubs enable him. Mitch McConnell is the problem. Get rid of Mitch.
2
"the most immediate threat to the nation’s political health"
Hmmm..... The most immediate threat is the American Socialist's obsession with establishing an Oligarchy where only devoted elites rule. Anyone that doesn't want to sing in that choir is automatically categorized as an apostate. The sad part is they might actually succeed in their endeavor.
They're campaign to destroy President Trump and everything about him is unparalleled in our history. Of course part of the plan is to destroy our institutions by branding them as out of touch, having been designed and built by old, white, rich, slave owning men over 200 years ago.
Something as simple as disposing of the Electoral College and relying on the popular vote would prove catastrophic. The electorate is very easily swayed by vacuous claims and empty promises. History has proved that over the centuries around the world. The founding fathers understood this.
I've been around for quite sometime and have never seen this level of an attack against our institutions to justify political change. It's getting close to what went on in various Communist Revolutions not to mention Nazi Germany and Mussolini's Italy. And we all know how those panned out.
1
@Mark
"The most immediate threat is the American Socialist's obsession with establishing an Oligarchy where only devoted elites rule."
Where did it say that? The article was about relatively equal representation in the Senate for all Americans.
"They're campaign to destroy President Trump and everything about him is unparalleled in our history."
The Congress has tried to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election, and possible connections to the Trump campaign. This President has defied any effort by Congress to fulfill its oversight responsibility, and is "stonewalling" all requests, subpoenas, ordering current and former White House officials not to testify. @Mark is drastically distorting reality, and trying to spin a far right wing "alternative reality.
Brilliant analysis.
The Koch brothers like it. Why change?
Of course the Senate's an equal, or even greater, problem.
It's why I cringed whenever people said the Democrats "won" 2018, that they got a Blue Wave...nope. Democrats LOST 2 seats in the Senate, and for long-term impact—to save our very existence from the current and future crop of Thief Justices who write weird books and Like Beer—we needed every Sane human we could get there.
And even the ones we did gain in the House aren't mostly Sane. Sure we got Ocasio, Omar, Tlaib, other people who are finally questioning why things have to be the way they are when they themselves can change it for once...but most of the rest don't even seem up to censure the loser, let alone hold the Senate's court-steals accountable. They're still taking the vile GOP in good faith!
Pick a non-crazy Senate candidate in the Democratic primary, then whoever wins VOTE FOR THEM—and make sure to tell them to stop bringing a pillow to the party-cult's murder-NOT-"assault" weapon fight.
1
Funny to illustrate a column about the Senate with a picture of the House side of the Capitol.
1
Real Dumb Idea.
So frustrating when the likes of Beto O'Rourke and Julian Castro focus their energies on the Democratic nomination for the presidency, which they cannot possibly get. Instead, they should go after the Senate. We have many bright lights in the party, but their lights dim when they think they have a chance at the presidency. They will lose out on the nomination; there is the question then about where the money they raised will go; their supporters may be too entrenched to fight like hell for the candidate that can beat Trump. I, for one, just want to see some real patriotism in office-seekers; if they love this country, then fight for an office that is possible. In this case, we should take on the Senate as never before. The monster named McConnell can do far more damage than Trump can do.
2
@Amy White
I'm not sure how we can judge people who aspire to lead the country. At the same time, I am with you. Most people on the Democratic side do not seem to understand how important the Senate is. The Republican majority Senate is confirming conservative Judges and nominees for Cabinet and other positions; they are the hammer when it comes to the impeachment process. They have the ability to advance or bury Legislation, and to block nominations to the Supreme Court (e.g. Merrick Garland). Democrats are rightly focused on defeating Trump in 2020, but it will be a hollow victory if they do not also win the Senate.
1
I am conservative Republican, and I generally believe that the structure of the Senate is wise. I am not overly enamored of democracy, which is simply government by the mob. While I identify as a member of the Republican Party (the party of Lincoln, TR, Eisenhower, and Reagan), I am much more committed to to republicanism (with a small "r") than I am to any party. A republic should have democratic mechanisms. The majority should always have a check on the government, but should not be able to rule in a manner that runs roughshod over the minority. At the same time the a republic should protect everyone's rights, including property rights, which are always threatened by excessive democracy.
That having been said, I would support proposals to make our government representative, but not proposals that are just designed to maximize Democratic Party advantage. Let's break California into three states. One of them will lean Republican, which will actually be a wash in terms or partisan advantage. Let's make Puerto Rico a state, and maybe break Texas in two at the same time. These measures would make the republic more representative, without giving either party an immediate advantage. Let's pass an amendment that gives the District of Columbia one congressman, one senator, and two electoral votes. Let's eliminate gerrymandering, but at same time amend apportionment to be based only on the population of citizens.
84
@Charles.. I disagree with you:
The structure of the senate is not wise because what may have made sense 200 years ago is no longer valid. When 10 states have half the population and 10 states have less than 1 % of the population it is the minority that runs roughshod over he majority. The concept of a republic (which in our case is 50 democracies fighting with each other) makes no sense unless we basically reduce the federal government to bring responsible for the safety of the states and nothing else. The ultimate in states rights. Which would in effect be like 50 countries working together (like the european union).
38
@Romas
The population disparities were pretty big even 200 years ago so their solution was a wise one.
As for reducing the federal government, well, that was a large part of it, something lost on many today. It was designed to have a limited national government.
We might as well rename the country, for it’s called the United States for a reason - recognizing each component sovereign. Perhaps you’d prefer something along the lines of the Federal Republic of America?
3
@Charles, how would you feel about admitting Puerto Rico, the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands as states?
I could see consolidating the territories into states, if need be. The Northern Marianas and Guam could, together, be a state, for example.
It seems to me that effectively unrepresented territories are a vestige of an imperialist past. If they can't be states, let them be independent.
15
As usual a man speculates what women think instead of talking to one. Susan Collins is toast for her role in the Kavanaugh nomination. Pollsters only seem to talk to men. That is why men are clueless. They think they know everything. stay tuned in 2020. Women Realize men do not represent them.
1
After 200 years the American Constitution appears to be “ unconstitutional “ being anachronistic and non representative of the current population.
1
Democrats need to look and run against ever GOP office. We need to pressure corporations to pull out of these red stated who are abusing their citizens. These poor red states want to do away with abortions which is the law of the land then boycott with your pocketbooks there support of backward politicians who are destroying the safety net to all Americans.
Tariffs another word for taxes,no health care , no infrastructure for transportation.opiate epidemic started by a greedy corporation, a corrupt NRA buying clothes for a man who doesn’t look like any type of model. The GOP party is the party of white arrogance and corruption
Money is the only word the GOP understand so let’s get them and win everything.
Remember the song “Ain’t no stopping us now” enough reality tv our lives and deaths are real.
McConnell is the problem — his single-mindedness pursuing a long-held Republican goal of establishing a permanent majority through fair means or foul especially; and his narrow-minded chauvinistic attitudes. His specialty is accumulating personal power by using Senate rules that he knows like the back of his hand to funnel legislation to roadblocks he erects that only he can remove. When he does, he exacts a fearsome price. The power to obstruct begets more power to obstruct, the secret of his success and to his hold on power.
He’s a throwback to another era, Antebellum America, a four decade period before secessionist agitation in the Deep and Middle slaveholding South tore the United States apart followed by the “War of the Great Rebellion”, as it was called back then.
Antebellum America was “half-slave and half-free”, as Lincoln phrased it. But misruled by senators from the half-slave region determined to hold sway come-what-may mainly by packing courts with slave owners and states-rights ideologues. Also, through a strategy of deliberate legislative obstruction. They elevated regional interests above national.
McConnell, who hails from that region, inherited those traits, or seems to have. If Sen. John C. Calhoun is his secret hero — the same Calhoun whom President Andrew Jackson threatened to hang for treason during the Nullification Crisis — it wouldn’t surprise me.
1
"Under the Roosevelt Institute proposal, Washington, D.C., the Atlantic territories, the Pacific territories and the Native tribes would each receive two senators and a voting member in the House of Representatives."
And, not surprisingly, the flyover states get nothing. Let me guess. The "Roosevelt Institute" is Democratic
Of course the Senate was there before trump. Trump did not happen out of nowhere . The problem was before Trump.
That kind of nationalist bigot extremist American culture existed before the Trump era. Trump just used it to climb to power.
he used all the narrative discourse concepts of the conservative Americans : immigration, anti abortion, lock women up, extreme capitalism.
Easy winning formula. It was already there . Even some parts of it among Democrats.
Easier to break the Trump spell on "moderate" Republicans by electing a Democratic president.
Democrats need to move, literally, from blue to red states. Imagine, e,g., retirees from California relocating to Wyoming and swinging the state blue. A few hundred thousand would suffice. Establishing such communities is a far more viable strategy than pursuing a constitutional amendment.
Great article.
You know what the media should focus on is how Trump does not care at all about the middle class and below. The NYT and other great papers and magazines and broadcast outlets must educate everyone on the importance of exercising their voting rights and participating in our democracy before Trump and his republican cult under his, Barr and McConnell leadership destroy our country. People must understand that if they don't vote they are voting for The Con Man in Chief. Democratic party must also focus on awakening the 40 % of the voting public that fails to register to vote.
And remember It wasn’t Trump who yelled, “You lie!” at President Obama while he addressed congress and the American people. That was Republican Rep Joe Wilson. And it wasn’t dozens of Trumps who laughed and patted him on the back. It was the rest of them. And it wasn’t Trump who blocked the Garland nomination, nor was it Trump it was Senator Graham who screamed until he was red in the face at the Kavanaugh hearings. And it wasn’t Trump who then voted for the new Supreme Justice in the face of the mounting evidence against his integrity and honesty. And it wasn’t Trump who voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act 54 times. That was the Republican Party.
This is just a small list.
- Trump's tariffs doubles tax on consumers and bankrupts farmers. .
- The Con Man in Chief is hiding years of illegally filed tax returns .
-Russian money laundering and conspiracy
-Obstruction of Justice
1
The USA may explode, implode, or just dissolve, but the filibuster will live on.
1
Unfortunately, Democrats will need to use every politically extreme maneuver possible to keep the shrinking radical right from permanently damaging the nation. This includes everything from eliminating senate minority powers to stacking the supreme court with eleven justices. Statehood for Puerto Rico and DC will also be a critical priority. Political ruthlessness requires equally ruthless countermeasures. Mitch McConnell’s lawless draconian legacy must be obliterated, our collective future depends on it.
1
mr bouie's stewpot of speculation cannot compete with the odor and flavor of the main course....we are in the fix we're in because the so-called democratic party (no longer the voice of working men and women but rather an ambitious lot exploiting the "pluribus" while eroding the "unum") were COMPLACENT...overconfident to distraction, they missed trump's clown car caravan as it passed under their noses (and those of their media advocates) right into the oval...and then, by way of response they chose vituperation over cogent opposition...and now its the same, having sat back anticipating mueller's
imprimatur, they are once again, caught out and, once again, in response, have taken to desperate outrage, now attacking even mueller himself and tossing subpoena grenades left and right, laying waste to their own chamber (which of, course, is also ours)...and so the pattern emerges...and if it doesn't change, trump will win again in 2020 and will take the senate with him.
mr. bouie's "reforms,"...add some states, change the numbers, etc., are among the measures of that desperation.
1
Agreed. The Senate is actually more of a problem than Trump because if Republican senators hadn't ceded their oversight responsibility to this wannabe emperor he wouldn't be the problem that he has become. I blame Mitch McConnell, Lindsay Graham and the other sycophants who have sold out not only their party but their country to Trump.
1
"Mitch McConnell may cripple", of course he will.
Look at the state of politics in this country, it is akin to warfare with sabotage and subterfuge being the main stays of both major parties.
Is this in our best interest ? The simple answer is no, the more complex answer may be yes.
As long as these two groups of diametrically opposed philosophies continue to battle over the most ridiculous policies and practices they can do little harm to " we the people " as the status quo will remain in place.
This is not how it is supposed to work !
Yet it may be our best hope. Stalemate.
And the SCOTUS is as much a problem as the Senate. It's called "separation of power."
There is an infuriating arrogance to most of the Democrats who have chosen to run for president with no chance of winning when they could have made all the difference in the Senate... the end result of their rush for the top job without the willingness to work their way up will be a loss for Democrats in both the Senate and the presidency. my fear is that Democrats are now forever consigned to a toothless house of Representatives who are just realizing they hold no real power beyond their wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Mitch McConnell is the single most malignant force in American politics in the history of the republic. Nothing will change unless his power is eliminated. He must be defeated in KY, or if he is re-elected, relegated to minority status. And when he is in the minority, the filibuster must be eliminated. Unless he is crushed, the Senate Republicans will continue to drive the country.
204
@Peter The problem is that the Republican party has dropped all pretense of approaching the political process with good will.
I see no reason to believe that there is not another Mitch like "leader" waiting in the wings.
22
@Peter: True enough. Part of me gave up on the whole notion of due process when he stonewalled Obama's SCOTUS appointment. That was clearly a Rubicon crossing moment.
11
@Peter
Jerry Nadler is the single most malignant force in American politics in the history of the republic.
Nothing will change unless Ms. Cortes' power is eliminated.
Rashida Tlaib is the single most malignant force in American politics in the history of the republic.
Nothing will change unless - oh, let's see ... Cory Booker's power is eliminated.
Are we done yet?
1
An easier solution than trying to create more states would be to create two sub-federal but fully autonomous groupings: one from the democratic (blue) states, and one from the anti-democratic (red) states.
That the red-state nation would immediately vindictively place enormous tariffs on exports of meat and fossil fuels to the blue-state nation and erect walls at the borders would be quite useful. It would place proper carbon pricing on these goods, and the walls would be necessary as the economy of the red-state nation, with the education density of, say, Somalia, collapses and its citizens become refugees.
Although the education density of the red-state nation might rise modestly over time as those with all the guns begin to use them on one another...
3
@insight You, sir/madam, for the win. Your suggestion is at least as plausible as Mr. Bouie’s and far more entertaining.
The ideas presented in this column have merit, but they would almost certainly provoke backlash. Democrats could alternatively, without any change in rules or representation, pursue the arguably more difficult course of action: present a winning message to convince voters in some red states to vote for them. Some of the states that are now reliably Republican were tossups or even Democratic in the not-too-distant past. If they could flip from Democratic to Republican, they could also flip back.
That said, as I see it, defeating Mitch McConnell is far more important than Democrats' winning a majority. McConnell caused plenty of trouble even as minority leader, and he would do so again. Other Senate Republicans have been more reasonable.
1
Rutherford B. Hayes and the Republican Party bought the 1876 from majority vote receiver Samuel Tilden. They bought it by agreeing to end Reconstruction. Eleven years after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, his Party sold the last remnants of his vision for the country. Why are we surprised by anything the Republicans do?
2
Thanks, Mr. Bouie. You have already made a gloomy day gloomier, but yes, you are correct, sadly.
1
The democrats didn't pay attention to the republican ground game that started in the last century and the Senate is the key. Alas, 2020 looks like another 4 years of the Grand Obstructionist Party leader Mitch McConnell regardless of who wins the presidency.
I would rather see California secede from the Union than broken up into several small states. As it is California’s economy is equal to number six in the world’s rankings of countries. California is thriving with progressive policies. We would lose all that to become like some sparsely populated red state? No thanks. There’s a good reason why those states are sparely populated!
1
The Senate is more of a problem than Trump. The Republican majority has abdicated their responsibility to protect and defend the Constitution. They have abdicated in favor of political advantage for themselves. McConnell is especially corrupt. We need a Democratic president but perhaps even more important, Democratic majorities in both Houses.
2
Just change the Senate to have proportional representation to a State's population. Maybe it triples in size, but so be it. The US Senate is the nucleus of Washington's dysfunction and Mitch McConnell runs that dysfunction daily-with a vengeance.
1
Over the last 50 years, the Senate has usually been Democrat controlled. And the party of the President has uso been the party of the Senate. Over our history the prevailing pattern is that one party controls the Senate for a decade or more and then control shifts to the other party.
The Senate was never intended to be a populist branch with control fluctuating election by election. Instead, it was designed to be more stable and to resist short term partisan fluctuation. There were a number of other anti democratic purposes attached to the Senate. Nobody claims otherwise.
If you want the Senate to perfectly represent the country’s partisan balance, divide the country into 100 districts of equal population with each district having the same partisan balance as the country on the whole. If you must, have interstate districts and if necessary, join parts of MA with parts of AL.
Achieving fair and balanced elections is a matter of simple math. But you need to decide whether current flaws justify radical realignment.
It’s hard to call yourself a democracy when a voter in California has one sixty seventh the voting power of a Wyoming resident with regard to the Senate. The fact that the Senate holds such sway over the Judicial Branch compounds this inequity. Only a history of statesmanship in this body has prevented the worst effects from being realized. However, it was inevitable that unscrupulous leadership would eventually exploit the inherent unfairness. Enter Mitch McConnell, a more quiet underminer of democratic norms than Trump but no less effective. Demographic trends in Texas and Florida may help Democrats in the long run assuming voting rights are protected but the structure of the Senate will remain unacceptably undemocratic unless changes are made.
3
As the country becomes even more polarized, which will surely happen if Republicans retain control of the Senate and vote in lockstep with their handlers (the money men behind them), I see the only solution as a peaceful secession of the blue states with perhaps some parts of Texas and Florida and Georgia breaking away as well. Blue U.S. can move progressively to a more egalitarian society and Red U.S. can keep their gun-violent, misogynistic, oppressive ways to themselves. I can dream, can't I? Note to Hollywood: would make a good script for a movie.
"The Senate is a problem for Democrats"
Yes, it was a problem in the 2016 election too.
Clinton clearly realized that she would need a Democratic Senate for her progressive agenda, and spent time raising $$ for Democratic Senate candidates from available sources who were willing to help.
Remember when the Bernie bros attacked (verbally) and picketed a fundraiser for Democratic Senate Candidates held at Amal and George Clooney's house?
Hopefully there will be none of that divisiveness this time as all progressive forces come to understand that we need to elect a broad coalition to govern effectively.
The suggestions for better representation at the federal level all make sense. However, based on the entrenched special interests that influence the people who would have to have summon the political courage to risk their ire, this is very unlikely to happen any time soon. The writer missed, what in my opinion, is the most effective, realistic and expeditious solution. And it would take a page out of what was once at the heart of the Republican's playbook. Focus on the power of states rights - which can be significant. Instead of looking at California as a huge missed opportunity, or injustice - look it as a major strength and opportunity. Take the auto industry. California isn't just driving our move towards higher fuel standards and EV requirements in the U.S. They are driving them around the world. They are one of the largest car markets in the world and if you want to compete there you have to play by their rules. What if they used their buying power to effect how pharmaceuticals are purchased. Negotiate better pricing for public employees, or purchase them through other countries - Canada for one - this would, in time, flow into the private sector through the courts. The Fed would have a hard time, over time, winning that fight in court. There are many industries that this can be applied to. Republicans supposedly stand for decentralized power and the miracle of the free markets. Well have at it! It's all about the Benjamins.
Though adding new states is one solution to the democratic problems presented by the structure of the Senate, there are many other dysfunctions with our constitution. Because it is extremely difficult to change the Constitution perhaps the best place to start would be a Constitutional Amendment that would place that authority in the hands of The People through a national referendum requiring 60 percent to pass. The last 232 years have resulted in massive changes that have stretched our Constitution to the breaking point, but the accelerating pace of change during the coming decades will be even more profound. If our Constitution is to survive we need a more democratic way of amending it.
1
The issue of a living constitution hardly ever comes up these days. Our democracy simply is fading away, which was warned about in discussion in the post WWII era. A living constitution. Do most people have an idea what that means?
Since 1980 and the Reagan years the endless discussion has been on the "Founding Fathers." Why? Because that discussion does in fact favor the dwindling numbers of white property owners who have found refuge in the GOP, no matter how out of touch they are for the majority of the United States population.
We have proved how willing we are to permanently reside in the past by even tolerating something like the Trump presidency, which has rendered us meaningless as a democracy.
The United States has degenerated into a fraud led by a fraud.
2
There are a bunch of promising Dems who narrowly lost statewide elections, and should go back and try again before setting their sights on the White House -- I mean you, Stacey Abrams and Beto O'Rourke. Win a statewide race for senate or governor, do a good job in that role, and THEN try for the presidency. Or run for mayor of a major city, and do a good job in that role -- that would be an adequate line on a resume, too.
3
We have so many good candidates for president. My hope is that some of them move on to Senate races. The Republican majority Senate has been a disaster.
1
Other then Biden and Howard Schultz, the DNC has a large slate of unqualified people. It’s a pity that the bench strength of the Democrat Party is so weak.
I suspect that the Republicans will wait until the last possible 'minute' before the 2020 election to condemn Donald Trump and only when they can come out as the heroes for saving the US from Trump;only when they think it will give them back the house will they move to get rid of him. Trump probably knows this which is why he continues to play only to his base, knowing the Republicans don't want to lose these votes.
1
Do we really have to read these pie-in-the-sky proposals, like breaking California and Texas up into mini states? Why not, instead, consider nominating a Democrat who can win in the south? That was the winning formula for Carter and Clinton. Obama, too, with his hold on the African American and suburban white vote. (And Gore, too, since after all, until an untimely intervention by the Republican Supreme Court reversed the will of the people, he was elected president.) Then, if it's run well, a strong Democratic presidential campaign should have enough of a coattail effect for a net gain of 2 seats in the Senate.
1
Here we are 18-months out from the 2020 national elections and the Dems do NOT have a coherent message except opposition to anything Trump.
We cannot win unless back the national government until we tell the electorate WHY they should vote and HOW their votes will affect the nation and their own lives going forward.
Forget the "Identity Politics", the 'Free College Tuition" and similar grandiose schemes. They will not win national elections. And if your party doesn't win, it doesn't matter how true and pure your positions were - you're still outside, looking in.
Unless there is a clear, coherent value-proposition (message) it doesn't matter whom the sales person is. Figure out the message and then sell, sell, sell.
1
In Canada we have periodic debates dubbed "Rep by Pop" that seeks to balance the number of senate seats a province gets based on population. It is admittedly a contentious issue, and I imagine it would be far more so in the US. But it would seem fair to connect the number of senators a state gets to its relative population, such that California would get more senators by a mathematical formula applied to all states. This would at least in theory be non-partisan - it simply increases representation in accordance with population increases.
The Senate is Broken !
40 to 1 Population Density Representation:
California 39+ Million People vs. North Dakota less than 1 Million people and the "People's Senatorial Representation is "2 Senators Each.
This huge disparity in fair- representation plays out with many small Red States as well.
Quite Sadly, the GOP refuses to do their sworn duties at every level of representation.
This is especially true in both Houses of our Legislative Branch of Co-Equal Government to the Executive and Judiciary Branches.
The GOP only cares about their Party and will sacrifice and even throw away everything our Founding Fathers put in place for their own personal gain and for wealthy donors - Period.
Democrats MUST regain the Senate and to do so by means of intense and directly focused district by district campaign blitz' -
We must burn and blast our way through the "Fox Shield of Misinformation" !
The Russians "showed us the way" with massive use of Social Media Bots.
It is time for the Democrats to fight Fire with Fire.
This upcoming election should not even be close - let alone have the possibility of Trump being re-elected.
Enough is Enough - Time to go after each and every low-population Red State and blast them with "Actual Facts" !
1
1. Stop sniveling and leave Lala Land.
2. Report on most likely red to blue turntable senate seats up for 2020.
3. Analyze what those states’ citizens really really want.
4. Build realistic platforms and aggressively but accurately tear down Republican platforms and win red states.
5. Agree Abrams Higgenloper O’Rourke etc can do more for our country building a Blue Senate than running for Pres.
6. Start now, because we have <18 months to get something far bigger than the Presidency accomplished.
3
I am as appalled by the Trump administration and the "new" GOP (going back to at least the 90's) as many other posters here, but I think that messing with the basic structure of the country's governance (Congressional representation, number of states) would be a historical mistake. The biggest problem we have today is a two-party electorate that has been almost evenly split for many years, and the crescendo of party loyalty and warlike behavior that has accompanied it. The democrats, as angry as they may be, must be careful not to act with the same short-sighted tribalism that the GOP has exhibited for so long now. The "gentleman" laws that have successfully governed us for years - from traditions regarding release of tax returns to procedures for appointing judges have recently been brushed aside by both parties, and more substantial changes, such as the Senate "nuclear option," have reared their ugly head. If you want to accelerate the demise of a once-proud nation, start making even bigger structural changes that will rightly be seen by the opposing party as a power grab. The pendulum of leadership in our closely split nation will continue to swing back and forth - Republican control, Democratic control - but as each party seizes power it will re-invent the government. Sound like a good idea? Not to me. How about changing people's minds regarding specific issues instead? After all, as this article mentions, even Alabama sometimes elects Democrats!
1
"a Republican Party whose political interests lie in restricting the scope of our democracy."
It's not just the Republican Party. The Democratic Party cheered when the Supreme Court removed an important issue from democratic control in 1973, and they're still terrified that voters will get the control back.
So even if/when we fix voter suppression, gerrymandering, and dark money, we still won't be able to get anything done unless we pack the Senate. Talk about an uphill battle!
1
"This move, which decoupled the interests of a state’s senators from its state legislature, was a fundamental change to the Senate, virtually obliterating the direct link the framers envisioned for the Senate and the states. "
One of the Tea Party's less publicized proposals is to repeal the amendment and have senators once more chosen by secret backroom deals in state legislatures. The Party frankly admitted that the purpose of the proposal was to strengthen the legislatures (which, of course, tend to be Republican)
The senate as it stands now belongs fully to the 1%'rs who own 90% of the nations wealth. They along with Trump are running a grift to end all grifts. It is unequivocally safe to imply that they are comfortable replacing democracy with authoritarian rule. Just a short time ago Putin would have been a loud dirty word to the political right. Since Trump though his name barely elicits a whisper from the servants of wealth. How long before we start defining the 1%'rs as Oligarchs? We are probably as close as we have ever been.
3
The Senate is not the only body that is unrepresentative. The Supreme Court heavily favors coastal states. A few years ago Texas, second most populous state in the country, had to defend an abortion law in front of a court on which they had no representation. They lost, of course.
1
Texas has gone to great lengths to establish and preserve their reputation for weirdness. You have to give them that much!
If Silicon valley located new jobs in empty states, and industries like software, research, and education were to grow there, demographic changes would occur leading to a Senate more reflective of the national vote. That's a more realistic solution that could occur over a decade than any political solution involving creating new states or changing the Constitution. Because Republicans will never agree to any changes because they know the Senate is the only thing keeping them nationally relevant. Whereas the free movement of people can easily change political outcomes over longer time horizons. Moving as few as five million voters could do the job, to the smallest states closest to a 50/50 split already. ND,SD, Idaho, WY,MT. A lot of employees would also appreciate less traffic, open spaces, clean air and cheap housing. There are also a couple southern states that have migration potential like NC and TN that could be turned-their urban areas are already purplish blue. Finally education is a force known to turn even white kids away from Trumpism.
3
The framers and their famous fear of democracy created the perfect situation for Trump and the GOP. The Democrats can win a popular vote in the country that would not give them the Presidency or the Senate. The GOP has done its level best with its supporters to claim that urban America is a vast Democrat constituency that is bribed with gov't spending. That undermines true American values. The Democrats response is to find candidates that would increase their representation in red states by catering their message to them. Once again creating Democrats who are really Republicans like in 2008. Obama, with total control of the Congress, had to work around conservative Democrats who had tremendous leverage. The stimulus plan was weighed down with tax cuts. Helping people during the foreclosure crisis was limited. Health care reform was a maddening long ordeal to put together. Then with the death of Ted Kennedy the Democrats had to settle for the Senate version of the ACA. The imbalance created by the framers is one that will be with the country for some time.
An answer to this whole mess of an administration and Senate is for the GOP to realize that if they started following their oath of office, stand for the rule of law, make DT accountable, and ignore their base, they may be able to replace the votes of their fanatical far right wing of their party with an appeal to Democrats and Independents. I'm as liberal a Democrat as they come and voted every time for Richard Lugar. He was a decent, good, and honest man. I didn't agree with everything he said and did but I could trust him. I knew he would do the right thing. I keep hearing on the news about GOP Senators who say in private that this administration is a threat to our country and they need to act. I wish they would. More division and partisanship will sink this country and throw us into DT's dictatorial hands. If the GOP started standing up for the country instead of the fear of their base, I can guarantee that D's and I's would give them a second look.
2
Currently, the US is a kleptocracy buoyed by a flawed, out-of-date upper house and the Electoral College. Even the House needs to become more democratic by expanding its membership so that there are fewer constituents per representative. Yet fundamental changes to the American Constitution are highly unlikely unless the Pacific Coast and other blue states indicate that they will secede if the US refuses to move towards a more perfect, democratic union. I neither expect this to come about peacefully nor to see this occur in my lifetime.
What needs to change? Here's my shortened list (I could go on and on)..
1) Electoral College need to be abolished in favor of a national popular vote. Anyway you look at it, the Electoral College makes absolutely no sense. States with small populations will no longer has disproportionate voting power. All votes will now be equal.
2) No lifetime appointments for Supreme Court Judges since the court has obviously descended into partisanship.
3) A Presidential Supreme Court nominee must be voted on in the Senate within a certain time period. Remember Merrick Garland?
4) Redrawing of House voting districts in all 50 states must now be done by an independent group not beholding to the party currently in charge in that state. Gerrymandering has become a problem in many states.
5) House and Senate rules should be cast in stone and not allowed to be changed willy-nilly depending on which party is in the majority. "Nuclear option" anyone?
6) Senate majority leader and House speaker should not be allowed to totally control the flow of legislation brought to a vote.
7) Let's get real about what constitutes a "national emergency" or a "threat to national security" and have strict rules as to when a President can invoke one without Congressional oversight. Remember Trump's Steel Tariffs?
8) The use of "Executive Orders" by the President needs to be narrowly defined and not used just because he/she wants to circumvent Congress.
5
this is so well stated. i am enlightened! Thank you, Mr. Bouie.
1
This problem can be solved by a Constitutional Amendment with no chopping up states or creating new ones. This solution maintains 100 senators, two for each state.
The solution is weighted voting. The Senate will create 1,000 voting points 501 points constituting a majority on any vote. Each state will be assigned as many points as its population would bare to the population of the whole country. A state which contains 10% of the population would be assigned 100 voting points, 50 for each senator. It is possible that one a particular one senator may vote yes and the other no, just like now. Each state would have its voice, seniority will remain but democracy will have a chance and big states will not be governed by small states and a vote across the the nation will be equal no matter where cast.
@Sheldon Bunin: “Weighted voting” is a very interesting concept, and I think it warrants further exploration.
I wonder though, as a first and arguably less radical step, if we should assign Electoral College votes proportionally in each state based on a given state’s popular vote, rather than the “all or nothing” model currently used in 48 out of the 50 states. Such an approach would only be relevant to Presidential elections, of course, so that still leaves the problem of unequal representation in the Senate.
For the Senate, I arguably think that the most feasible approach would be to allocate the number of senators in a given state based on that state’s population. Perhaps not precisely based on a 1:1 ratio, and certainly not based on district-level populations, as used for Congressional elections. This might require changing the total number of senators; otherwise some states would need to lose or gain senators.
Hey! How about this? Allocate the number of senators in a given state based on the tax revenues returned by each state to the federal government. States that “give” more get a greater number of senators, and states that “take” more — excluding certain types of social services — get fewer. Hmmm… Lots of pros and cons there.
1
The real minority rule problem in the US is that we are ruled by the rich. If the rich were not allowed to poison our politics to the degree they do now the Republicans would not be so extreme.
6
Are there no significant numbers of people in Kentucky who understand that the state's consistently poor educational system that dooms their children to working in coal mines and dying young from it or at 7-elevens for their entire lives is the product of the republican machine in Kentucky that McConnell is a representative of ? That involves big money ads consistently misleading them about health care and
education ? Are the people in Kentucky living in the third world ?
6
Maybe it is time for some of our presidential hopefuls to rethink and do what is best for the country rather than themselves, and run for the Senate. This would include Hickenlooper, Abrams, and O’Rourke and or Castro for starters.
10
The Democrats must win our hearts and minds. Then they must call for a constitutional convention to repair the damage done by the republicans.
Or do we need to be subjected to a string of Trumps, McConnells and other miscreants in the 21st century before we wake up and make the changes needed to move forward into the future?
1
Agreed the current senate is an anachronism. However since it looks like the Democrats cannot fix on a strong unifying message, and also because of the strong economy, it looks like Trump will be re-elected, debating the senate right now seems rather self-indulgent. Democrats, sort yourselves out first!
4
Can the NYT editorial page get more radical? Sure, blow up the U.S 250 year old governing structure which produced the first true democracy since the fall of the Roman Republic, a system of checks and balances which is the envy of and template for all the democracy's that came after, that became the most prosperous State in human history, that over time has produced a balance between the political parties, governed by a an elegant and innovative founding constitution which balanced competing interests.
This "plan" amounts to an ultra gerrymander which will destroy any power that the smaller states and rural areas currently have, eliminate one party of a two party system leaving a one party state, and permanently cleave apart an already fractured electorate. This plan should be called the "Yugoslavia" plan because implementing it could result in a similar outcome. If you break up California, it opens the door to breaking up the U.S.
7
As a resident of California I am not interested in any 'solution' that does not give me equal representation with each resident of Wyoming, every one of whom currently has 67% more voting power than I do. Additionally, California is also a donor state, and because of my state's enormous under-representation in the senate I am severely under-represented in any economic voice on how money is allocated at the federal level - or in any other function of the senate- like, say, deciding votes on nominees for the Supreme Court. This is very simple from my perspective. It can be summed up in two statements : 'No taxation without EQUAL representation'. And : 'No decision making at the federal level that I do not have an equal say in'.
10
I agree totally. The current makeup of the Senate is not only anachronistic but so unrepresentative of the American public that it threatens the survival of our Republic. It leads to terrible policies that harm the economic and political interests of the majority of Americans who live in large states like California and New York and gives too much power to small unpopulated states. It is simply unfair.
5
A much better solution is to expand the Senate to 200 members and give each state a population
adjustment based on its actual population and thus make the Senate more representative of the actual population of each state and thus more democratic.
California would get 12 more Senators and NY 7 and Texas 8. I would give DC two Senators and PR would get two if it is willing to become a state.
I believe this would make America a stronger and fairer democracy. It would compel the Republican Party to diversify and become more moderate if it wanted to politically survive. Ending the filibuster might be a good idea too particularly if the Senate begins to more accurately reflect the changing demographics of America.
3
A few hundred thousand coastal and urban Democrats should retire in Wyoming, Montana, the Dakotas, Utah and the rest of those low-population Republican states and flip their Senate seats.
15
@abigail49
Won’t work.
Florida is full of democrats.
The electoral process is crooked.
They pull up your democrat lawn signs.
Gillum Won but lost. In Florida.
Same will happen.
We are being occupied by the freedom caucus folks in the senate.
Jail time. Treason.
The Democratic Party must organize for the long haul to overcome this.
First, the most powerful candidates should change residence to the smallest states. Second campaign financing should be concentrated on the smallest states. If the $80 million raised to elect Beto was applied in a few small states, it would go far.
Finally the Democratic Party needs to implement policies that support rural citizens — rural fiber optic connections, immigration reform, media anti-trust.
There could also be a grand bargain to allow the minority to bring bills to the floor of the House in return for the same in the Senate. Finally, we need to somehow end the filibuster in the Senate. The need for a 2/3 majority for common legislation was not foreseen by the framers of the constitution.
If we continue to be blocked by our inability to pass desperately needed legislation and we fail to address the growing portion of families living without dignity, our “democracy” will not survive and deservedly so. In such an eventuality, all levels of society will suffer.
2
Rhode Island, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine and Connecticut are useless. Trade them to Canada for Quebec and Ontario.
@bearcountry man Bring it on! Health care and a refreshing change of government. But you can keep Susan Collins, not so “incredibly popular” as one would think. We’ve had enough of her studied prevarication, her thespian angst, finally to see her fall in line at last like the good soldier she is.
One-party rule is never a good idea.
7
We cannot save our country if we do not flip the Senate. McConnell’s polls are in the gutter, people are lining up to fund an opponent to Colins, no GOP Senator should remain unopposed.
If Democrats fail to step up to this challenge, there’s really no point in taking the White House because we’re sunk.
8
Obstructionist #1 McConnell HAS to be defeated in 2020.
10
The Legislature ... the House ... the Senate ... forget trump ... concentrating on him only strengthens him ... ignore him and he is weakened ...
3
Whose fault is it that the bigoted white supremacist nationalist right-wing son of Confederate Alabama Addison Mitchell McConnell, Jr. is the Republican Party majority leader in the United States Senate?
In the 2016 elections the Republican Party increased their majority in the Senate. Excluding the extreme likes of Joe Manchin and Angus King this exposed the Democratic Party dilemma.
When a half million people in Wyoming have as many Senators as 39.5 million Californians you understand how far our divided limited different power constitutional republic of united states is from a delusional ' our democracy'.
5
I figured this out a long time ago. Why is it taking the Democratic Party so long to figure it out? If the Democrats can sell the value of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, the value of a good public school education to the independent voter and the Republican fence sitter then they don't have a chance. And quite frankly I don't see that happening.
5
Your broken and undemocratic Senate is the whole reason Trump is still here.
12
So Democrats cannot win under the rules which made the greatest, richest and most free nation in the history of mankind (despite their amazing ideas .......) so they decide to change the rules.
If your ideas fail in the idea marketplace with the educated taxpayers (read: Republicans) maybe that tells your something about the worth of those ideas. If not, it tells you to learn basic economics.
8
How will Native American or minority membership be identified as the generations become more intermarried over time?
1
@Susan
Maybe they will simply become Americans and no longer feel the need to have a hyphenated name.
1
@Norville T. Johnson
I lived in AK for 20 years. It is a growing problem there pertaining to genetic proof for membership in their tribal nations and the membership benefits they derive under federal law.
There was a time when we needed more identity of ethnic and gender backgrounds and to build pride and understanding of our cultural differences, but I hope we'll see the day when all minority groups give up hyphenated designations as qualifiers and that identification is no longer sought on official forms. (As an octogenarian I dream, but have hope for future generations.)
1
When mentioning McConnell's blockade of Merrick Garland, let's not forget that this abdication of sworn constitutional duty was only the highly visible tip of a massive iceberg of obstruction, of nominations of federal judges at all levels and jurisdictions, orchestrated by the cancer from Kentucky.
8
Be careful what you wish for, Mr. Bouie. Not so long ago some folks in northern California were clamoring to secede from the rest of the state. They're pretty conservative north of San Francisco. Same goes for the citizens of upper New York State, many of whom would love to break away from the Big Apple and form their own orchard. Urban centers in Texas and Florida are generally progressive but they're spread out across those states and would not likely have much of an effect on turning any of those projected "mini-states" a safe shade of blue.
11
From the outside, I can't believe there isn't more interest in a West Coast secession.
@PM, only Texas is allowed to seceed per the Constitution.
Global warming may make some red states appealing to non republicans who currently live in blue states.
Agreed. Mitch McConnell is public and Democratic enemy #1.
4
So it’s “unfair” that Wyoming gets two senators but it will be okay to give tribes, the largest of which is perhaps half the population of Wyoming (most have less than 25K), an equal two. Bizarre math!
4
I hope not, because it we are really unable to prevent the country from falling more or less permanently into the hands of something like today's GOP, then I think a lot our talent will eventually leave. It won't be a protest. It will simply be a brain drain, as other countries offer great opportunities and average citizens have no particularly compelling reason to stay. The US is quite powerful (for now), but it's not exceptional anymore. It's just another country that looks out for itself, and that's run by some oligarchy whose only real values are making money, preserving their own power and privileges, and their own ethnic pride. There's nothing special about that. That's the way most countries operate, and they lose a lot of their talent to places that offer more. Most Americans, and certainly most young Americans, want more than what the GOP offers. There is a limit to anyone's patience, and competition loves a vacuum.
4
Why is this not a key part of Democratic strategy? Nothing should matter more. Isn't there a decent moderate white male the dems could throw against the evil McConnell? And toss millions his way?
4
And we just figured this out?
3
I'd say it is a very big even increasingly scary problem, whereas President Grifter-Autocrat and the Grifter Deplorable Repubs are an unmitigated disaster never envisioned by the founders as likely to fold as Ben Franklin had, who had very public doubts about keeping the republic
5
Finally somebody is making sense! Bravo Mr Bouie!
2
Great article, Mr. Bouie!
4
God could you imagine the White House shenanigans it there was a Democratic House and Senate. I suspect the Trump will be in hiding when the federal marshals arrive. The GOP will but their resources into the Senate we need to challenge them in every state. Maine is ripe for the picking and NV and Arizona are low hanging fruit.
2
How correct you are. Trump, as horrendous as he is as one of the worst people on this planet, is a merely a moronic, malleable symbol of a larger problem - Republican insanity and mindless tribalism.
McConnell is a more indicative example of the corruption of the ex-Republican party. They now stand as a rogue, anti-American (in the sense that they have their own bizarre interpretation of our Constitution and are a power-hungry bunch of thieves) cult with no moral or ethic underpinning and a violent hatred of anything "not them". They condone the destruction of the rule of law, endorse corruption and prejudice at the highest levels, seek to corrupt the Judiciary and all branches of government, giving absolutely no recognition to the MAJORITY of Americans.
If the Senate continues to be held by these rogue conspirators they can effectively block most Presidential action like appointments to courts, cabinet positions, treaties, etc. They have done this before and left this country in ruins.
I believe in civil bi-partisan governance under rule of law. Republicans would destroy this and our country for their own greedy reasons.
7
In other words, Democrats can't win the Senate, yet they should.
3
Susan Collins is no longer that popular - she has lost lots of support and in a state that went totally democratic in 2018 - well, she's got a fight ahead of her
5
Another possible solution to the very serious problem outlined by Mr. Bouie which he does not propose is ... education.
If the "rural whites" and many of the other groups who form the Republican base were made to understand that the real threats to their livelihood and future are not gays or gun restrictions or abortion rights or, omg, even brown people but are, instead, powerful people and the institutions they control, which want nothing more than more power and money at their expense, then maybe, just maybe, the party of the plutocrats will be consigned to the dustbin it deserves.
But for that to happen, Democrat politicians are going to have to stop relying on identity politics as that's an electoral (and, certainly, an upper chamber) loser.
3
All of this is beautifully expressed and clear. But it leaves out some very important ingredients.
In order to get ahold of the Senate in 2020, the Democrats will have to find a way to contend with FOX and Sinclair. As long as most of the people who are "the base" get their info exclusively from these sources, nothing they can say or do will make a difference. There is nothing to counter it - not MNN, not MSNBC, or CNN or PBS. 24/7 propaganda!
The other issue is abortion. In order to counter it, someone would have to shout: separation of church and state!!! The government will make no laws based on a specific religion!! Abortion would not be a national issue if it were not for the proliferation of religions that say, "all abortion is murder." If you are an atheist or have no religious beliefs, you have the same rights as anyone else but if you get pregnant, and want an abortion, then you do not. Old, rich, white men telling women what they can/can't do. Why not punish the impregnators? There is no virgin birth.
Finally, there are the millions of people who worship guns who believe the government wants to take them away. Change their minds? Naw.
The Democrats can talk all they want about their policy platforms (go, Liz Warren!) but unless they crack the groups above, they will lose the Senate and maybe the House in 2020 and, as you say, even if they get the Presidency, without both houses everything will stay the same or (god forbid) get much worse.
1
We are dreaming. Constitutional amendments, eliminating the two senator per state structure, or eliminating the electoral college? Just dreaming. Seriously, does any one in power, whether Republicans or Democrats, the rich oil and financial barons, or the former slave owning Red states readily, willingly, or voluntarily give up power, control, or dominance? Laughable. Who are we kidding?
What we have is taxation without representation. In 2016 the Red states controlled by Republicans zapped the Blue states — oh, yes, the coastal elites in New York, the Northeast, mid-Atlantic states, California, and rhe West Coast and the big cities like Chicago and Philadelphia — by reducing real estate tax deductions to nothingness. In 1776, and involving “tea,” when the British tried that gambit they got a revolution. That — a revolution— is what is needed now. Our current British are the Republican owners of the Red states. Throw the bums out.
5
One way to control the Senate is to defeat McConnell.
This could easily be done by:
1 — Exposing how impoverished Kentucky is set against the rest of the US under the rule of McConnell in his long tenure in office. Let Kentucky voters see the truth that McConnell has done nothing for them. Not one single thing.
2 — Exposing who is the biggest donor to McConnell’s campaign money both as direct cash injections via a super PAC and indirect cash injections like the planned aluminum plant being orchestrated by one Putin’s oligarch (to make a wild guess, this is a laundromat than an industrial plant).
McConnell. The most dangerous man in America after Trump
5
Mr. Bouie wrote"The Senate is a problem for Democrats".
How about this: Mitch McConnell is a huge problem for 99% of Americans.
6
The military led Republican Senate leaders elected Trump. Reverse engineer the first Trump supporter being former Senator Jeff Sessions who likely shared inside Trump campaign information with Congressional colleagues. Trump was the perfect military school educated candidate for the military puppet position. You do know the military runs it all, don't you?
I had been thinking for years that both opposing parties were killing each other's leaders since the Uncivil war, but now believe the military has a hand in the deed.
Many movies, TV shows, and video games have violent overtones because all Americans are in an audio visual boot camp for training. The Republicans throw money at the military and favors to gun owners to cultivate their loyalty.
Trump prepared to have a massive land/air military parade on the streets of Washington just five days after the election. After I raised the looming possibility of a coup if Republicans lost the Congress, here in several comments, the parade was very wisely cancelled by the Pentagon. It isn't important if you don't post this comment, but it is to share there.
2
Sure, it sounds like it would be a great idea to expand the Senate. You would have more Senators from newly created left-leaning states, territories, Native Americans, too. Great!
But if your aim is to have equal representation, why jump through all of those hopes, dubious at best. Instead, propose one constitutional amendment: abolish the Senate in its entirety. Leave in place one unicameral legislative chamber, i.e., the House of Representatives. Just like most other Western democracies (including the State of Nebraska, too). The constitution already provides (through Baker v. Carr, et al.) one-person-one-vote representation in the House. Leave everything else in place except no more Senate. I submit, it would be no more daunting a task to abolish the Senate than it would be splitting California into five states, granting statehood to D.C., Puerto Rico, Native Americans, etc.
Name one American city has a bi-cameral legislature. (Gee, why was it again that the courts struck down the NYC Board of Estimate?) Name one major corporation that has a bi-cameral board of directors. Name one major Western democracy that has a bi-cameral legislature.
It's time to abolish the U.S. Senate.
4
Too many contradictions/impediments/fears
to transcend.
Wish I felt less cynical.
Reformation ain't gonna be.
This negative comment doesn't mean to stop trying.
Mitch McConnell's every word and deed is to disrupt and to deny our system of democratic governance. His oath-breaking refusal to schedule hearings on the Garland nomination was a conspiracy. Senator John Cornyn, TX was definitely in on it when McConnell, WITHIN HOURS of announcement of Scalia's death, promised Americans that he would re-invent our Constitution.
Every state needs Americans to understand: that legacy cannot stand. Our Constitution is not McConnell's, nor Cornyn's, nor the other 50-odd Republican Senators' plaything. We should be counting the final days that every one of those co-conspirators are still holding public office.
Yes, the power disparity of small states makes them prime targets of monied interests. Still, changing that reality is the kind of epic battle that just cements the already defiant. It's poison.
The tactics of Far-Right and Far-Left that work so well for primary candidates are widely used because we as citizen-voters DO NOT PUSH-BACK. We've injested that poison; and we are suffering its maladies. The extremist poisons must be purged by citizen-voters by pushing-back on the extremist media. Logical progression and meaningful accountability must be the citizen-voters' demand of the office holder. If he/she falls short, that office holder SHOULD BE replaced with better stock.
3
Great column! I literally wake up nights worrying about the Senate. If Mitch McConnell stays Majority Leader, it won't matter if a combination of Michelle Obama and Wonder Woman sits in the White House. I would hate to see the end of my beautiful California, but if it could send the Republicans to the permanent sidelines where they fairly and rightfully have belonged for at least the last 20 years, I would be happy to become a resident of NorCal or Redwood or AltaCal or whatever we would rename our section.
2
Democrats aren’t going to win anything in 2020. Better start making plans to move to Canada now, liberals.
1
@Greg
When Trump is removed from office, and immediately carted off to prison, we will experience the same phenomenon that happened after Nixon left office.
You won't be able to find anyone who voted for him.
1
This is why it worries me no end that Stacy Abrams and other high profile Dems have refused to run for the Senate. Is saving our country not a worthwhile goal for them? We're out here busting out guts trying to turn red States blue or even purple. It seems like it is a wasted effort if those with high name recognition who have a more than an even chance of winning won't throw their hat in the ring.
3
There’s nothing new about the unfairness of the Senate (and thus also the Electoral College). What’s new is the that our geographies align so strongly with our politics. See Bill Bishop’s The Big Sort. Most states are consistently either red or blue. As it happens, many of the low-population western states are reliably red. So, for Democrats, the way we elect the Senate feels urgently problematic.
That’s only good sense. Californians have a right to resent their weak voting power. But the underlying problem is that the nation is deeply divided in a way it hasn’t been since the civil war, geographically and ideologically.
I wish I knew how to address that. I do suspect the a woman from Chicago and a man from Oklahoma would be more likely to see eye to eye if our cable news and talk radio were not so intent on keeping everybody angry at each other all the time.
1
Creating new states to swing federal power in favour of the Democrats seems a long-shot at best. With the acknowledgment that I’m a Canadian and hence not fully familiar with US federalism I do wonder why Democrats don’t focus more attention and resources on winning control at the state level and implementing social policies for the benefit of their citizens at the state rather than the federal level. Basically let Kentucky do Kentucky, move on and make life better where you can.
1
I’ve studied the Senate past and present. Jamelle is wrong and he’s practicing the journalistic fad of seizing on benign disparities that exist for a reason to excuse foundational institutional reforms for momentary politics. It’s juvenile. I’m on the left, but I understand the utility of our institutions.
Madison opposed equal representation in the Senate, yet recognized its redeeming values in Fed. 62, calling it an "impediment" that improves protection "against improper acts of legislation" given that the “excess of law-making seem to be the diseases to which our governments are most liable”.
The proportion of Americans living in the top 15 states, about 65-70%, has not changed since the founding. The Senate is a regulatory function on the free-market of power. It impedes power from concentrating including *among the people themselves*.
Jamelle wrongly writes the Senate is rigged for the GOP because of race, sex and size of states. If you rank states by those criteria, you’ll find the GOP is far more competitive than Dems in the least male, white and largest states. Dems can easily win the Senate, but Jamelle knows that would require Dems to moderate to reflect the country. He doesn’t want to see that.
Dems controlled the Senate for 42 of the last 66 years. Since 1999, the GOP have controlled the Senate for 2 years longer than Dems. Jamelle confuses dysfunction for division. If he wants federal power centralization, he should say so.
In America, that’s undemocratic.
3
@R.P.
"Dems can easily win the Senate, but Jamelle knows that would require Dems to moderate to reflect the country"
Huh?? Is "to moderate" to allow unlimited gun sales and forbidden access to abortion? Republicans never compromise, yet try to paint Democrats as uncompromising.
Stand strong Dems. Don't fall for these false arguments. Call them out.
2
Thank you! Excellent historical context and explanation of our federal republic as envisioned by the Founding Fathers.
When the US “exports” democracy, we don’t set up a US system, but rather a parliamentary system with an empirically more representative and more democratic government.
The US is self-aware of how undemocratic our system is, but since the corporate interests are vested in the Senate and the politics of national division, the outlook to change it is bleak.
2
McConnell is the Palpatine of this story. When the history of the Fall of the Republic is written, he, rather than Trump, will be seen as the Master.
6
How the Senate is elected ain't gonna change. There is therefore only one alternative solution: "meaningful change in the demographic contours of our partisan divides."
Stated simply, because of the two-Senators-per-state rule, the Democratic Party MUST win a majority of rural whites - like it did in the 1930s - in order to take control of the domestic policy agenda. This is why somebody like Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, makes for a much better leader than Vice President Biden or anyone else who hopes only to reassemble the "Obama coalition." Democrats need to get really serious about winning over rural voters.
1
Good ideas or at least a good start. In a choice between the White House and the Senate for 2020, I would rather see the Democrats take the latter. Winning the WH while the Republicans still control the Senate is not a win at all.
The current field of Democratic presidential candidates is starting to resemble California's gubernatorial recall election and it is difficult to take the Democrats seriously. If a Republican president is not or cannot run again, a large field of Democrats is fine; but when the goal is to remove a problematic Republican president, a large field of candidates divides and dilutes voters and distracts from that singular goal. is anyone in charge of the Democratic Party? Pelosi? Obama? Bueller?
1
When Republicans lose, they change the players and the leadership and try again. When Democrats lose -- at least in this time of "Resistance" -- they bellyache that the rules are not fair, because obviously if the rules had been fair in their eyes, they would have triumphed. It's a bit of a pathetic argument compared to, "We got spanked, it's going to take a few election cycles to work our way back, let's get to work."
as evidenced by the voting suppression and gerrymandered districts being overturned in multiple states the playing field clearly was slanted against Democrats in 2016.
Democrats would do well to put every single legislative campaign dollar into ending McConnell's reign of terror. Leaving the senate under another republican leader with a bigger majority would be preferable to the psychopath McConnell and a smaller majority if they can't get a majority.
But to this problem... It is Imperative that we don't have another incrementalist bend over backwards to "reach across the aisle" president. You don't do that with psychopaths...It just doesn't work. You only lose when you try that with psychopaths. They Only respond to raw power.
The best outlook is a Sanders or Warren who will effectively use the presidency as a bully pulpit to whip Voters to flip the senate to get what Voters want done. None of the Other democratic presidential candidates has that vision or commitment to change. Warren and Sanders Will call out the corruption as it's happening to get to the change we need. Do you see Biden or Klobuchar or...any other corporatist candidate doing that?
Yes, the Senate will prevent M4A and any other progressive policy and judicial appointment until McConnell is no longer leader. But a Sanders/Warren Presidency is the best avenue to make that happen in 2022 or 2024. When he is knocked down from the leadership I want to see McConnell pilloried. He is public enemy #2.
4
How satisfying would it be for Mitch McConnell to lose the distinction of Senate Majority Leader, since he abused that power to steal a Supreme Court appointment from President Obama.
5
Bernie Sanders says the same thing to his supporters and at his rallies. It is not enough to win the White House. No president can bring about needed change alone. We are all in this together.
Fight for control of state legislatures. Make gerrymandering history. Restore voting rights to the disenfranchised; allow incarcerated people to vote. (No, that won't change election results. They aren't a voting block.)
Fight for control of the senate and retention of the House. Without those, even Trump would be neutered.
There is more than one way to skin a cat, or de-fang a rouge president.
4
The plan is to go hardcore ASAP. But of course that's secret. We're all like, "OMG, what do we do?"
The Senate as it is currently run is a thoroughly anti-democratic institution because Republicans deliberately made it that way. Mitch McConnell - just one loathsome man from Kentucky - arguably has more power than the President simply by virtue of Republicans holding a slim Senate majority. It's as if a morally and financially bankrupt sociopath scratched a lottery ticket he found in the gutter and suddenly became the richest man in the world, lording over everyone.
The light is rapidly going out on our democracy.
4
The only reason Bouie is whining about this problem is that it impedes the Cultural Marxists from executing their final and complete take over the polis as they have the large metropolitan areas of the nation.
What he means when he writes, "But progressives ... have started to brainstorm about reforms", he actually means, given the current social dynamics, i.e., anything but "white" guys in the Senate, the system can be rigged to the DNC Politburo's favor by adding more places with a paucity of "white" guys.
They filled the cities with blue-voting people and now they want to add more states with more blue-voting people. Nothing "democratic" about that--just another means to the utopian Grand Collective thesis.
1
God forbid the Democrats can’t get their liberal agenda through without bipartisan support. Tragic. Not.
2
@DRS
"liberal agenda" gives me painful flashbacks to the "gay agenda" feared by far-right homophobes of decades past.
Please, if there is a specific policy you fear, spell it out in detail. But "liberal agenda" is such a broad brush that it makes one suspicious of your own "agenda".
2
We are all being held captive by a group of right-wing Fascists who care only for themselves. We all have to keep our voices active and at high volume to demand a more representative form of government. The democracy we have enjoyed for more than two centuries is on the verge of collapse, having been kidnapped by right-wing fanatics composed of the wealthy class on one top end and the less educated, lower-income and rural folks on the bottom. RESIST. DEMAND. STAND FAST.
3
The point you are raising has been obvious to many who have written comments on these pages for a while now. Since the Garland debacle, even the staunchest supporter of our archaic constitution should see that we are no longer a democracy. The senate is hugely more powerful than the House which is supposed to hold the purse but as we just observed, in the case of the Wall, a mere acting secretary of defense can divert funds with no congressional say,
The senate is an archaic institution. It is as bad as the electoral college and has to be reformed now.
How can it be done? Even with a simple majority in the senate as well as the White House and the House, Democrats can not change or amend the constitution.
What is to be done? Maybe the only way, short of splitting into blue and red USA, is to go out on the streets and force the issue. We are getting to the point that the US will soon be a totally fascist state ran by a white oligarchy. It has happened before in history. People convinced themselves that their institutions would protect them. They did not.
1
This column does not factor in that Donald Trump is insane and becoming more unstable every day.
What will Trump be like in a year? We all know he's going to get worse, but none of us know what he's going to do.
3
Wisconsin needs a strong Democratic Challenger to Ron Johnson. The guy is a tool. Run somebody that can mobilize the Milwaukee voting population and as a Democrat, the rest of the states dems will get on board. Go after Johnson.
Mitch McConnell is probably the most unpatriotic American there is. How he has become the mouthpiece of the Senate, he is just awful and his pride in obstructing the Obama did so much damage to this country, let alone the Supreme Court vote. He, as one person, holds too much power.
2
Mr. Bouie writes another inspired column. Every Democrat running for president needs to tie Mitch McConnell to Donald Trump at every opportunity. Our national axis of evil must be stopped.
2
I'm guessing Mark Kelly (NASA astronaut, former Navy pilot, and Gabrielle Giffords' husband) is going to, fairly handily, beat appointee senator martha mcsally in the Nov 2020 election for U.S. Senate. So that's a seat for the Dems, right there. McSally lost to Kyrsten Sinema in the 2018 Senate election but then got the other arizona u.s. Senate seat as an appointee, after the death of John McCain.
3
I plan to support McConnell’s opponent in the 2020 election. And I don’t live in Kentucky.
4
Seems the afternoon crew missed this, so once more:
The only reason Bouie is whining about this problem is that it impedes the Cultural Marxists from executing their final and complete take over of the polis as they have the large metropolitan areas of the nation, Hillary country.
What he means when he writes, "But progressives ... have started to brainstorm about reforms", is that given the current social dynamics, i.e., anything but "white" guys in the Senate, the system can be rigged to the DNC Politburo's favor by adding more places with a paucity of "white" guys.
They filled the cities with "blue-voting" people and now they want to add more states with more "blue-voting" people, adding non-citizens nation-wide would be even better.
Nothing "democratic" about that--just another means to the utopian Grand Collective thesis.
4
"And if they can't win a majority, Mitch McConnell may cripple a Democratic presidency from the start...."
Sen. McConnell is on pace to make Joseph McCarthy look like an amateur. Yes, a corrupt clown now occupies the Executive branch of the federal government. But McConnell continues to pack the judicial branch (including his infamous Gorsuch coup) to his liking while he enables the travesty that is president Trump. Only House Democratic spine can stave off disaster until the electorate has its say in 2020.
3
This reads like a dorm room discussion. None of these ideas are in the cards, so why waste time enumerating them?
2
Susan Collins is not "incredibly popular", especially after Mitch McConnell made her look like a fool, and after her support of Kavanagh. Some think she might not even run. Although she may have the rest of the country fooled that she is a "moderate Republican", the people of Maine have figured out that she is a con artist, who almost always votes with her party every time, votes to confirm very conservative judges, and only votes against her party when its safe to do so, when her vote wont be needed to pass legislation.
5
@Hal Didn't she vote against the Trump/McConnell assault on the ACA? As I recall that was courageous (for a GOPper).
1
Disproportionate representation for low-population states is one problem. Another problem is NO Senate representation of minority party voters in deep red and deep blue states. Since Senate terms are staggered, states vote statewide for only one senator at a time and the candidate of the predominant party, unless there is some major scandal as in the recent Alabama election, has a virtual lock on the job. When the second seat comes up for election, rinse and repeat. Why even have two senators from each state? Why not save taxpayers some money and just send one?
1
Perhaps a few GOP senators (like Collins) will grow a spine, conscience, & patriotism, and switch parties.
I know, very naïve. But as a past boss of mine used to say, "hey, I can dream can't I?"
2
The national Democratic organizations have operated on a doctrine of "Can't win, don't try" ever since the kicked Howard Dean out from the chairmanship of the DNC. 50 state strategy? Long gone. Now they are back to plowing money into races they already have in the bag, or else support GOP-voting Democrats like Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema, Josh Gottheimer, and other "reach across the aisle" Democrats. You can argue about committee chairmanships if you want, but when these fake Democrats give the GOP whatever they want, what's the point?
Either this party is going to go back to being Democrats, or it's going to keep losing. And so will we. Because mark my words, a permanent Trump family dictatorship with the McConnell-led Senate as its politburo is almost certain now.
The Senate obviously needs to be dissolved as it represents such an unequal sample of the population. That was the idea in the first place, I guess, to give states with small populations of plantation owners, with large populations of slaves who could not vote but produced the wealth of the plantation owners. They were given this status based on their elite positions in society as well-bred white men. Have not we evolved from that? Now we have farmers in sparsely populated states, with Latino workers who produce their wealth, (and who cannot vote), being represented in the Senate by white supremacists and other numbskulls, such as Steve King. Are we going to save the Union, or should the farm states and the south form their own country? I would favor the later. This is not worth another civil war.
The Senate works. It stops bad legislation far more often than it stops good legislation. I wish the House of Representatives had a filibuster as well.
The Senate should stop recording people's race. That is racist. When I fill out the census next time i will write "human" in the other race box.
1
53 Republican Senators now represent 143 million people.
47 Democratic & Ind. Senators represent about 182 million.
This is not Democracy; this is indefensible.
Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed by states that represent just 44 percent of the population!
Through gerrymandering and voter suppression, Americans steal more votes and elections than Russians and Chinese.
First they came for the blue districts and I said nothing.
Then they came for the voters' rights and I said nothing.
Then they came for the Supreme court and I said nothing.
Now they come for so much more ....
2
@Mike B
Very well said, Mike. Kudos!
The Senate approves all Presidential appointments and tries government officials for impeachment.
The idea that the citizens of the less, particularly LEAST, populous states have a grossly disproportionate share of power when it comes to the confirmation of appointments of
— supreme court justices
— members of the president’s cabinet
— ambassadors
— federal judges,
brings the importance of this issue into focus.
That the citizens of Alaska, Idaho, Montana, the Dakotas, Rhode Island, Wyoming, Delaware, Kansas, Mississippi, New Mexico, etc. may soon wield the power to decide whether to convict or acquit our president of impeachable offenses, while the citizens of California, Texas and New York play a minor role in the process, is not democracy in action.
With an unfit, unbalanced president in the White House, this realty is truly disturbing.
3
the above comment speaks to the heart of the issue and the big picture at once. this is the real crisis.
The GOP drools over its opportunity for judicial dominance, and the Republicans, not known for much soul anyway, have few calms about selling whatever they have for more rightwing judges. They are riding trump as far as they can.
2
@Feldman Oops -- I meant 'qualms', not 'calms'!
The problem is no focus on legislation or agenda or progress.
Anything to get Trump, despite zero legislative necessity for those documents. Obsessive minds are stuck in a whirlwind and can’t get out.
The intellectual dishonesty is appalling
This is the constitutional crisis; congress abuse of power
Meanwhile the Dems have no legislative agenda. It’s so disheartening.
Shame on Dem.
4
You have diagnosed the problem correctly, but your proposed solutions are so farfetched, improbable, etc., that they are of no value.
2
A thoughtful analysis. But It doesn’t address the issue of long term senators who spend much of their time raising money and much of their office panderring to their wealthy funders .So we have a senate corrupted by money and chosen by a small,unrepresentative segment of the democracy
Given the limitations of the electorate,largely ignorant and subject to simplistic deception..a vitiated democracy may not be a bad thing .....but one which tolerates lies and deep corruption is ...a bad thing.
An amendment is needed to change a Senator's vote value to be weighted based on the proportion of population that vote represents.
Even condo owners vote and pay fees (tax) worth only a fraction of its property's worth of the whole (per sqft, for ex) compared to others. A studio owner's vote is a fraction of the value of larger units. As it is now, studio owners in Wyoming carry the weight of the 67 room penthouse that is California. Perhaps Wyoming should pay 67 time more tax to the Fed.
Wyoming's vote should be 1/67th the value of a California's, making the vote fair and in the spirit of one person one vote and "representational equality." Now 1 vote equals 67 votes the Electoral College votes is worth more than 3 million votes.
Dems platform to run on - Republican's support of criminality, obstruction of justice and the wiping out of the top counter-intelligence agents at the FBI, giving them free reign to repeat 2016 in 2020 - without any investigators recording their misdeeds. Indeed, what FBI agents are willing to commit career-suicide investigating new foreign enemy government attacks on our elections? Indeed, Giuliani is showing how brazen Republicans can be, now that they feel they can proactively and openly seek foreign government assistance instead of awaiting offers of illegal assistance.
We need enough red states with small populations to temporarily relocate Democratic leaning retirees to those states to live and vote Democratic - and save SS and Medicare!
1
I have long thought that Mitch McConnell is the much greater danger to the Republic than Donald Trump. He’s an accident; McConnell, on the other hand, is a long-time veteran who knew his way around Washington and the legislative process while Trump (and his father) were red-lining non-white applicants in the 1970’s.
Indeed, the president could be defeated in 2020 but with McConnell wielding an iron grip over the Republican delegation in the upper chamber, he would remain free to play both Scylla and Charibdis in eating any Democratic legislation that flowed his way. He has amply demonstrated a greedy willingness to rig the game for the minority party while enjoying the fruits of the majority’s frustrations. He’s always been that kind of person: far less interested in the whole than in the part—especially when that “part” represents the oligarchs from whom McConnell accepts his orders.
A Democratic president next year would be, essentially, Obama redux; we all remember how McConnell treated him. No; in Tolkien’s splendid telling, Trump would be Saruman, a would-be ruler of Middle Earth, a poor man’s comparison to the Eye of Sauron, the malevolent being who wishes darkness and nothingness for everyone else.
The presidency is the great prize next year, but without the leverage of a majority in the Senate, they will spin their wheels for four years with the always-treacherous mid-terms In 2022 up next.
If McConnell’s still around, he’ll happily find a way to blow it all up.
2
Several top tier Democrats, to include Stacy Abrams, have declined to run for Senate seats in 2020. Frankly, I can't blame them. While I agree with Mr. Boule's column, the fact of the matter is that the Senate doesn't do anything. Even if Dems were to achieve a majority in that chamber, it's highly unlikely that Majority Leader Schumer would scrap the filibuster or do any other structural changes that would make that body into anything more than a dusty debate hall. Why give up a year of your life to campaign for a job where you don't do anything? And if the Democrats remain in the minority, being in the Senate is even more useless.
1
Good column, Mr. Bouie. Yes, it's quite frustrating to live in a supposed democracy & yet the minority rules. (Technically we're a republic, not direct democracy. Nevertheless, as a representative democracy, majority rule while protecting minority rights is the way our government is supposed to work.)
Mitch McConnell is, in some ways, worse than Trump. Trump is pure id; he wants what he wants--attention most of all, & he throws every kind of fit to get it.
McConnell is deliberately evil. His blocking of any legislation to help the American people recover from the Great Recession was the ultimate partisanship. His loyalty to the wealthy donors should alienate his rank-&-file constituents, yet they keep reelecting him.
The Democrats need to emulate the Republicans in coordination to ensure they gain & retain power: Not by voter suppression & gerrymandering, which the Republicans have done because they can't win any other way (& that's evil from the pov of democracy). But they need to conference & decide how to best win control of the Senate, rather than having 20 candidates for president. They need to conference & decide which handful of candidates have the best chance of beating Trump & the rest drop out to focus on Congress.
Our free market ideals should be applied to political parties, so we have more than 2 choices. That would put the fear of democracy back into the GOP & Dems. Then they would be forced to act on behalf of the people, not themselves.
"There are no immediate solutions to this problem."
If 100,000 patriotic young Americans move to Wyoming, they could have 2 Senators.
It doesn't take many votes to get elected Senator in Wyoming.
I believe this is at least the 2nd piece in the NYT's where Bouie has put forth his ill-thought out theory that the US Senate is an 'unrepresentative' body in a democracy.
The US is a federal republic, not a democracy. Our founding fathers artfully arranged a balance of democratic representation with the House and republican representation with the Senate.
The Senate was never meant to be a quick acting body or the pinnacle of unanimity. Rather, it is expected to be slow and deliberative, acting as an expression of each Senator's individuality in representing their state and its people.
Also, Washington DC is a creature of federal creation that was originally comprised of a lands provided by Virginia (now Arlington County) and Maryland. If DC wants representation, let it go back to Maryland.
As to splitting states up, this may have some merit since it was how Maine came about, splitting off from Massachusetts in 1820 as part of the Missouri Compromise.
Yet, why stop at California? Why not also split NYS in to downstate (NYC, Long Island, maybe Westchester) and Upstate? Or Michigan in to the Upper and Lower? Or Washington and Oregon in to coastal v interior states? Such could go on ad infinitum creating as many Republican leaning states as there would be Democrat leaning ones.
Bouie's ideas of 'reform' to the Senate continue to suffer from lack of reason, clarity or achievability.
1
Every Republican in Congress that supports tRumps abuse of office should be tried for obstruction and failure to uphold their oath of office and removed.
1
It's not just the Senate; it's also the way conservatives are doing their best to stack the courts with Federalist Society ideologues who can be counted on to interpret the law as conservatively as they can get away with. They'll be in place for decades to come. It's why McConnell has been shoving them through the Senate as fast as possible.
Don't forget another strategy: attacks on voting designed to disenfranchise traditional Democratic voters, measures to make voting harder, and districts drawn with surgical precision to limit the ability of Democrats to win that reflects their actual numbers.
And don't forget the importance of taking back state legislatures and governorships. They draw up voting districts, control elections, bring court cases and pass laws intended to shape the national legal system.
The temptation to treat the presidency as giving someone super powers is incredibly naive - but all too common. Of course if Trump succeeds in overturning the rule of law, that caveat no longer applies - except to Democrats.
With the unusually large number of Democratic presidential candidates continuing to rise, it is becoming apparent to many that personal ambition is outweighing concern for the country. Some of those big name hopefuls should consider the Senate, recognizing the significant chance that Republicans will keep its majority and Trump will win a second term.
2
The issue may be the moral character of the senators themselves. The changes proposed may be all well and good but would take years to implement. Corruption and greed drive most of our problems. It's an age-old problem. Selfishness and shortsightedness...senators like Mitch McConnell pose as patriots but they are nothing more than venal straw men doing the bidding of their wealthy sponsors.
1
This is a pretty bizarre wish list. The US Constitution (17th Amendment) is crystal clear that "The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote." and so the stuff about senators from DC, Puerto Rico, Indian tribes, etc., would all require a constitutional amendment to be implemented. No way will 38 current states agree to Senate representation for DC et al. So what is the point of this entire piece?
1
Why not eliminate the senate, ceding their authority to the house? The Senate is no longer representing the interests of the populace. And, also, get rid of the electoral college, and make all federal elections funded only by public money. Finally, enact term limits - 2 or 3 terms maximum.
3
Good luck on that.
The way to get the Senate to work for you is to win statewide elections. To influence the composition of the Supreme Court win the Presidency and a majority in the Senate. The way to do these things is to get to the political center, something Democrats don't want to do. What is their plan? Upend the nation's entire political structure so it works for them without having to face the reality that they're too far to the left. Every time I read about Democrat plans to regain power I realize that they're living in a political dream-land. It reminds me of Mr. Friedman's article the other day on how to get Republicans to hand the presidency to the Democrats--easy, just get Republicans, who according to recent polls are 90% behind Mr. Trump, to field a rightist spoiler candidate. Other examples can be given: How to control the world's temperature? Cut economic activity, walk more, plant a vegetable garden, ban fossil fuels. What to do about the resulting hundreds of millions of unemployed? Confiscatory taxation of the rich--nothing to it! How to solve the immigration problem? Open the borders to hordes of welfare-suckers, etc., etc. No sane people would put the Dems in charge of a fantasyland theme-park.
3
Those who seek changes in how we choose Senators would let the tyranny of the majority rule the country. Even though I am a moderate liberal, I’m against changes that would take away the ability of smaller states to have their voices heard. Today’s problems are the result of the people we have elected, not the system itself.
7
While growing up, I had several good friends; and we--in microcosm--are the cause of all of America's awful problems.
We grew up in the reddest part of a red state, Rep. Steve King's district in Iowa. And every last one of us left, and we aren't returning. Pull back to look at the entire country, and you clearly see why Trump is President.
Add to that, the Republicans' evil long-term planning. Pack the courts. Prevent people from voting. Gerrymander wildly. And on and on.
The Democrats have a huge challenge in 2020. I hope for the sake of this country, and the world, that they are up to it. Recent history tells me that they are not.
4
I think some of the ideas here regarding the Senate are intriguing; there really isn't any good reason, for example, that our remaining territories are not states (assuming they would vote to become such), and they should be represented in both houses of Congress.
Add to that the idea that the number 435--or 438 if you include DC--is not any magic ceiling on House Representatives. It is not codified in the Constitution, which only requires that each Representative have a minimum constituency of at least 30,000, but was set by Congressional statute in the early 20th century. Until then, as population increased, so did the number of representatives.
It is difficult to believe that the Founders would be happy with the current representation of approximately three quarters of a million people for each House member. The House numbers could be increased by 50%, perhaps even doubled, and there would be advantages in bringing the reps closer to the people in their districts--and, of course, the relative advantage of smaller states in the Electoral College would be lessened, as electoral votes in populous states would increase.
Of course, there are many other reforms that can be pursued (ranked voting among them), but given our lack of will to separate campaigns form big money, we're not likely to see any of this soon. The most important reform would be publicly funded elections with very low limits on individual donations to each race, and no group donations.
6
Splitting states, creating new ones, or even mass temporary migrations (eg, 1 million Californians move to Wyoming for a few months in 2020) may oust the Republicans, but not soothe the great American wound. A second civil war may appear inevitable, but even that is not the answer - the first one didn't really work in hindsight. These are merely solutions to the 'soft' problem - Republican rule.
A solution to the 'hard' problem - a United States - can only come from within the people, which appears to be almost impossible, and hence it is called the hard problem.
2
It’s practically a rite of passage for a Constitutional Republic to collapse once or twice (sometimes in a single century).
America has had a good run. If the implications of Citizens United haven’t become clear to anyone at this point, bless their hearts.
5
This columnist should try living in the real world. There is absolutely no chance Republican Senators will support any change in the Senate’s composition which would have the effect of substantially diluting their power by adding Senators who would vote left, let alone a constitutional amendment. If NYT readers truly want to overcome GOP obstruction of progress, they should embrace Citizens United, contribute billions to super-pacs and outspend the Koch brothers to elect more Democrats.
3
Republicans dream the Democrat presidential candidate will be one that supports the ideas regularly propounded by Jamelle..Reparations, packing the Supreme Court and the Senate, adding new States, dividing old ones based on identity, abolishing the electoral college and now he wants to get rid of the filibuster?-The only thing that thwarted the Republicans from 2016-18..It's as if he craves the tyranny of the majority..The next populist majority is more likely to follow a smarter, cleaner version of Trump...That is what he should fear..
3
WE NEED TERM LIMITS NOW. With campaign finance reform impossible, limits are only path toward restoration of representative democracy.
4
@Silvana: 15 US states have legislative term limits. Ohio is one of them. They have done nothing to improve representative democracy and nothing to limit the power of lobbyists and powerful money interests.
3
@Silvana. The only thing terms limits have been successful at is establishing a clear starting date for newly hired lobbyists.
2
If only we could, but it seems easier to get 120k Dems to move to each of Wyoming, Montana and Arizona to flip those states. That could get us 6 Senate seats right there!
Or better yet, if young and non-white voters voted at the rate that older white people vote, the electoral maps would change a lot in some key places.
9
@KPH
AZ is already turning blue now. A lot af new residents (me included) now vote dem.
1
Trump won the heartland of America which proved critical by going there repeatedly when the pundits said he was crazy. He won the independents and on the fence Democrats by listening and responding positively to them. What I hear is a constant anti even moderate Republican drone every day. How can the Democrats win the Senate when they openly and vehemently dislike the very voters they need to win over? THAT should be the take away message of how Trump won in 2016.
9
@NYe Well said, but it's not just the Democratic Party that can't get past their hatred for Pres. Trump and the GOP. It's also the media which has become the mouthpiece for the Democrats, as amply illustrated by this writer's statement that "beating Trump" is the only way to restore democracy to America. The left just can't seem to believe that millions of Americans are rooting for Mr. Trump and his policies, that anyone could possibly not agree with their liberal righteousness. It's more than tedious anymore.
6
At least you are not like your colleague Mr. Manjoo suggesting that only candidates of this gender or that be elected to office...
At least you still understand, the minorities will have to actually work across the country to win one, not play identity politics. (I think Mr. Manjoo is wanting the women to lose, so he advocates "no men allowed". He's not helping.)
Good luck in your work to elect more people in your party across the nation. What works for some does not work well for others, never forget.
1
The ideas of mass migrations of Democrats or radically changing the map of the United States in order to repair the distinctly undemocratic composition of the senate seem both impractical and unneccessary.
330 million people. 100 senators. 3,300,000 people get 1 senator. No gerrymandering of senatorial districts.
This is a constitutional problem.
Also, I don’t want to move to North Dakota.
1
@Tom W
North Dakota is the second wealthiest state in the Union I believe.
Not to worry a blue wave is coming as it did in 2018 for Democrats to retake the House. Yes, Mitch McConnell is enabler-in-chief to Donald Trump's demolition of the Constitution. In fact, he started it before Trump was even nominated and elected by denying to provide the Constitutionally mandated "advice and consent" to Obama's nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court. The country desperately wants to rid itself of Trump and all his willing accomplices in the Republican Senate. The Democrats may lose Alabama, but they should win Colorado, and maybe Iowa, Arizona, Montana, Kansas (where there is an open seat), and perhaps even Maine where there's a huge anti-Collins movement, and Tennessee where there's another open seat. A blue wave like 2018 and perhaps even bigger if the Democrats can unify the party (say with a Biden-Harris ticket) and make the case that the voters must impeach Trump could put the Senate in Democratic hands. Our Constitution and its "rule of law" is really on the ballot versus the autocratic "rule of Trump" and the Republicans who support him in 2020. So far, Biden is the only Democrat making that case, and it has so frightened Trump that he's send his consigliere, Rudy Giuliani, to Ukraine to enlist illegal foreign campaign aid to find "dirt" on Biden.
4
Agree entirely. Look at our states. Look at the Governor of my state - Tony Evers, surrounded by Republicans, fighting every bit of reform the people wanted. Time to end the political schizophrenia.
5
The majority of your state voted for Scott Walker twice.. I assume you were OK with him giving his majority the reforms they wanted too!
Insightful, depressing piece. Where are the Dems willing to forgo the fame and fortune of running for president, instead dedicating themselves to public service in the Senate? As if that weren't status enough.
"Public service." It's such a noble calling that has lost so much sheen since the Kennedy era, thanks I guess to people like Mitch McConnell - amoral guns for legislative hire, willing to decimate the country for a lifetime supply of mint juleps and a pension.
4
Shhh! Texas' treaty of union with the United States permits Texas to break itself down into as many as five states. But it's never going to happen. I'm confident the likes of Ted Cruz will never give up any power.
1
None of the options in Mr. Bouie’s column are likely to come true. There is one way that the Democrats could regain control of the Senate, though: Run competitive candidates and fund them. There is every treason that progressives should be able to craft a message that appeals to people in rural states.
2
Oh come on! Can't we put our energy in defeating Mitch. And I don't care how much time he has left. I remember when Bernie visited Kentucky not too long ago-- one man attending the rally piped up "I never figured it's be a Vermont Democratic Socialist who would give me more information than the Senator from my own state!" With Mitch, it really shouldn't take all that much.
7
@Mamabear
To defeat Mitch, we need a candidate.
It’s doable, his polls are in the gutter,
But we don’t have a candidate.
1
A couple of years ago this page was gleefully forecasting the demise of the Republican party based on changing demographics. Now that a more nuanced view of the numbers tells a different tale we have a constitutional crisis.
7
MAYBE we should focus on the most important thing that we need to do, even as important as the presidency itself, and that is DEFEAT Mitch McConnell in his election in 2020. I don't care how red Kentucky is, we need to put up a good candidate and fight like our lives depend on it. Because they do.
Why? Because Mitch is the most savvy, effective legislator that the Republicans could wildly dream of. He does 5 times more damage to the body politic than Trump does. Who's going to be majority leader if Republicans hold the Senate, John Cornyn? John Thune? Oh, I'm shaking in my boots over them. /s
Draft Amy McGrath.
9
@David. Absolutely. Why is there so little emphasis on the Senate in the Democratic Party? They seriously need to get their act together in this regard. Mitch must go!
@Leslie
I would prefer Mitch losing and Dems not taking back the Senate to Mitch winning and Dems taking back the Senate. People must realize that Mitch is that dangerous, evil, and effective.
Mr. Bouie, like many progressives, laments the fact that such a small portion of the U.S. population has disproportionate representation in the Senate. Yet, the mega-metropolises and the parent-states along the coast that boast the largest populations, also control the greatest amounts of wealth and host the most important (and predatory) industries- NYC, Boston, D.C., Miami, Seattle, SF-Silicon Valley, LA, etc. This is where the 1% live. The poorest Americans with the least influence in the public or private sector and far removed from the centers of economic growth reside in exactly those regions progressives and Mr. Bouie resent for their undue voting power.
4
I have come to believe that we actually do need a constitutional convention.
I recognize that, on the right, there might be a desire to explicitly forbid abortion or gay marriage. I don't think those ideas would clear the high bar (two-thirds of the states) for passage.
On the other hand, the convention could take up a number of ideas that do need to be discussed. I'm not going to predict they'd pass, but maybe a compromise would be found that would improve upon the status quo. Ideally, these are the topics that have to be discussed seriously in this country if our political system is going to endure through this century:
1. Reforming the Senate.
As this article points out, the Senate is far too unrepresentative to remain in its current form.
2. Abolish the Electoral College.
Two of the last three presidents have been elected with a minority of the popular vote. That is unacceptable in a democratic republic.
3. Clarify that the First Amendment does not allow unlimited financial donations to political campaigns.
If we don't change this, we'll have a plutocracy. It's that simple.
4. Establish term limits on federal judges.
The framers did not contemplate that federal judges would serve for three or four decades. Life spans were shorter in the late 18th century.
A 15-year single term is appropriate.
5. Establish mandatory retirement age for federal judges.
State court judges generally have to retire at the age of 70. That rule should also apply to federal judges.
6
this article ignores the underlying problem and proposes a band-aid fix. the real problem is that a significant percentage, though not yet a majority, of Americans buy into the propaganda, half-truths, nonsense, and cryptofascism of the Republican party. This percentage has been growing for decades and is still growing. Underneath that problem lies another, which is that the world is changing rapidly. This is not really a problem but it is an unpleasant fact. the problem is it's happening too rapidly for some, and their hearts and minds are vulnerable to demagoguery. I wish there were a vaccine for this, but so far there no one has come up with one.
8
education helps, in part because it makes superstition obsolete. what we have now is a lot of evangelical rural flat earthers standing athwart history yelling, stop! this can go on for only so long before it starts to jeopardize us as a country, which started happening around the time of the ascension of Newt Gingrich, although the seeds were planted long before that.
2
Grant statehood to the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, American Samoa, and Guam and the Northern Marianas. That would probably net the Democrats ten additional Senate seats, as well as perhaps eight or ten additional House seats and approximately fifteen electoral votes. This would not be a perfect solution, of course: it would add several states less populous than even Wyoming. Unfortunately, the US Constitution has grown so archaic that any piecemeal changes will inevitably be flawed. The fundamental evil inherent in giving each state, regardless of population, the same two Senate seats--a mistake that Madison himself bitterly regretted in 1787--cannot be undone without writing a whole new Constitution. The same goes for the Electoral College.
As to making other changes: Adding representation for Native American nations would undoubtedly require a constitutional amendment. And any move to break up California would, as Bouie writes, almost certainly provoke Republican counter-moves to carve new Red states out of Texas and Florida.
But by bestowing on the overseas territories and Puerto Rico full rights of citizenship, including voting representation in Congress and direct participation in presidential elections, would be an act of justice, marking the formally end to U.S. colonialism. No American citizen should be denied these fundamental rights.
3
When the nation was founded the role of the federal government was not envisioned to be what it has become. An alternative strategy for progressives would be to eliminate the federal income tax and have most responsibilities - and the money - revert to the states. Right now, blue states send enormous amounts of money every year to the red states; perhaps we would all be better off if CA, NY and the rest kept their money and could pursue health care, education, and infrastructure investment other policies of their choosing, and let red states live within their own means for once.
4
@David
too simplistic - what about roads, military, espionage, and so on. where the non-progressives go wrong is that they want to eliminate the federal government, or drown it in a bathtub. the challenge progressives face is to keep government useful and stop giving ammunition to the simpletons.
1
Abolishing the fillibuster is a HORRIBLE idea. And I say this as a Democrat who thinks we need large-scale reforms to the structure of the Senate.
As the author stated, without a constitutional amendment or new states added, Democrats are only likely to have a majority in very rare years. Abolishing the fillibuster, which would allow passage of bills in these fleeting timeframes, would subsequently preclude Democratic minorities in the vast majority of Senate makeups to block anything the GOP did.
Abolishing the fillibuster benefits the party poised to be in a majority more often; that's the Republicans.
5
@Tom
Mitch is going to do away with the filibuster anyway. Just watch.
1
>>> "Abolishing the fillibuster is a HORRIBLE idea."
Yup, what Tom said. As long as a national minority has a strong advantage in control of the Senate, making a simple majority in the Senate more powerful is fundamentally undemocratic.
Rather than pursue structural change should the Democrats take back the Senate, it might be more efficacious to simply turn the poorest of the red states blue by aggressively improving the lives of their citizenry.
Making significant infrastructure improvements (high-speed internet access, improve and expand health care facilities, public transportation, and public schools, address the opioid epidemic and provide robust recovery programs) would go a long way toward returning formerly blue, rural states to their New Deal/Democratic roots.
All the Republican Party does for the non-rich citizens of poor red states is redirect their frustrations at their fellow non-rich citizens elsewhere. The Democratic Party doesn't have to play that game. The party has to demonstrate to the rural states that government isn't the problem - Republican governance is.
8
Thank you! I’ve been saying for some time that the senate is a serious problem. Not only is it embarrassingly undemocratic, it has become an outsized tool for special interest corruption. That said, Republicans will never allow the structural changes that would improve the system and save the country. They would have to relinquish some power. Red states hate blue states and will do anything to punish the coasts by destroying the environment and restricting civil rights. It’s becoming clear that the only viable option is to peacefully part ways.
3
It seems the easy way to fix the problem is, presidents win only when they win the popular vote, and end gerrymandering. One person one vote, density would make no difference
1
>>> "It seems the easy way to fix the problem is, presidents win only when they win the popular vote . . ."
That might be easy if amending the Constitution were easy. It's not.
2
All good ideas. Democrats have to recalibrate our entire political outlook going forward. It's a zero sum game now - there is no compromise on anything. Full stop. We're in a war to preserve our democracy, and the only way forward is to ensure the republican party is crushed and rendered impotent now and forever more.
8
@markymark that was the only way forward in 1860, too. it worked so well for the southern states that they want to do it again.
California is one state.
Numerous attempts to break it up have been met with cold disdain by Californians, time and again.
Even if it were broken up, there's no guarantee at all that the new Senators would be Democrats.
The answer to this problem lies in better candidates, better messaging and better action...by Democrats.
10
Thank you, Mr. Bouie, for emphasizing the role Mitch McConnell has played in the disfunction of the Senate. He is a man lacking principles, and as University of North Carolina historian Christopher Browning wrote: 'If the US has someone whom historians will look back on as the gravedigger of American democracy, it is Mitch McConnell. He stoked the hyperpolarization of American politics to make the Obama presidency as dysfunctional and paralyzed as he possibly could. As with parliamentary gridlock in Weimar, congressional gridlock in the US has diminished respect for democratic norms, allowing McConnell to trample them even more."
We all need to take Mr. McConnell very seriously--he has almost single-handedly both undermined our democracy and stoked the power of the worst POTUS in our history.
It should be a major Democratic goal to ensure that McConnell does not win his next election.
37
Somewhat unfair as Mitch has not nuked the filibuster as Jamelle and Trump suggest. Good that they have some common views!.. I doubt that Garland would have been confirmed anyway,...Under the new politics, it looks as if most appointees will have to survive a party line vote...I'm not sure how any Democrat or Republican Presidential appointee will be approved by a Senate of the opposite party...I understand the anger over Garland, but the Democrats took it too far. It's going to bite them... If Trump loses and the Republicans hold the Senate, the new President shouldn't expect any appointments to be approved and should expect lots of supenas and hearings!
Yes - that is exactly what the Republicans are up to. Maintaining Senate control is their goal. The way it is structured now with North Dakota having the same number of Senators as California, for example, they should be able to succeed at this for several elections to come. If they continue to support Trump, they can guarantee the votes from his base. And they can rely on the Never Democrat vote too.
Doesn't look good.
5
One suggestion would be to require Supreme Court nominees be voted on after a maximum time limit after presidential nomination. McConnell should be the first and last Senate Majority Leader to exercise what I feel was an unconstitutional pocket veto and could in the future prevent a SCOTUS nomination from any President whose party does not have a majority in the Senate.
6
His math is wrong! If 34 states with 30% of the population control 68 Senate seats, then the 16 states with 70% of the population will have only 32 Senate seats. Beautiful for the Republicans but hardly "democratic". It negates the idea of "one man, one vote". We venerate the Founders for their "wisdom" but they were no better than anyone in foreseeing the future. We need a new constitution! (Bye the bye, my late wife was a direct descendant of two of those Founders.)
1
Mr. Bouie, I have skimmed the David Faris book. It was timely and very interesting. However, increasing the number of states is just an illusory solution.
If Democrats embark upon a plan for admitting more states to the Union, Republicans might insist on joining the party. Suppose Republicans proposed to amend a Democratic Party plan to admit D.C. and Puerto Rico and to divide California into six states by dividing Texas into five states. How could Democrats deny the division of Texas while approving the division of California?
What if New York, on its own initiative, sought to divide into three states, one comprising NYC and environs, and other two, outsate areas?
The unintended consequences of the Faris plan make it highly unpredictable and totally undesirable.
5
How about this: Allow states to de-couple from federalism and return to a revised Articles of Confederation. Many Democrats and most Republicans would be happy with this. It's more realistic than pie-in-sky manipulations that would never be accepted by the Republican dominated Senate of today.
1
@Etienne I don't like the weakness of the Articles of Confederation. if we had not had a strong central government during the cold war years, a government that was able to take strong, direct, and capable action, including recovering from mistakes, these comments would be in Russian.
@rjb...I understand that. My point was that this was as a good a solution as what was postulated in this op-ed. Also, the situation we find ourselves in now is untenable as it pertains to true representation of the voting public.
It appears potential candidates with name recognition are more apt to run for President than try to run for the Senate. Every one wants to be the band leader but no one wants to play in the band.
4
This is a timely piece. We can't propose major structural changes to the Senate at this juncture, though it's good to discuss it. But what we can do, for now, is compete for the Senate as if we want to win it. Forget "slim chances" and just go for it.
The DNC/Democratic Party needs much better strategists. The presidency is important but the Senate is equally so and there has been so little attention paid to winning it back — it's like the Democrats have already conceded and aren't really bothering to compete for it. Mitch McConnell and his merry band of Machiavellians have been a force of destruction and dysfunction in Congress but the DP has to take responsibility as well for some of the dysfunction; their longstanding preoccupation with winning the presidency (something that predates Trump) at the expense of the Senate (and, until the last election, the House) has left the Democrats in such a vulnerable position and allowed the GOP to dig in.
I am more than dismayed that so many Democratic candidates are running for president instead of paring down the strongest to a manageable, realistic group and finding an equally strong bunch to run for the Senate, even in states where the DP does not think they can win. Look what happened in Alabama: Doug Jones, a long-shot Democrat, won. And in Texas, Beto O' Rourke came much closer than expected to ousting Ted Cruz. Although he lost, strong Democratic turnout helped flip two House seats blue. It made a difference.
7
I would not sweat it. Trump will win in 2020, the Senate will remain Republican controlled and the House will lose some of their Democratic clout.
Americans look at the economy, which is booming, and ask the question: "Why should we upset the apple cart?"
Only the far left Democrats, seeing that their government controlled programs are heading nowhere will cry and whine about losing America.
2
@Bill: The Civil War was an awful strategic error. The Union should have let you have Fort Sumter, permitted the Confederacy to secede, and limited military action and other intervention to efforts to free and rescue enslaved people.
Then, we could have purchased such commodities as the South would have been able to produce at attractive prices, and sold manufactures at profitable prices, in each case to the extent that your homeland could have maintained a viable economy without slave labor.
And we wouldn't have your reactionary tendencies dragging us into hateful backwardness.
The problem with this editorial is it equates more representative democracy with good government. The Senate and Congress have defied popular will for years, for example on the tax code, inheritance,
health insurance, foreign policy ... etc. Making the election of senators more democratically elected may or may not do anything about the plutocracy which the U.S. has become. Better would be to offer Scandinavian type reforms along with more democracy.
1
If Republicans were in this spot no doubt there would be a resettlement program underway to move tens of thousands of their voters to certain states to swing them. I'd settle for some kind of strategy to assemble 26 states that could be relied upon to elect Democratic candidates.
Clinton won 20 states in 2016 - 38 of the 40 Senators from these states are Dems, with only Collins and Gardner still hanging on for the Rs - these 2 must be defeated in 2020.
Beyond that the Dems need to focus on making 6 of the following reliable Democratic states: Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Florida, Iowa, Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina,
Ohio. Some of these are already close to tipping, and a few already have Democratic Senators. Instead of despairing, Democrats need to sell their party in these states - a permanent Senate majority can be achieved.
7
Lol - Republicans were in this spot. 5 years ago the GOP controlled the House and Democrats the Senate. Didn’t hear much talk about “fixing” the Senate back then.
Well for once I agree with Mr. Bouie. Given that Senators were originally elected by their state legislatures, instead of direct elections, we can't say we are not willing to change the institution. I am not in favor of doing so purely for party advantage, the Republican game, but to give territories, like Puerto Rico, and Native American tribes more representation is long, long overdue. While we are discussing it, why not add more members to the House. Originally each representative was equal to 30K in population. That's not even true in most red states now. Jim Jordan, the pugilistic representative from Ohio, represents 711K, Nancy Pelosi almost 900K. Of course, the number of representatives plus the senators equals each states electoral college votes, which is where we have had a disproportionate un-representation for well over two decades.
1
I think this wrong. It's an attempt to subvert the long-standing Constitutional order. Just like Court packing. It's something you'd see in a banana republic. It's antithetical to political stability.
Maybe the ends justify the means but do you ever recall the GOP proposing something like this?
If if Democrats did it, why would the GOP just one-up their efforts next time they are in power, ad infinitum.
If politics becomes nuclear war, we all live with the fallout.
8
I think, for a change on this level to be made, there is still a need to focus on getting across the importance of voting during elections, especially so for minority groups. The voter turnout for all racial and ethnic groups have been growing, and that's great, but it needs to grow even more.
3
Yes, the Senate is a problem.
So are state governments, indecency's proving grounds, especially in the states governed by the GOP.
So are the coastal cities, which thrive on plundering the middle class, the home of the moneyed/democratic establishment class. They feed at the same teats the establishment GOP does. Those same teats the established media serves. All for increasing the coffers for the already very wealthy.
So is the Supreme court.
And law enforcement.
In short, the very many false rules and myths of our past has come back home to roost: we need to change that.
Infinitesimal change won't help. Only changing the narrative of our country and our body politic will do. And no, Biden is not your answer: he is if anything, a catalyst to this raging fire.
3
is this guy serious? this article is a superb example
of why the dream world
Democrats are heading us
into another catastrophe.
I am waiting for the day when the Republicans are
going to sit back and allow
California to be divided up
into seven different states.
we have won only two of
the last five elections and
we are the majority. what
does that tell you about
how we present ourselves
to the American people?
8
I agree the senate is a problem. Our archaic rule of 2 senators per state dictates that we will never be properly represented in the senate. South Dakota, North Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas , Wyoming , Idaho, Montana - these 8 red states have less than half the population of California, yet they have collectively 16 senators to California’s two. Insert New York here as well if you want. It’s an issue.
8
@Edward Weidner Why "never"? These states in recent memory had Democratic senators and governors. Win them back, I say, with Democratic policies that are attractive. Many in these states are getting desperate with Trump giving them failure after failure, including today's failure on a China deal.
6
After reading the article, all I can think is... the only option is to actually live with, and work with, Republicans, at least in the next number of years. The Democrats will not take back the Senate most likely. Presumably this kind of push toward cooperation and compromise is what the Founders had in mind, actually. It is a whole lot more work, though.
3
@Daniel
Ah, but these Republicans are not Republicans. These are puppets of Koch and various other corporate oligarchs.
They don’t work with us. When they don’t get their way they shut down.
1
I really, really wish that reason, as expressed in this column, would or could overcome the structural inequities embodied in our constitution.
Sorry to say, it's not gonna happen.
We are faced with, and engaging in, long term political trench warfare.
There will be no quick fixes. Reason alone will not persuade the millions of Trump cultists to ever change their minds.
Constitutional amendments,etc. would be great, but the truth is the entrenched oligarchs who rule America will never allow that approach; they will use all their power to manipulate the cultists to satisfy their own greed.
I know I sound negative, but if we don't face the reality of the type of struggle we are engaged in, we will lose. Door to door canvassing, phone banking, donating, doing the grunt work required is the only way we can win.
Stop waiting for some miracle. Roll up those proverbial sleeves and get to work.
7
Each state having an equal number of Senators cannot be changed even by the normal Constitutional Amendment process. According to the Constitution it requires unanimous approval of the state legislatures (and is therefore impossible).
Our only hope would be another Constitutional Convention, and I'm not counting on it.
6
We need to borrow some intellectual property from our current trade enemy to solve this crisis. When China wants to exert undue--or. perhaps in America's case, overdue--influence in a region or country, they simply overwhelm it with a sudden population tidal wave. (In recent years think of Tibet and Mongolia.) So let's get ten or twenty million Democratic volunteers to move, in precisely effective ratios, to those states that have an outsized influence on national politics, and by using that tactic finally balance our political system.
3
Let’s get real. None of the recommended changes to the Senate will ever pass.
I’d argue that the Senate is not inherently the problem, since the interests of low-population states is not automatically at odds with the interests of high-population states.
The problem is the Republican Party specifically, and what they have become. I’m not saying conservatives in general; I’m saying a party that places its own desire for power over the well-being of the country. Including the well being of the states represented by Republican Senators.
The only thing that will work - and it’s a long shot - is convincing the citizens of red states that people like Mitch McConnell are bad for them, even if they share some conservative values.
I say “some” since Republican Senators largely represent the 1%, not their constituents, when it comes to financial rather than social issues.
12
All these suggestions about how to fix the Senate, like adding extra states and so on, are ridiculous. First, it would require a Constitutional amendment so that California could be split up, and then it would require the Republicans to go along with it and with adding all the new states, and that won't happen.
A better and simpler way is to make the electoral college based only on House seats, and do not include Senate seats in that. Then the college would be based only on the population, and not on the states themselves. That is how a true democracy should work. This would also require a Constitutional amendment, and we know how that would go. But it's a much more direct way to fix the imbalance we have now.
2
@Max Dither Great idea. But technically simpler to simply expand the house, so that number of electors increases by the same number. That will dilute the influence of the small states too...
The states of Montana, Maine and Kansas all have newly elected Democratic governors in 2018 but are still considered "safe" GOP seats in 2020 by some forecasters. The strengths of the incumbent and challenger are important but so is the national voter mood and participation, especially among younger voters.
The national 2018 midterm voter turnout was the highest since 1916 and probably before thanks to the guy in the White House and he'll probably still be around in 2020 to help the Dems out again.
This will be a huge factor in 2020 as well so shifts in voting patterns that we saw in 2018 could continue to bedevil the GOP, which has always counted on low turn out and voter suppression.
The Senate is the second most unrepresentative body after the Supreme Court. After yet another election in which the candidate who received the second most votes was elected, we need the National Popular Vote initiative to pass in enough states to kill the fatally flawed Electoral College.
4
If it is correct that the structural problems are so severe that no amount of additional voter registration of non-Republican leaning voters is enough to overcome them, why does the GOP put so much effort into suppressing the votes of those that don't support the GOP?
3
@LMG
Because, in truth, the modern GOP has come to represent the interests of a very small percentage of the American people.
Religious fundamentalists, pro-lifers, 2nd ammendment voters and racists are pulled in by hollow promises. The GOP isn’t interested in those issues. They use those folks to form election winning coalitions.
The GOP serves the rich, the corporations, the $$$.
I recommend patience. Yes it will be a problem to have a Dem President and a Repub Senate, but in a few years with the waxing and waning of dominate parties, at some point the Dems will control the Senate. This how it works and you just live with it and work within it.
Things have a way of evening out and they always look a lot worse than they are. When Ronald Reagan was elected I thought the world was going to end and he would drive the US into the dirt. Looking back, he doesn't appear to be the bogeyman that he seemed at the time. We will muddle through these awful years with Trump and McConnell, and it will all work out in the long run.
1
When it comes to this, putting all the systematic failure on the GOP is not fair - and I say this as a left leaning moderate independent.
Over the past two decades, there has been enough time that Democrats control the Senate and sometimes simultaneously the House. And there was a two year window plus the White House. What have the Democrats done to avoid today's situation? Nothing. They were busy fulfilling Ted Kennedy's bucket list by toughening Obamacare through the Congress, in the process losing control of the House.
It's every party for themselves while they are in power, and they have no incentives to reduce that power when they can use it. Both parties have their hands dirty on this.
2
Legislative majorities in large states (and their new component states) along with the consent of Congress could return the senate to a higher level of parity, as was originally the case. It doesn’t appear that the president is involved in the decision, and no super majorities are required, if Senate rules accommodate. It will be harder to get existing states to combine, but a proliferation of city states more reflective of current economic organization, combined with a decreasing proportion of vestigial rural states would eventually restore an equilibrium.
“New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new States shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.”
ARTICLE IV, SECTION 3, CLAUSE 1 US CONSTITUTION
1
The Democratic Party needs to stop kicking each other in the shins, figure out the basic concerns of a majority of voters and concentrate on those subjects. As it is right now the party is splintered with far too many candidates campaigning like some non core issues are all or nothing. Some of the more peripheral issues will be easier to address with majorities in both houses of Congress and trump out of the White House. Concentrate on the basic issues in 2020 and don't let trump and McConnell distract from those issues.
2
The Senate determines the Supreme Court. This is a generation of power at stake.
1
Under McConnell the GOP Senate is grabbing the third branch of government, our federal courts, by packing the courts with unqualified and/or partisan judges. These are lifetime appointments. If the GOP has its way, our federal courts will be as unrepresentative as the Senate for the next decades. Worse. It's becoming as far right wing as Trump and McConnell. Forget about what the majority of Americans want or support. It took an unscrupulous majority leader like McConnell to show us a basic weakness in our Constitution: the Senate has too much power to control the federal courts. We need reform on the selection and appointment of federal judges too.
3
If Democrats win the Senate, they will also win Committee Chairs. Cruelly, James Inhofe helms the Senate environment committee. We must win this back from the science deniers!
1
There was a time when the Senate was called "the millionaires' club" and it was attuned to the needs and wants of the very rich, ignoring those lower on the economic scale. Our present Senate is not a new phenomenon. What makes our present Senate particularly egregious is that our president is also cognizant of the wants of the very wealthy while ignoring the needs of the masses, other than feeding the masses a fake story that he cares for them and is helping them. Here we have a double-edged sword sharpened on both sides to benefit a small group on the top. If we had a Teddie or Franklin D. Roosevelt to balance the Senate, we might have more benign laws passed that helped the poor too. To change the composition of the Senate, as Mr. Bouie plays with, splitting the liberal states into more states,( albeit the same might be done with the conservative states), is a non-starter because neither liberals nor conservatives will accept fundamental changes that limit their power permanently. The best approach , I believe, it to work to eliminate Trump and put a humane leader in charge.
1
If there were more members of Congress in the House the Electoral College would change. Wyoming, Vermont, Alaska etc would still have one representative and only 3 electoral college votes each. But California's total would surge. Depending on how members there are in the House (say House members) California would about 65-70 House members plus 2 for their Senators. This does not require a Constitutional amendment.
Given that Blue States produce 60-65% of US wealth, we're back to taxation without representation. McConnell & the GOP want an unrepresentative democracy.
1
Thank you, Mr. Bouie-- you have articulated in an easy-to-understand manner what will probably become the next big constitutional "crisis." America currently suffers from the "tyranny of the minority" with a republican senate (representing a minority of the overall US population) dictating policy for the entire country. It is made worse with an out of control president (like we have now). It is only a matter of time before the majority will take matters into their own hands. Hopefully, some of your suggested changes will be made before things get ugly.
I personally like the following idea. First, Puerto Rico and DC (and Pacific Islands) should be made states, as you suggest. Then the largest states (blue and red) should be allocated more senators and possibly more congress-persons. For example, give California 6 senators instead of 2 (but without breaking up the state). The constitution will need to be changed, but that is OK, the founding fathers contemplated that would be done from time to time.
1
There is only one way that Democrats can do much about gaining a majority in the Senate or reclaiming the Presidency. That is by listening carefully to potential swing voters in the crucial Heartland states -- rural and small town, not just major cities -- and creating messages and running candidates who can sell there. Preaching to the loyalists in the districts that will go Democrat anyway will not do it. That was the lesson that should have been learned in 2016.
4
Democrats need to keep working at finding the right opponents. Look how close O'Rourke came to unseating Cruz and how AOC won against all odds. I bet Mitch McConnell's Kentucky seat could be taken, particularly given how unpopular he appears to be among his constituents, especially if Jennifer Lawrence helped stir up younger voters in her home state.
3
Mr. Bouie I really enjoy your columns. They are well thought out and informed, and I often learn things from them. This column is another example of the expansive thinking you employ in offering solutions. That said, many of your suggestions (or the ones you report on) strike me as pretty drastic. And I say that as one who strongly agrees that the Senate is the bigger problem facing America.
Rather than make structural changes however, which might be worthwhile, but will take years to implement given the fierce court battles the Republicans will launch, the Dems need to focus on how they can win back some of the voters in these rural areas. It's a daunting challenge for sure, but it's made worse when the Democrats seem to disparage and write off the rural populace.
For one thing why not use the Green New Deal and the "mythical" Infrastructure Initiative to devise ways to create good jobs in these areas? How about building plants and facilities to create the things needed to build wind turbines and solar panels, and build large scale wind and solar farms? These would more than offset the jobs that will go away (or significantly diminish) from the carbon-based industries that now provide a lot of jobs.
For another, the Democrats need to get out into these areas - "enemy territory" and listen to the people and then show they've listened by including their concerns in any platform they offer. If they ignore these areas, they'll be ignored in November.
1
This man is the best thing to happen to the NYT opinion pages in decades. He consistently addresses the largest threat to our survivial, which is not an individual politician so much as a a systemic bias toward the far right. I've been saying for 20 years that we need to break up California: two senators for 40 million people versus six senators for roughly 2.5 million people in Wyoming and the Dakotas combined. Madness.
We need to address Article V, first and foremost, governing the torturous amendment process itself.
1
This article actually taught me a lot that I didn't really contemplate properly or thoroughly. THANK YOU MR. BOUIE. I mistakenly thought we could "somehow" convince people living in Wyoming in one way or another that the right wing doesn't care about Yellowstone or The Grand Tetons, the tourists that come with money and their hopes of hitting the slopes or seeing Old Faithful, etc. Teddy Roosevelt was a Republican, but he wanted to preserve, protect and defend the great outdoors, so he addressed
issues beyond military strength . That and farming, livestock, any number of other environmentally sensitive and tariff sensitive issues are at stake. Native Americans certainly should vigorously fight for proper representation. What could be a bigger insult to
people who tried to survive with the massive immigration that occurred in their homeland than to be shunned (and worse) when the government ignored their rights? Puerto Rico is still living "on the brink" and need- deserve- political clout. Maybe they should decorate the White House lawn with paper towels left over from Trump's visit? Don't the people living in North Dakota get it yet?
Is Texas pleased by all the hurricanes slamming into its coastline?
But no, I do believe this article taught me a lot, and I need to better understand the challenges facing ALL of us. I just wish Trump would fly commercial every time he gets the urge to play another round of golf. My tax refund would sure be a lot bigger.
Look, the American masses will either cluelessly continue to get screwed or they won't. I'm betting against them. I expect them to keep turning power over to the Republicans, either in the Senate and the White House, or only in the Senate. In either case, the rich will have achieved what they want: the ability to stifle any government aid for the lower classes, or to alter America's trajectory towards greater and greater oligarchy. Most Americans are simply no longer either intelligent enough or ethical enough to see what's right or to do it. We used to be better than this, but after thirty years of Boomer domination, we've turned into the "culture of narcissism" Christopher Lasch warned us in 1979 the Boomers would transform us. He was dead right, now with the Boomers Narcissist-in-Chief running American for oligarchs here and in Russia, giving the American masses corrupted enough by Boomer self-centeredness to vote for this swine exactly what they deserve.
1
If Republicans don’t do something about it, winning the presidential election in 2020 won’t be enough.
1
We need a lot fewer Democratic presidential candidates, and a lot ore great Dem Senate candidates!
And: the Right (ALEC, Kochs, etc) have very effectively targeted state-level politics for decades. We need to out-match them. Failing to win the open Wisconsin supreme court seat was a big blow to hopes to undo insane Wisc gerrymandering.
11
Taxation Without Representation is a long-cherished Tory (or to use today's labelling, Republican) tradition.
1
The GOP drools over its opportunity for judicial dominance, and the Republicans, not known for much soul anyway, have few calms about selling what they do have for da judges. They are riding trump as far as they can.
Non-voting liberal-minded people are the additional enablers.
However, I'm beginning to see a silver lining in the dissolution of the USA under trump. I'm very willing to let those red states go.
1
In the 2018 midterms that flip the House of Representatives, it can only be concluded that responsible Americans from both the Republican and Independent parties, joined forces with Democrats to help secure these winning results that were crucial in protecting our fragile Democracy.
Imagine if the House was still in Republican majority control. Is there any doubt that the coverup of the Mueller Report would be complete and there certainly would not be any congressional oversight of this Executive Branch led by this lawless President and we would be powerless to stop it. Frightening scenario indeed.
VOTE in 2020 to protect our democracy for current and future American generations.
1
A very powerful op/ed piece. And a very depressing one.
4
The solution is simple. Democrats will have to move less populated states. When the situation becomes intolerable and completely unrepresentative, there will be a mass migration.
3
However, this time, if and when better people are hopefully elected to the Senate and the White House, the rest of the world is going to expect positive action on the environment/climate, human rights, no support for unsavoury tyrants as those temporarily in power in the Philippines, Israel, Saudi, Brazil and Poland, and peaceful action for change rather than typical military interventions. We all let the drone operator Obama off the hook because he was a smooth operator, but no one should expect the rest of the world to be as naive as that again. We look forward to a progressive, mature, informed, friendly and cooperative US as a good partner to tackle the world's problems together after 2020.
1
Actually, the core problem is the Democrats have no legislative agenda; only the hunt for Trump.
It is futile. The definition of insanity, keeping trying to do the same thing and expecting different results. Two years of investigation, and we are still chasing smoke.
The intellectual dishonesty and abuse of power, using subpoena as a political weapon, has already made Trump look relatively reasonable (compared to hysteria of the Left)
2
I have a better suggestion: CA and NY should secede from the Union. What could go wrong? Secession worked out so well the last time it was tried.
Of course, if a precedent is established, NYC might elect to secede from NY State. And Manhattan might secede from NYC. And Manhattan south of 96th Street might choose to secede from the rest of Manhattan. And how about the upper east side.....
Mr. Bouie’s suggestions are even less likely to succeed than an effort to eliminate the electoral college. Compared to this, Thomas Friedman’s recent plea to a phantom high-minded far-right Republican to throw him/her self on the sword by challenging Trump for the presidential nomination is looking downright reasonable.
It seems that Democrats have concluded that they are unable/unwilling to come up with policies that appeal to anyone but their existing base. If that’s the case, then the Senate and probably the Presidency will remain out of reach for the foreseeable future.
1
None of the proposed changes to the Senate will pass with current political realities intact. Plus, they are essentially gimmicks.
The constitutional setup we have does not work anymore. Changes need to be made.
As for the Senate, abolish it.
Senate Republicans have been a problem for this country for a long time. They get elected into office and quickly forget their constituency. High on their priority list is the advancement of their power regardless of the outcomes. Like Trump, they have no reluctance to lie and cheat. Their State efforts at gerrymandering are testament to manipulating voter outcomes. At the same time they have decided that Trump is the way to maintain their strangle hold on our country, Nothing quite like forcing their beliefs on the rest of us. And with Trump comes a new low; the use of foreign powers to cheat their way into office. So why not enable Trump to be Trump; from their point of view it's way better than winning an election the honest way and they don't have to work for it. So far they are getting away with it: Stacked courts, gerrymandered states, saying no to all legal requests from the House and looking for Russian help on the next election.
1
I have extensive family in Maine and according to them and many people up there, Susan Collins is in trouble. Her victory is not a sure thing. Far from it. Her Kavanaugh vote didn’t help her case.
3
Eventually the country will have to move to single senatorial federal districts comprising adjacent whole states and portions of others comprising 1% of the U. S. population, subject to reapportionment every ten years. Why would the small states agree to this constitutional limit on their power? Eventually the large states will have a stranglehold on the House of Representatives. All allocation of funding except debt and national defense could cease until the constitutional amendment passes. All other programs now funded by the federal government could cease. The large wealthy states will have no problem picking up the tab and in most cases will come out ahead. This form of jawboning will leave the other states with no other option than to accede to a fairer form of representation in the Senate. In all likelihood the concrete threat of large state action or the gradual transfer of budgetary responsibilities would lead to a compromise consisting of senatorial districts. The situation is similar to England pre-1832 that resulted in the Reform Act of 1832 which equalized the population size of the House of Commons districts. In that case rebellion was the threat. This could also occur here but a cooler course of action seems more likely.
2
One method to partially "fix" the unrepresentative effect of the Senate is to have the House play hardball with the budgeting process. The house majority can write spending bills that pull the plug on money going to projects in the sparsely populated states. The senate can refuse to sign off on these, but the resulting shutdown of the government would force low population states/senators) to start to compromise with the more representative house. It's all about money, and the House ultimately controls spending.
@cjl. In case you haven’t noticed, the House isn’t doing anything.
Well, considering that the Senate was designed to impart checks and balances on the Executive branch, I'd say it is more of a problem under Trump.
Heavens to Betsy, I'm sure most reasonable and learned observers assumed in January 2017 that a Republican Senate would not have kowtowed to Trump on issues of criminality and malfeasance and his downright bad governance like it has. Sure, they were going to give away the store like any "good" Republican, but what happened to the party of "law and order?"
Led by Mitch, the Republican Senate is "complicit," as they say.
2
Why worry about 2040 and eight states? Today, more than 51% of the US population lives in the nine most populous states. Interestingly, 10 of those 18 Senators are Republicans.
Too many Democrats think "California, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois" and assume big states are blue. They don't think "Texas, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina" which aren't as big in aggregate yet, but are the fastest growing of the large states.
2
Ok, now I'm really depressed. Since 2010 a minority has had all the power in this country. We can't afford 6 more years. Time for states to form powerful independent regions to help foster the changes we need. We can't wait for Washington any longer.
4
@Norain That was tried once before. In 1861. I seem to recall it didn’t go so well.
Way to take our eyes of the prize. To paraphrase Tim Russert, 'The White House, the White House, the White House'! Stay focused on defeating Trump and defeating Trump only. Any diversion from that goal could be catastrophic. Get Trump out and a lot of dominoes will fall after that. His continued prosecutions, and convictions will help to tamp down a lot of Republican fervor. First thing first, then do what's second.
4
This is quite an amazing column. And I mean that not in a good way.
Faced with structural (demographic) issues in the Senate, progressives like Bouie have two options:
1. Opt for a politics that appeals to working class whites in smaller cities or more rural areas, or at least doesn't totally alienate them. This would involve rethinking elements of the identity politics orthodoxy that grips the current Democratic party, especially in relation to immigration.
2. Think of ways to radically reshape the Senate, usually in a completely fanciful manner - and which would in some ways worsen the Senate's existing problem of one person =/= one vote.
It's a sad statement about progressive thought that Bouie opts for the latter. Important parts of the American left are utterly incapable of thinking outside their new self-imposed orthodoxies.
This is terrifying, given the genuine "structural" issues present in the Senate.
4
@Meidner
Of course, people on the right who complain about "identity politics" have no problem with a Trump who ran his campaign on identity politics. As it happens, appealing to white racial anxiety is identity politics as well-especially in relation to immgration.
One quibble with your piece, Mr. Bouie: I live in Maine, and I can report that Susan Collins is not as popular as she once was, and in the more liberal parts of the state, her support for much of Trump’s policies is beginning to cost her. In particular, her vote to confirm David Bernhardt, and her support for Betsy DeVos (she helped advance her selection out of committee, but then voted against her) has angered some of her supporters.
Whether or not this translates into a loss in 2020 is not certain, but we will soon find out.
6
This is what happens when you make decisions affecting hundreds of millions of 21 century citizens of every race and creed by poring over a 200 year old document crafted by a handful of white men. What other country does this?
329
@Paul Many other countries with a far shorter experience of democracy have pored over the same document and drawn inspiration from it.
34
@Paul
And what happens when you allow the country to change per the fickle tides of public opinion? Anarchy. Please point out the parts the constitution as currently amended that do not work to the benefit of the majority of US citizens in this country today. For all of the whining about Trump, it is this very constitution that constrains him- just as it constrained all the other past leaders who wanted more power than they deserved- no matter what branch of government they were in.
30
@Labrador1 Read the article again. The crux of the issue is massively disproportionate representation between states with large v. small(er) populations - not the "fickle tides of public opinion". Mega-cities or MSAs have larger populations than discrete states yet have zero presence in the Senate (e.g., LA, NYC, Orange County v. LA, AL, ID). It is taxation without representation. And it's gone far beyond tiresome. The breaking point is fast approaching for those of us who are forced to deal with the likes of Mitch McConnell.
114
I would argue that we need to focus mostly on the Senate, and hope for the presidency. Call it up-ballot voting if you will.
If Democrats control both houses, and Trump gets re-elected, he gets impeached. If Democrats hold both houses, and Trump is reelected, they can curtail his agenda.
Americans have got to move away from focusing on winning the presidency. Stop looking for rock stars to save you. Take a civics class. It's far better to control the laws.
539
@myasara Oops, Senate requires 2/3 majority to convict in an impeachment proceeding. Long odds that the Democrats could elect much more than a bare majority.
21
Trump will lose. Winning the Senate is important, and it is remotely possible. But your argument seems to be ignoring the fact that a supermajority of 67 Senators would be necessary to successfully impeach Trump. Voting him out is the most important goal. Once he is defeated, he can be prosecuted for the federal and state crimes he has committed, and we will be done with him.
30
@Jimmy Verner
I'll take those odds. Even the wort of Republican Senators (and there are SO many) should have some respect for our Constitution and Trump's insanity. They are driving this country toward a new Civil War for the soul of the nation, and that would not end well for anyone. Hello Vladimir!
16
Brilliant. Not so sure how we would allocate senators to Native American tribes. Some of them are very large, organized, well-governed, well-funded and represent a substantial number of Indians.
Other tribes -- like California Rancherias -- may have as few as four living members. We'd have to consolidate them in a way that doesn't disadvantage the larger tribes the way Wyoming disadvantages California.
Nevertheless, the problems are academic. We should begin.
1
My first 30 years were lived in California. I recall frequent discussions of dividing the state into two parts, north and south, for reasons of culture and resources (largely water). Nothing ever came of it, in part because there were overriding issues of economic vitality that flowed from the state's large and diverse population and resources. I don't see the current political crisis as any more compelling than those earlier ones.
In fact, most of the suggestions offered by the Roosevelt Institute seem to be fairly harebrained. Even if the stars were aligned perfectly and the changes were made, demographics and political shifts would likely make further adjustments necessary shortly thereafter. In the end, our political system would be more chaotic than its current state.
Instead of fiddling with the underlying mechanism, why not change the real problem: an ill-informed, lazy, easily manipulated voting public? Do that, and all of the problems we have will correct themselves by having intelligent, dedicated and critical voters elect responsible and reasonable representatives and senators (and presidents).
2
The real answer is a constitutional convention that would change the rules on the composition of the senate, abolish the electoral college, etc.
Our current constitution has been a marvel, but was never meant to last for centuries.
208
@Sparky
Actually it’s doing what it was intended to do which is to prevent a few heavily populated states from influencing the smaller ones.
No need to change the rules.
They have worked fine for centuries
16
@Norville T. Johnson
It has not worked fine. In 40% of the most recent elections, the candidate with the most votes lost. That is an abysmal failure for any government that purports to represent the people.
Furthermore, as the article states, representative power is overwhelmingly slanted towards the interests of the least populous states. There is no way to simultaneously believe that we have a functional representative democracy and that the Senate's makeup is fair.
95
@Norville T. Johnson
"prevent a few heavily populated states from influencing the smaller ones"
That reminds me of comments we often see in my state. Whenever there's a statewide vote some folks from the sparsely populated areas east of the mountains complain that the folks in the 3 most densely populated areas west of the mountains have an unfair voting advantage.
I often wonder if they think acreage, not people, should be voting.
54
Agree with much of this analysis. And with the reminder that politics is "unpredictable and events matter." Old enough to have witnessed quite a lot of realignment (to put it drily) of party platforms. Expect Democrats could become a bigger-tent party by defending policies--and being as clear as possible with voters about it--that benefit 80% or even 90% of voters across rural/exurban/suburban/urban divides. This would be better than going too quickly to some of the proposals here, though I agree that the Senate is getting to be more out of whack with majority of people.
58
oops. Responding to wrong person!
@K Swain
There ya go. The voice of white male privilege, trampling on the rights on women and minorities willy nilly because democracy = "mob rule."
Fie upon that attitude. The will of the people has been flaunted and the results have been disastrous. The Supreme Court "elected" GW Bush, in its infinite wisdom; and he presided over the worst terror attack in our history with more than 3,000 dead; disastrous and costly wars and a near-Depression.
The PEOPLE elected wise Barack Obama.
The Electoral College put the horrible and unqualified Donald Trump into the White House.
Enough said.
1
Intelligent observations. But this larger agenda isn't going to happen by 2020. But flipping 3 seats might just be doable ... with clear focus. Just as an example, if Biden is elected Pres. and Beto becomes VP, he can provide a tie-breaker. Existing Dem. senators return. Abrams might be convince-able. And Alabama may be hard fight, but not impossible. But your point is very well taken... we can't have more of Mitch.
6
Thank You Mr. Bouie . Every time I try to come up with a solution and think about the logic of how the Senate and Congress were established, as the Legislature Branch, It doesn't feel right at all, and that is because it isn't.
There is nothing Trump will not do in violation of The Constitution, laws, norms and ethics to achieve his ends. Therefore, he knows that there is nothing Democrats will do that matters one bit because ethics, norms, laws and The Constitution don't matter as he consolidates dictatorial power. The only exception is impeachment proceedings followed by a vote because doing so can wrest control of what is going on from Trump. And yes, impeachment is a political process but Democrats control it, regardless of the Senate.
3
Democrats could win the White House and the Senate, but still lose the broader war against the economic forces that helped elect Trump in the first place. Electing a neo-liberal like Joe Biden will only support the economic status quo, which will lead to more wealth disparity, a declining middle class, and growing political frustration that could drive the election of more populist authoritarian governments in the future. The only answer is electing a progressive capitalist, who can implement universal health care, affordable college and student loan debt forgiveness, early child care, and other programs designed to lift the burdens on the 90% and level the playing field.
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@JS
The wealthy pay Republicans to try and get them a lot more money, and pay Democrats to try and get them a little more money. Thats been the status quo for the last five decades. If the things you propose had been implemented during that time, we'd have a huge, prosperous, middle class, not many poor, and not many billionaires. In other words, I totally agree with you.
7
@JS-
“The broader war against the economic forces that helped elect Trump in the first place.”?
Economic forces? You mean Vladimir Putin? That mob boss dictator worth perhaps as much as $100-billion, or more — maybe much more. Maybe a third of a trillion dollars. Much, if not most of it, stolen state property from the dead Soviet Union during Yeltsin’s years.
Now, $300-billion gets “laundered” (as is said in polite circles) many different ways, but especially through real estate investment in the West — where it remains, hiding in plain sight. Trophy properties In Manhattan. London office and condo towers. Geneva, Switzerland, waterfront estates. Lichtenstein, Luxembourg, Tokyo, Paris.
President Putin, with the full resources of the Russian Federation at his disposal, its cyber-warfare and foreign intelligence services able to reach deeply into the United States to tweak our electoral system, even stuff ballot boxes in a few key states? That Putin, who put one of his business partners in the Oval Office in 2016 and intends to keep him there in 2020, or even longer?
To park money in the West Putin secretly partnered with wealthy Europeans and Americans to get it there . He must put as much as he can beyond Russia’s reach should he ever lose control of it; its judiciary and police especially. But, to keep it safe in the West he must corrupt western political norms and neuter its legal systems as he did there. In Trump, he finds a more-than-willing partner and accomplice.
5
@JS You must mean to elect Elizabeth Warren so we can have programs that restore our democracy to the people and not the oligarchy.
6
Because of the historical accident that the country originated in a compact of thirteen ex colonies, we are stuck with the American equivalent of the House of Lords, the Senate or Upper Chamber, which was designed to put a brake on the democratically elected House of Representatives . . . . The solution is not to attempt to counter-gerrymand the Republicans. The solution is to offer to the people in these states programs and policies that will actually deal with America's rural crisis and help them, as the demagogue President Trump's promises will not.
1
Nothing will change until Mitch McConnell and his self-serving partisan ilk in the Republican Party lose their majority in the Senate. It won't matter who is elected President if Mc Connell is still there to block floor votes and stuff the courts with politically biased judges. The Democrats need to focus on
Congressional races as much as on the election of the next
President. The battle is for the country not just the Presidency.
419
@Guillemot
You left out sleazy Lindsey Graham and some others like Jim Jordan and John Kennedy.
5
@Guillemot
McConnell does not have an ideology. He is a paid employee of our extractive and polluting industries. In a sane world, he would be impeached himself.
1
"...Susan Collins of Maine — is incredibly popular with her constituents."
That might have changed with her support of Brett Kavanaugh.
The grass roots have sprouted in Maine and the Fund Susan Collins' Future Opponent crowdpac, which began immediately after she betrayed the peoples' trust and voted for Kavanaugh, now stands at almost $3.8 million.
564
Joe,
I agree. The people of Maine aren't going to forget Collins' vote on Kavanaugh.
They probably think about it every time they have a beer.
64
@Joe
I donated to the group opposing her after the Kavanaugh fiasco, and will continue to give anyone who opposes her as much as I can.
38
@Joe
Rumor has it that Collins gets 1% of her campaign money from the citizens of her state. Wildly popular? Not so much, and her vote on Kavanaugh and trust in McConnell's word to protect the ACA were pure folly. She thinks nobody is watching. She is dead wrong.
64
All too true, especially in light of the fact that Senate
races are not affected by gerrymandering of legislative
districts. There was, as a result, no such issue that led
to the loss of the Indiana, Missouri, and North Dakota senate seats in 2018. Of course the issue of voter ID laws is a
permanent threat to the trumpican majority, but that is as
much an issue of voter education and proper procedure, which requires well functioning political organizations at the state/district levels, than anything else.
But basic to everything is an engaged, informed,
and infuriated electoral base that understands that the Senate is as critical as the presidency next year; in particular, one that fully appreciates the needed check upon trump were he to win (I just gagged).
I question whether such a base exists in sufficiently large numbers to defeat the number of trumpican incumbents who will be well funded if they maintain
loyalty to their dear leader, and who will therefore
be sure of keeping the votes of trump loyalists.
There are also enough who are committed to seeing the China issue and border wall issues resolved on trump's terms, no matter the short term domestic inconveniences or moral outrages, even to their own pocketbooks or sense of
common decency, to be skeptical that these are issues in favor of a democratic candidate.
The simple reason is that too few people are really
clear about the nature of our 24/7 horror show of abject squalor.
1
Let's see, rather than change their priorities and positions so as to place them more in line with the majority of American, and rather than address the problems our citizens face instead of investigate endless imaginary transgressions, you propose jury rigging the system so that those who are further left can win? Sounds like a pure power play, and sour grapes.
4
@Dr B - Yes, a pure power play as Republicans have done blatantly for decades (refusing to hold hearings on a Supreme Court nominee, preventing minorities from voting, etc. If you can't take it, don't dish it out.
@Dr B
The Democratic Party represents the majority of Americans.
@D Rosenberg LOL. So your defense is that the Democrats should be as useless and ruthless as the Republicans even if it costs them the Presidency and Senate?
Trump represents a totalitarian threat but even if he loses a Republican Senate represents an inability to meet the threat from climate change which appears to be an existential threat. There seem to be only two viable alternatives for the US, one is the Democrats control all branches of the federal government and the other is that the Republicans shift toward the left. Both of these alternatives seem unlikely. In addition to the two threats mentioned there is a growing sense the the US is gradually turning into a surveillance society as more and more of our personal experience is being captured as behavioral data and used to predict our behavior and manipulate us for commercial purposes. If this trend continues much longer this would be another way that democracy could come to an end and the odds of halting this trend in time do not look good. It certainly looks like the US is in deep trouble and right now there is a lack of reassuring answers.
1
I think the situation is more hardened into concrete than even this column implies.
After the murder of innocent children at Sandy Hook 90% of all Americans wanted reasonable gun control to keep crazy people from having access to guns, including then Pres. Obama who put his back into passing legislation. Nothing was passed. Very disturbing.
Now scroll down to the 2nd graph @ this EPI study: bit.ly/EPI-study
It shows that from 1945 to 1972 GNP rose about 100% & the median wage in lockstep w/ it.
Since 1972 GNP has grown another 150% but the median wage has remained flat, for 47+ years. 90% of those gains flowed to the 0.001% even tho it took the 100% to create those gains.
The inflection point of 1972 (IP72) is an overwhelming & HARD inflection point. It concentrates wealth which concentrates power. IP72 is a stunning event. It signals the creation of an oligopoly in 72 that's only gotten richer thus stronger. We haven't been a democracy since.
IP72 is not sustainable w/out complicity from elites in both parties. So IP72 signals betrayal from our elites & rich alike. They have all the power & I'm not sure breaking up states will change that because the current federal system was in place prior to 1972 & somehow power was much more diffused. If IP72 is not broken the rest of our system will eventually break.
Breaking IP72 is key. Every pol should be asked how they'll do this.
Currently Sanders & Warren are the only ones w/ credibility on the issue. Not sure this helps.
7
Well, the broke the Senate with the 17th Amendment.
The solution, not mentioned is to just make the Senate equal in size to the House, in numbers. This will not change the Senates job, which is to be a "deliberative body". What it will do is make it more "democratic". The framers, nor did they envision 50 states, nor did they envision 325 million people.
This would also make the Electoral College fairer, by having 870 Electoral votes, requiring 436 to win. It would force campaigning in all states, as it would be harder fro one party, like now, to control Senate electoral votes.
Yes, this would involve amending Constitution. But, a radical change is required because the GOP power, over the Senate, will only get tighter.
It is too bad that this country never put in place a nation referendum process. The biggest failure, in the "Great Experiment", was the people ceded too much power to the hands of the very few; politicians, the 1% and two political parties. Our 1789 designed government no longer works in 2020. Trump, the GOP, and the very few, have found every loophole not only undermine the government, but the Constitution, as well.
3
Rather than attempting to overcome all of the obstacles to creating new states, why don't NYC and California pay to strategically relocate a few thousand voters here and there throughout the red states for a minimum of six years with serious bonuses to the volunteers if their new states elect Democrats to the Senate. Even if the pioneer volunteer's efforts don't succeed, Republican politicians will find themselves compelled to address the concerns of the average voter for the first time in generations to hold onto office. Already money well spent.
5
It's time for some of the unlikely presidential hopefuls (Abrams, O'Rourke, Castro) to do the right thing for their party and abandon the race for the White House. We need them in those Senate fights. Badly. The enemy might be Trump, but his general is Mitch McConnell. We have to get power out of his hands.
8
In other words, it's hopeless.
Meanwhile, the poobahs of the Democratic party are terrified of Bernie Sanders, whose program might actually attract red state voters, where the policies of a party which couldn't even repeal the carried interest loophole fall flat.
5
Wow. The suggestions in the article are an unconcealed strategy for one party to grab power. Never mind that the House of Representative already allocates the seats based proportionally. Why not just prohibit Republicans from participating in elections and thus solve our current political dilemma.
It’s the ideas such as these that make the flyover states resent the coastal elites. Instead of trying to disenfranchise those states even more, why not focus on policies that work for all Americans. And whether one likes Trump or not, he clearly understood the emotional resentment of the heartland of America and his appeal to the forgotten states formed the basis for his eventual success in the 2016 campaign.
12
@Serge Troyanovsky
"for one party to grab power--back," you mean.
Whatever needs to be done to break the Republican grip on the US should be done. With climate breakdown, wealth inequality, and rising rightwing authoritarianism, we don't have the luxury of waiting around, and playing Mitch McConnell's games, for another few decades. The more radical the proposals for ending R power, the better.
2
Presumably we believe in democracy and therefore we believe in the competition of ideas. Changing the rules of the game driven by the dislike of the party in power is a dangerous road to take.
Ultimately the belief that “we know better” and that the other side must be defeated is what leads to revolutions. Luckily this country has successfully navigated its disagreements without resort to unlawful behavior. A little bit more respect to each other and the choices made by the rest of the country (outside our own bubbles) would go a long way towards rebuilding our wounded democracy.
3
Do you manage to ignore every argument made in this article about representative fairness. Why should 600,000 people in Wyoming have the same representation in the Senate is 40 million people in California?
3
It is quite apparent that Mitch McConnell is Trump's own personal windsock, but first things first. We need to rid the stain off this country's fabric as soon as humanly possible, changing over the Senate can wait. It would mean gridlock, but what's new? And besides, it would not be gridlock with Trump policies in the balance.
4
I have been thinking for some time that there might be some wisdom in providing that every former President would automatically become a member of the Senate for life. Admittedly this seems less appealing at the current moment, but my thinking is that such a group (probably 4-6 at any given time) could provide some ballast and perhaps enable some degree on consensus-building in the face of the rampant partisanship that seems to have been growing ever since the Bork hearings. Probably hard to get done, but maybe a concept worth considering.
2
@Joseph Bracewell
So having unelected lifetime appointments is a solution? No thanks, we don’t need royal privileges doled out thusly.
Statehood for DC, PR, the Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, and the Northern Marianas. Unincorporated territory status for the Dakotas + Wyoming?
On a serious note, whatever needs to be done to break the Republican grip on the US should be done. With climate breakdown, wealth inequality, and rising rightwing authoritarianism, we don't have the luxury of waiting around, and playing Mitch McConnell's games, for another few decades. The more radical the proposals for ending R power, the better.
2
I have been hoping that Beto will acknowledge reality, and admit, at least to himself, that he is most probably not going to be elected President in 2020. He would be doing a much greater service to our Country if he ran for the open Senate seat in Texas. His chances of being elected to the Senate are exponentially higher than him being elected President. If he were to do this, he would be a true patriot. He has plenty of time to run for President, but later. His country needs him in the Senate in 2021.
298
@miss anthropy check out MJ Hegar running against Coryn. She is amazing. I have donated to her campaign. I hope she beats the old boy.
13
@Miss Anthropy- Check your facts as there is no "open Senate seat" in Texas. John Cornyn is the incumbent senior senator from Texas and will run a very competitive campaign. Cornyn is well-liked, personable and has a great resume. While I don't agree with many of his positions I have to respect they are considered opinions.
Beto is a flash-in-the-pan candidate that could NOT beat the least like Senator in modern times. How exactly is he a credible candidate for anything?
4
The same argument applies to Stacey Abrams of Georgia. Se may even have a better chance of winning than Beto does against Cornyn.
12
As a Californian, I am not willing to break up the state. It would be a nightmare.
As for the rest, I support statehood for DC, but aside from Puerto Rico, I don’t believe any of the territories have large enough populations to qualify for statehood?
The Dems MUST win back the Senate and keep the House even if we lose the White House. The Senate is crucial to stopping bad SCOTUS and cabinet nominees and for passing important legislation. Mitch McConnell, above all, must be defeated and we have a good chance at that-his poll numbers are way down in Kentucky, as they should be.
If, God forbid, Trump got re-elected but we win the Senate, they can vote him out of office once we impeach him-he will be gone!!
It's imperative that every Democrat, Independent and unaffiliated voter votes on 11/3/20 and votes for all Democrats on the ballot, no matter who is on it.
10
This is precisely why we should not be enforcing Policy Purity in the Presidential nomination race. If the Senate stays Red, the moist we can hope for is to avoid shutdowns and maybe an Infrastructure bill.
6
As I understand it, admission of a new state requires a joint resolution of Congress, and this would never get out of committee if the result was pro-liberal.
Please keep these ideas to yourself. Gerrymandering is bad enough at the state level without Mitch McConnell getting the idea to subdivide Wyoming.
3
@Rufus. A joint resolution of Congress is the same as passing a bill. If we abolish the filibuster, we can do it. Splitting states is a much dicier proposition than adding them.
1
A house divided can not stand.
Until the Republican Party ceases to exist or decides to place country before party, this nation will remain a toxic and dysfunctional one.
388
@Sam I Am: The GOP are not going to change. It is the Democrats who have to change, to sweeten their tune, to win back the Heartland electoral districts that went for Trump last time and may well do so again. Some keen market research is needed followed by one consistent, selling message and one candidate who becomes the symbol for that message. All else is wasted effort. Spouting righteous ideology and winning elections are not the same thing.
7
I think both Sam I Am and Penseur are correct here. The GOP is a danger to itself and others, domestically and abroad. And if the Democrats can't find broad appeal that cross-cuts identiitarian interest blocks, that will continue. That broad appeal is difficult when any number of these groups will pull the plug if they don't get what they want. This is not to say that some of these groups don't have righteous reasons for doing so (but most don't); it is to say that purism on the left won't have the same effect as it has had on the right, and Democrats shouldn't expect to win or to pull national politics leftward by doing insisting upon it.
3
@Sam I Am
Yikes! Guess what - the people on the right-wing fringe are saying the same thing about you. Are they right?
What I see, myself, is a bunch of reasonable people who can work together, and then a bunch of unreasonable people who want to point fingers, blame everything on the other side, and pretend that political labels define how people behave. And in this perspective, your comment here is a perfect example of the problem in 2019 America. So obsessed with labels, facades, affilations.
1
In essence, you want to find a way to rig elections.
Very lovely.
There's a reason why we are a constitutional republic, and not a democratic majority rules type of system.
The way things are now ensures that liberals in echo chamber large population areas won't over shadow those in smaller areas. We should have bubbles determined based on their echo chambers, not based on making liberals have equal footing proportionate to their population, it needs to be based on bubbles of population, and ideals, and location.
In other words, your goal is to make the larger share of liberals in CA have a bigger voice, compared to the lesser republicans there.
CA is a huge, overwhelmingly large echo chamber in many cities. They don't need more power than they already have, in terms of liberals.
If the way it works is 80% of the population is made up of 23 large cities, then the 20% of conservatives in 100 cities should have a larger voice, if the demographics work out that way, and this is precisely because ideas are NOT more diverse in large cities as you tried to proclaim. They become bigger and bigger echo chambers for the left. The balance needs to be on geographical representation and ideals in those regions, not populations. That was the point of our system. It isn't perfect, but you seek to give liberals an edge, it is clear, based on population %'s.
9
I agree with the first part of the article - Dems need to keep in mind the fact that, in order to be able to govern, their agenda will completely stall in the Senate unless they can get at least 50 senators. So they need to pick up senators in places like CO, ME, NC, IA, AZ, especially as they will likely lose one in AL. The presidential candidate needs to have coattails in those states, not just win by a landslide in CA and NY. That's just reality, and anything else is preparing to fail.
But the second part of the article is in my opinion, misguided. Firstly, because the situation is not as unfair as it portrays. Sure WY only has population of 600k. But so does Vermont. And there is nothing written that says that FL or NC are Republican states - Statewide races are often very close there. Dems should be asking themselves why they don't win more of them rather than ask for an impossibility (like giving statehood to tribes etc.) Moreover such moves will fuel Republican claims that it is Democrats who seek a coup or partisan reforms.
Instead, Dems should be focusing on common-sense political reform: a national no-gerrymandering law for the House. Full House representation (if not statehood) for DC and Guam. Increased size of the House to reduce the distortion of the Electoral College, etc. These are much more achievable (or just non-partisan matters of civil rights) than stacking the Senate.
As for the Senate, Dems have to focus on winning it, and that's it.
18
One of the many broken things with the Constitution is the Senate in general. Adding more seats via extra states is band-aiding the problem. The real issue is that the Senate does not need to exist.
A representative democracy can work without a special super-branch that exists only to serve the interests of states, because the concept of a democracy has no room for representing artificially created states.
But if we're so married to the bicameral legislative-a modest proposal: instead of 2 senators per state, just conduct national elections for senators with 1 vote per ballot. The top 33 vote-getters become Senators for a 6 year term.
In this national popular vote, rural interests can pool their influence together to elect coalition leaders and still brandish considerable authority. It shouldn't matter what state a senator hails from-just that they represent a significant portion of the national electorate. This would establish the house as the representatives of localities and the senate as representatives of the country.
2
We must all understand that the GOP/Trump are one and the same; Trump is not an aberration.
The critical issues threatening our great Republic will not cease with the ouster of Trump.
The GOP goal is minority-rule authoritarian government by any means possible, including subversion of the Constitution, voter suppression, and breaking the rule of law (Russia, obstruction of justice, perjury, contempt of Congress, nepotism, financial corruption, etc.).
3
I would like to thank the author for pointing out the obvious - the Republicans will hold the Senate in 2020 barring a big Democratic win.
If Biden gets a vote just because he is not Trump, the same voter is still likely to pick a Republican for Senate. I am guessing that if the 3 candidates mentioned thought they'd win a 2020 Senate race in Georgia or Texas, at least one of them might have agreed to run.
Rather than resorting to transparent procedural warfare over the Senate, consider that it may be impossible to sustain one urban & suburban party vs. one rural & exurban party. Such a division creates a lot of one-party "races", which promotes corruption not democracy.
Beyond this, we cannot really govern this way. Issues like gun policy, climate change and public transportation will never be addressed well when one party optimizes the system for one demographic and the other does anything to get into power so it can rip up all of those laws and optimize policy for an entirely different demographic.
Addressing climate change requires shared sacrifice, not taxing fuel to fund often bloated public transit systems. Gun control might have little effect if guns are freely available a few miles away. Competition among health care providers in cities has to be balanced with the need for their presence elsewhere.
The parties & our self-sorting have combined to lead us to a bad equilibrium. We need a bigger jolt than procedural tweaks in the Senate to move to a harmonious one.
3
@Alan Are you kidding me with this suggestion of "often bloated public transit systems"? Transit systems in the U.S. need gobs and gobs and gobs and gobs of additional funding and expansion before they can possibly be considered bloated. Now, if you're talking about our road and highway systems that have paved the vast majority of our cities solely for the use of private vehicles (usually with only one person in them) and eats up just about every available dollar of transportation funding, there's the bloat.
4
@Me
No, I am not kidding. I have seen a couple estimates that the average miles per gallon per person of a city bus system is WORSE than the average miles per gallon of passenger cars. This is not exactly an apples to apples comparison, but ridership statistics can be inflated so it is hard to say which direction the number should be adjusted.
Public transportation brings other social benefits besides collective fuel economy so that depressing statistic is not the end of the story. But it also should not be all that close if the systems were tolerably efficient.
I highlighted the issue because it is the kind of thing that, when the parties are defined by geography, overwhelmingly benefits members of one party so it will be hard for both parties set a policy and then leave it alone.
1
@Alan is not kidding about "often bloated public transportation systems." The system in San Jose, CA, (VTA) collects 11% of its operating budget through fares. The remaining 89% is subsidy of one form or another. It would be cheaper to buy cars for the VTA riders!
By the time the CA legislature is done with the "Bullet Train" from Modesto to Bakersfield, it would have been cheaper to buy each household in Modesto and Bakersfield a Tesla.
The CATASTROPHIC loss of the Senate in 2014 cannot be emphasized enough.
Democrats had 55/45 control until the 2014 midterm reversal to Republican 54/46 control of the vital Senate—gateway to crucial judicial appointments and so much more. Especially with the "nuclear option" era.
How did we lose the Senate in 2014 (after CATASTROPHIC loss of the House in 2010)? Certainly one factor was Mr. Obama remaining aloof from Party leadership.
He never wanted to be the head of the Party (even though he was the President), and defaulted on that to the Clinton machine.
7
The problem, sadly, is that there's no way to fix this problem short of an actual revolution. In order to change the method of allocating Senators, we'd have to amend the Constitution, which requires the GOP Senate, who won't ever vote to give up their undemocratic hold on power.
6
From Federalist No. 22; Alexander Hamilton (1787):
"It may happen that this majority of States is a small minority of the people of America; and two thirds of the people of America could not long be persuaded, upon the credit of artificial distinctions and syllogistic subtleties, to submit their interests to the management and disposal of one third. The larger States would after a while revolt from the idea of receiving the law from the smaller . . . But this is not all: what at first sight may seem a remedy, is, in reality, a poison . . . If a pertinacious minority can control the opinion of a majority, respecting the best mode of conducting it, the majority, in order that something may be done, must conform to the views of the minority; and thus the sense of the smaller number will overrule that of the greater, and give a tone to the national proceedings. Hence, tedious delays; continual negotiation and intrigue; contemptible compromises of the public good."
31
@jrinsc best comment of the day.
1
People have forgotten (or we’re never taught) basic civics. The senate was created to have equal representation of the states because they are equal sovereigns REGARDLESS OF POPULATION. California has the same sovereignty as Wyoming.
The House, on the other hand, was created to allow proportional representation from the states. The two bodies then must agree/compromise, balancing the two representational schemes.
Valid then, valid now. If you want it all allotted solely by population why even bother to have two chambers?
7
@George S
Many states have bicammeral legislatures. Two houses with divided duties. However, two supreme court decisions of the early 1960’s, Baker vs. Carr and Reynolds vs. Sims, dictate that both houses MUST represent the populace.
Government governs by the will of the governed.
For each county of my state, Pennsylvania, to have one senator would be to allow the thousands of people in Elk and Tioga counties equal power to the millions in Phiadelphia and Allegheny counties.
The only legislative body in our country held outside this rule is the U. S. Senate.
Fair is fair.
We could elect representatives based on counts of trees or numbers of cattle in a geographic area. But that would be absurd. Trees and cattle don’t vote. Citizens do!
4
Let's be clear. Defeating Trump is critical no matter what happens in the Senate. An intransigent Congress is still preferable to an activist Trump.
10
I think the writer has forgotten that to change the constitution two thirds of the congress and three quarters of the states must ratify the change. This is not going to happen. In the 1860s this resulted in Civil War nowadays the nation's population might begin to wonder about the relevance of government and its role.
5
@Stephen Kurtz
or it might result in a breakup of the country.
All the attention to the presidential election is a grave mistake. If the Senate remains in republican hands with Mitch McConnell the dominating force, we will continue on this path. Democrats must have a dual focus.
25
It appears that Mr. Bouie has more of a problem with the intransigent Republican party than he does the Senate. The institution worked fine when the opposing parties were collegial to each other and drank Scotch as they passed bipartisan laws. Now with the political divide more like the Grand Canyon, we may never see those days again. Some of the solutions offered in the essay sound interesting, and here is one more: add a single senate seat for each state, but to only be contested by valid independant non party affiliated candidates. A neutral party in a 150 seat Senate, in other words. The compromises and the combinations in forming legislation would be endless, and dare I say - progressive. It’s more the party system at fault, I believe, and less the structure of the Senate.
This is a very important article. It gets to the heart of the matter and remains the real danger of America turning into Hungary.
The Republicans do not believe in democracy. They believe in power, that's all, by any means necessary even if they circumvent the law and goes against the wishes of the majority.
Yes Trump is a clear and present danger and must be removed. But none of what is happening in this dark time without the full and total capitulation of one of America's two major political parties. pl
36
So true. But changing the number of senators is not the answer and is not likely to happen anytime soon. Democrats can win in Republican states, especially when rational people can see how toxic the current Republican party is. I mean, why do Republican House members care whether the Senate subpoenas the president's son. Yet here they are Tweeting and ranting.
Good candidates are the key. I am disappointed in Stacey Abrams and Beto O'Rourke. These people should not be president. They have almost as little experience as our current nutjob. But they should be, and could be, Senators. Democrats can flip the Senate, but it will take work, money, and candidates who can excite the populace.
73
@Matt
This problem began to emerge after the Clinton administration introduced us to the concept of "Flyover Country".
Most things Democrats support are broadly popular: better wages, affordable healthcare, consumer protections, safe workplaces, a clean environment. The Democrats tend to get beat up in the culture wars. If the Democrats would focus on "kitchen table" issues and resist getting sucked into the culture wars, they could win enough seats in Flyover Country to get a majority of the senate.
That doesn't mean abandoning social justice issues. It just means talking about stuff that most people can agree on, and working on social justice after winning a majority.
1
I agree that Democrats should learn how to play hardball. After 25 + years of debating people whose goal is to prevent debate, compromising with people who only want demonize you, submitting to power grabs & broken rules & dishonest propaganda, the Democrats have, IMO, as big a credibility problem as the Republicans.
But nothing is going to set this country on a better course except addressing the deep corruption of the entire political-media system. Any party needs opposition. Democracy without meaningful debate is meaningless. The Republicans aren't opposition; they're more like an organized crime syndicate with an iron grip on much of the country's media. And the Democrats have been more invested in pretending that everything is normal than in taking their responsibility seriously.
6
Where was this viewpoint when Harry Reid let promising bills gather dust on his desk? Mitch McConnell deserves every bit of criticism he gets, but Harry Reid set the tone for a useless Senate.
3
Exactly! All this energy by dozens of candidates to remove Trump, when McConnell is the one who rules us. Does Mitch even have an opponent?
11
10 least populated states = 12.5m citizens;
10 most populated states = 128 m citizens.
Each Group has 20 Senators = minority rule.
This is why Congress is stymied. This is not democracy.
10
What if billionaires like Tom Steyer paid for young liberals to move to places like Kentucky, Ohio and other GOP strongholds?
What if liberals moved to these places and committed to live there for like five years, long enough to vote in a couple of elections and vote out these awful Senators? It's a short-term fix, but at least it would break the stranglehold that the GOP currently has on the Senate.
5
If ifs and buts were candy and nuts we’d all have a merry Christmas
No taxation without representation means no equal taxation without equal representation. Why should an American in California pay the same federal taxes as an American in Wyoming, when the 37,253,95 Americans in California get 2 senators and the 563,626 Americans in Wyoming get 2. Under what theory of “equal representation for equal taxation” should the 50% of the US pop in the 10 largest states pay equal federal taxes as the 2% in the 10 smallest states have identical power in the U.S. Senate?
53% of all Americans live in CA; TX; NY; FL; IL; PA; OH; MI; GA; and NC. These 160M people have 20 senators. A senator for every 8M.
2.8% of all Americans live in: ME; NH; RI; MT; DE; SD; AK; ND; VT; and, WY. These 7M have 20 senators or one senator for every 350K. They get 22 times as much political power.
There’s nothing ‘special’ about the Senate itself or the politicians elected as senators as human beings either. There’s nothing ‘special’ about ‘states’.
Why should residents who happen to be in the populous state have to pay equal taxes when they do not have anything remotely resembling equal representation? The just theory of ‘no taxation without representation’ also means ‘no equal taxation without equal representation’.
5
I live in CT, the 2nd smallest state. But has the population of Wyoming, Alaska and South Dakota combined. I often wondered about breaking up low population, large geographic states. Wyoming could be divided into the states that surround it, as well as West Virginia. The Dakotas could be one, instead of two.
If religious, racial and ethnic minorities want more representation, they need to vote. You want to know why most politicians are old white and male (FTR: I don’t care about race only policy)? Because old white males vote.
No proposal to break existing states into smaller states has a chance of being accepted, nor any such proposal be accepted, when the purpose of the proposal is as you admit o benefit one political party at the expense of the other. I would suggest you stop wasting your time and your readers' time with such pie in the sky ideas nd instead concentrate on steps that can be taken to persuade the voters that it is not only Donald Trump who is threat to the Constitution and this country, it is also his Republican Senator enablers. If you nevertheless persist in discussing radical proposals, a much simpler one to rectify the problems caused by a Trump-like President is to amend the 25th amendment to specifically provide for replacement of the President when he exhibits symptoms of serious mental illness or emotional instability.
5
@Jay Orchard While I don't disagree with the sentiment of invoking the 25th amendment, you're missing the major, and growing problem at hand: The senate is an undemocratic institution..." a disparity that gives a person in Wyoming 67 times the voting power as one in California." I think we can objectively say this is unfair, regardless of assumed political affiliation of those populations. When 50% of the population lives in 8 states in 2 decades, will it be "pie in the sky" then to reconsider the way we've structured the Senate?
What about the most straightforward of "solutions," namely migration of progressives and their businesses from blue states to red states?
1
The religious groups are supporting the permanent damage that Trump and the GOP are causing with coal use and fossil fuels. The U.N. recently told the world about not much time left for millions of plants and foods. We need to embarrass Trump and his supporters into total reality that this is real and time is running out. To do nothing we will loose the election and our planet. The GOP claim they are pro life baloney if the are allowing our planet to be destroyed we will be to.
2
Just wait until Trump's trade war devastates the western Agricultural states. Just wait until Trump's trade war hammers what's left of manufacturing in the upper midwest. Just wait until he gets us into a shooting war with Iran and the children of rural areas come home in body bags. Just wait until Trump finally kills Obamacare and millions in the rural areas are without healthcare. Just wait until we find out what Russia has over Trump.
There is much to look forward to that can flip the Senate. We just need for Trump to become totally successful in all of his endeavors and for the red state suffering to really set in. A 25% tariff on everything imported from China should do the job.
7
Jamelle Bouie's assessment comes as no surprise. To him, few things aren't centered on race.
As for solutions -- to more rapidly advance the progressive agenda -- might he also consider breaking up the country?
1
The point you add raising has been obvious to many who have written comments on pages for a while now. Since the Garland debacle, even the staunchest supporter of our archaic constitution has to see that we are no longer a democracy. The senate is hugely more powerful than the House which is supposed to hold purse but as we see in the case of the Wall, a mere acting secretary of defense can divert funds with congressional say,
The senate is an archaic institution. It is as bad as the electoral college and has to be reformed big time.
How can it be done? Even with a simple majority in the senate as well as the White House and the House, Democrats can not change the constitution.
What is to be done? Maybe the only way short of splitting into blue and red USA is to go out on the streets and force the issue. We are getting to the point that the US will be a fascist state ran by a white oligarchy. It has happened before in history. People convinced themselves that their institutions would protect them. They did not.
3
You have to realize that the GOP picked Trump, not because they thought he would be good for America, but because he was clueless and good for them. For decades now the GOP has been after our social safety nets including universal health care, have supported big business and has been against Hispanic immigration. They have been misogynistic, xenophobic and outright racist. Trump reflects who they are and they protect him for it. The real enemy is the GOP and Trump is the diversion.
3
How could Bouie's idea about giving Senators to other US entities be realized? Wouldn't it stil come up against, at the least, Mitch McConnell?
1
It may take 50 years but when it flips , it will flip so hard that the Republicans and their ideology will be a relic of history . Demographics are unstoppable. That is the only positive thing that I can think of.
1
Perhaps the problem isn't the Senate but is the House...
1
As a non-American, I find the lack of public outrage by US citizens to be stunning.
Your president and his administration is demonstrably corrupt.
A foreign power was allowed (encouraged) to meddle in a presidential election and has regular unmonitored access to your president.
A special counsel report into Russian interference is brazenly withheld from Congress and American Citizens.
Why are the streets of Washington and New York not teeming with enraged Americans?
This is a real question.
18
@Bernier You're right to be stunned. Among the reasons are: a big portion of the country gets their news from a right-wing propaganda machine, Fox News which has them convinced that Trump walks on water and democrats breathe fire.
Another reason for our apathy is Learned Helplessness. As a Californian, with 1/67th of the voting power of a Wyomming resident it's hard not to feel as if nothing I do or think matters. It's not totally true, I did canvas in a nearby swing district in 2018 and we did flip it.
Nevertheless, when it comes to national politics, I'm in Los Angeles. If I protest here, I'm preaching to the choir. My representative is Adam Schiff, chair of House Intel. Committee, who is on TV all the time and I know agrees with me. So do my Senators. I need my fellow citizens in the middle of the country to stand up and make their voices heard. And I have yet to discover how to do that.
13
It wasn't so long ago that the Democrats had a majority in the Senate. Why did the Democrats lose their majority? Please don't say gerrymandering.
I love the fact that the author wants the Democrats to end the filibuster. The Democrats did that to get Obama's judges confirmed. Then the Republicans ended the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees, and we got two conservative Justices. So the Democrats further end the filibuster when they control the Senate, and the Republicans will do the same when they win back the Senate. And the author will scream about how unfair it is that the Republicans can totally ignore the Democrats.
1
Changing the rules is not realistic and even if it was it might not produce the result you are seeking. If the Democratic Party wants to win the Senate it needs to rùn electable candidates in the less populated states.
3
Ending the filibuster is an appalling idea, but it's obviously going to happen. Liberals, for all of their howling about the ending of the filibuster for SC nominees, will end the filibuster in 2021 as their first move.
Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to mob rule.
So long as the imbalace created by the Great Compromise at our constitutional convention in 1887 stands, the very structure of the senate is problematic. The immense advantage the two-senators-per-state rule provides to the citizens of less populous states has forced our nation, again and again, into situations which reflect a complete denial of the “one man, one vote” principle on which democracy rests.
California is home to more than 75 times as many people as Wyoming. Both states send two senators to Washington D.C. So, a citizen of Wyoming wields more senatorial influence than do seventy-five Californians.
Without this unfortunate imbalance, Mitch McConnell and some very unprincipled Republican senators wouldn’t have the stranglehold on the U.S.Senate they currently do.
We must cope with our current governmental structure. However, moving toward constitutional reform is in everone’s interest. Governmental representative should represent people, not areas of land.
The twenty states of lowest population have forty senators, but a combined population less than that of the most populous state —> which has two senators.
The unfairness of this is obvious. And this patent unfairness is made even more apparent by the actions/inaction of the current Republican majority in the senate.
4
Sorry but the Senate represent states not their populations. The house represents their populations. Their respective populations are irrelevant however if you believe it matters the simple solution is to move to a less populous state.
It’s always the Dems that want to change their rules but only to their advantage. Yet they are the first to say the other side isn’t representing all of America. Hypocrisy abounds.
2
@Tom W
Oops! 1787.
Companies like Amazon could help create new cities/ metropolitan areas on the borders of lowly populated states like Wyoming, the Dakotas, Idaho and Montana. Demographic shifts would impact the political representation of these states.
4
What a joy to read Mr. Bouie's column since it cuts through to the heart of the matter. The majority of Americans have found themselves living for 40-50 years under a government far more conservative than the citizenry. This fact is essential to understanding why people who are able to vote do not do so; they recognize that their vote does not matter. Our democracy is threatened because, like our Founders and Framers, we have "taxation without representation." We are willing to pay taxes, but expect the money to be used for the good of the people, and not for: large business selling to the military; or energy companies willing to destroy the planet for their own luxury; or Senators who profit in their jobs by exclusion from the insider trading laws; and certainly not to give Russia our soy trade with China. The Americans in territories and federal districts deserve fair representation as much as anyone. We live by the "rule of law" which is the will of the people, not the will of a political party adept only at greed and gaming the system.
4
Mr. Bouie is exactly right with the main thesis of his column. We cannot call American governance a "democracy" with the US Senate constituted as it is. The thing is, Republicans don't think of the United States as a democracy in the first place.
The GOP will not tolerate any threat to its anti-democratic structural advantage without a very bitter fight. Quite the opposite. Today it fights to make the nation even less democratic.
5
Mitch McConnell should be investigated and expelled from the Senate.
He is working against the country, betraying his oath of office, and working solely for corporations, the rich, and his own personal gain.
He has been very open and bold in this quest.
Can anyone think of anything that he has done that is good for the country??
Please enlighten me.
109
@Grove
He helped put Gorsuch and Kavanaugh on the bench. Hopefully they will be 2 of the 5 votes to stop the legal murder of babies in this country.
Don't like the way that the United States Supreme Court rules? Add some justices! Can't seem to win a Democratic majority in the Senate? "Create" some new states! Can't seem to have a Democratic presidential candidate win the Electoral College? Abolish it!
A pattern seems to be emerging!
4
The Senate is a standing affront to democracy, and our constitutional system makes it almost impossible to change in any significant way. We as Americans need to ask how long we are willing to sacrifice popular aspirations on the altar of a fundamentally anti-democratic chamber whose original purpose is now irrelevant, as Bouie points out. As disturbing as the precedent would be, I believe Americans need to be open to the possibility of a popularly elected President and House teaming up to effectively strip the Senate of its powers -- perhaps even abolishing it entirely. This would be unconstitutional, but more fundamentally justified than giving Mitch McConnell a personal veto over our collective future.
5
@Adam Kotsko Many democracies have non-representative legislative houses to check the impulses of majorities. The House of Lords in the UK consists of appointed - not elected - members (they were hereditary peers until recently) who don’t have the ability to initiate legislation but can obstruct its passage. India’s parliamentary system is modeled on the British one. There are many sound reasons for this, particularly to quell the more ugly impulses of majorities. And while humans have become demonstrably less violent even in the last 70 years, the evidence of the wars of the last century dictate that vigilance should not be relaxed.
Keen insights from Mr. Bouie. While I support Senator Warren, no Democrat elected president will be able to create the drastic changes required without control of the Senate. Today's GOP is a radical, broken party. It serves the oligarchs at the expense of the poor, the middle-class, and the planet. Let's keep our eyes on the prize. We must vote in 2020 to take back our country from those who are destroying it. Whether the party's nominee is moderate or progressive matters not. We must have the House and Senate to pass landmark legislation.
11
Every problem has a fulcrum point on which it balances.
In the Senate's case the fulcrum is Mitch McConnell and his bad-faith positions on how the Senate should behave. The assault on the Senate's traditions and norms begins and ends at his office door. Instead of adding states or fiddling with electoral procedures, get that guy (and his ilk) out of office. Problem solved.
If Republicans hold a perennial majority of Senate seats but are open to compromise and negotiation, I have no problem with that. It's not the system that is broken; it's the members of the system.
5
I'd happily give California one of my state's Senators -- Steve Daines (R) -- which is where he came from to begin with (although his father is or was a land developer/builder in Bozeman).
Daines doesn't appear to do much of anything for most people in our state, except, of course, the richest of the rich and those who want to develop and/or block access to public lands. Or those who want the right to have weapons of war to hunt elk with every year so they keep voting for him.
And while he's packing his bags, maybe he can take his sidekick and former boss, Rep. Greg Gianforte with him, reportedly the richest man in the House, who also does not to seem to have the state's best interest at heart.
As far as I can tell, all that happens when Montana has elections is that the richest of the rich win, with the lone exception of Sen. Tester who works ten times as hard as our other two combined and then comes home to work on his land.
If you are looking for structural change, why not start in Montana? We could use all the help you can give.
5
The biggest problem is really Mitch McConnell. Who made him emperor?
It just boggles the mind to think that the named leaders of congress can prevent a bill from being voted on. This is truly a lack of representation, especially when an overwhelming majority of the people support a yes or no vote.
These people were elected to do a job and to make the voice of the people they represent be heard.
18
Yes, that is why Democrats need to stop focusing almost entirely on Trump.
Howard Dean when he was party chairman years ago wanted to build a 50 state party, but Obama and Rahm Emanuel kicked him out and focused on a limited number of "winnable" states.
Democrats need to somehow build a political machine in every state and make every contest count.
In the early part of the last century Democrats created political machines in the big cities because Republicans owned all the media.
Is it not be possible for Democrats to organize in such a way as to get more people registered and to the polls? Why don't people think along the lines of hiring full time workers to organize every precinct in the country.
All the polling I've ever seen shows that if more people would vote, the Democrats would win almost every time. Democrats have been out smarted and out maneuvered for the last 40 years.
The only candidate I hear talking about a strategy of how Democrats should approach the next election is Pete Buttigieg. I imagine he would have made an incredible national chairman, but since he lost out in that contest maybe he will be in a position after 2020 to select the next national chairman. I can only hope.
5
Bill Maher regularly asks "Why do we need 2 Dakotas? And why can't Montana and Wyoming become one? Start requiring any but the original 13 states to have a million citizens or merge.
Already, the 26 smallest states control 52 seats in the Senate with less than 18% of the population where the 10 biggest states control only 20 seats with 58% of the population.
I actually think Dems chances in the Senate are a little better, but better campaigns need to be mounted. Let (help) Alabamians put up Roy Moore against Doug Jones again...and watch him lose. Find a serious, dynamic candidate to run against Mitch (who ain't real popular in Kentucky) for allowing a trade war that impacted the bourbon industry, and didn't help the coal miners in any way. He's vulnerable. And Collins votes on Kavanaugh and upholding Trump's veto are already putting her at risk.
12
Creating eight new states would be impossible unless the problems in the Senate are addressed first, which would obviate the incentive to create new states, wouldn't it?
If the problem is population distribution as it now stands, then let's redistribute some of our Democratic voters. We have an overwhelming excess of them in California. So let's create an incentive to get some of them to move elsewhere. Start with states where the marginal difference in the number of voters by party is small, like Iowa. Moving about 50,000 Democratic voters to Iowa would tilt the field, producing two new Democratic Senators. States could be targeted strategically based on the marginal differences in the number of Democratic and Republican voters..
1
Let’s carve up Alaska into 8 states and Texas as well into say 4 !
Oh wait, they support the Republicans and that might add 20 more Republican senators.
Hmm, maybe not such a great idea after all
1
@PJ
Not if AOC has a say.
1
The new House leadership instituted rules changes this year to improve bipartisan legislating and give the minority more of a voice. As examples, if 290 house members (66%) co-sponsor a bill, it has to come to the floor, regardless of leadership's opinion. And if an amendment achieves 20 co-sponsors from both parties, it gets a vote. The bi-partisan Problem Solvers Caucus bargained for these in exchange for voting for Speaker Pelosi.
Similar modest rules changes in a new Senate could work. The filibuster could be made harder to use: you must actually hold the floor, not just threaten. Further, if 33% of the Senate demands a vote, that vote must be taken. That rule would bypass the filibuster. And even if the majority votes all such items down, they are on record as having so voted. King McConnell is a master at shoving the tough votes under the rug to protect his minions.
Finally, let's have a rule that all presidential appointments must receive a vote within 120 days. Even if a future McConnell wants to stonewall every court appointee, the majority party would start to look foolish by rejecting all of them. Eventually, voters would get sick of the nonsense and hold their senators accountable.
4
Quite frankly, the Republican Senate is a bigger problem than Trump. Trump will most likely be defeated in 2020, but other authoritarian GOP candidates will then line up to run, secure in the knowledge that the Republican Senate will follow them anywhere they care to lead.
Then there's the issue of Fox News, not a news channel at all but the propaganda wing of the Republican Party. It will have to be dealt with as well.
105
@Vesuviano
How exactly would you “deal with” a news channel like Fox? Would you apply the same treatment to msnbc and cnn?
1
@Norville T. Johnson
I'd start by bringing back the Fairness Doctrine, and then I'd institute draconian fines for misinformation. I'd fact-check all stations, not just Fox, and I'd use truth-in-advertising laws to make Fox identify itself as what it is: the propaganda branch of the right wing.
@Vesuviano
So it seems like you want to force them to identify themselves as the way way you see them and not as they necessarily see themselves.
In your world , how would conservatives or non-liberal progressive be allowed to express themselves?
1
Excellent review, should be used in course reading lists. The Constitution needs reform. But it won't happen with Republicans in power, as they are in most low population states.
That's why Trump, in his drive to create a constitutional crisis, is an opportunity. The GOP Senate is a sclerotic impediment to any change. But Trump is capable of bringing down the party. From his destruction of Jeb Bush to his Putin alliance, Trump has millstone written all over. Because of cowardice, Republican Senators eagerly support him. They could find themselves trapped in his vortex.
As Mr. Bouie states, politics is unpredictable. The course of change alters dramatically each week and month. At some point the power and wealth that controls the GOP and Fox News will bail. Like the NRA, big money's strategy is to support the extreme, to bend debate. But they're capable of moderation once chaos is the alternative.
The white, red states won't suddenly see eye to eye with less white, blue ones if the Republican party is shamed out of existence. But impediments to change will recede.
2
You forgot about that other option. The left could eliminate the population imbalance. Instead of adding states, The Pacific West could absorb any number of low population states into a regional republic. With the possible exception of Texas, everything between the Pacific Ocean and the Mississippi River is fair game. I can think of a few logical geographical boundaries which are naturally defensible.
Perhaps it's time Americans start considering whether the United States is truly "one nation indivisible under God." If the party of Lincoln is willing to deprive voters of their equal rights and representation under the law, maybe we should consider dissolving the Union.
If we're considering hypotheticals, we might as well lay all options on the table.
15
It doesn't look likely to me that new states will be created. Republicans are likely to remain in charge of the Senate for a while.
A better strategy is for Democrats to step up their game in sparsely populated states that are there for the taking. Those include Missouri, Idaho, Iowa, Montana, and maybe even South Dakota, Kansas, West Virginia, and Kentucky. All have elected Democratic Senators in the past. Let the Republicans keep "rock ribbed" Republican states like Oklahoma, Wyoming and Indiana.
Democratic leaders would need to abandon two of their own key donor sectors. In Kentucky and West Virginia, they win by actually doing something about prescription heroin and its derivatives, and abandon their big pharma donors. States in the grain belt can actually be had as well, as mechanization and neglect from DC have resulted in flat or declining incomes and population flight.
Instead of just talking about helping family farms, they could actually do so, instead of continuing to believe that bad actors like Monsanto and Cargill are representative of the people who live in the Midwest.
The Democrats win by returning to what they have only pretended to be for decades: champions of the people.
8
Mr. Bouie, you had me until about halfway through your opinion, when you started talking about the formation of new states. That will happen when pigs fly.
The Republican Senate would never agree to a constitutional amendment that might have even a tiny chance of diminishing their chances of holding onto power, and even if they did, there's no way there would be enough votes in state legislatures, now disproportionately Republican, to approve such an amendment.
But the first half of your opinion should be required reading, because it dramatically demonstrates how tilted the playing field is -- and will continue to be -- when it comes to elections in the U.S. accurately reflecting the views of a majority of its voters.
5
The Constitution guarantees each state an equal number of representatives, and it cannot be amended to change this.
Splitting the existing states may be the only solution.
@John Graybeard, I believe that each state is guaranteed exactly two Senators but that the House Representatives are awarded by relative populations of each state. So, only the Senate is the problem on this issue. I assume that is why the GOP is so fixated on packing the courts to assure that the current red states will be able to continue the Gerrymandering and voter suppression that has served them so well in the past decade or two.
You may be right that there are parts of the Constitution that are not amendable, but I personally have never heard of that.
2
@John Graybeard
Anything in the constitution can be amended, including apportionment (though it’s a bad idea). No provision in the constitution is exempt from amendment.
4
@George S
"...provided that ... no state, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate."
Article V, U.S. Constitution.
1
It is long past time to give statehood to territories that want it. No taxation without representation was once a battle cry for revolution.
I grew up in Texas and it was drilled into you that Texas could split into five states if it ever wanted to. There is a growing minority population there, as there is in Georgia so the large states may not be as red as they were in the past.
When a president loses the popular vote by almost three million votes, you have to question whether there is still a democracy.
When Republicans in Congress representing relatively tiny populations obstruct all participation by Democrats including for hearings and work out backroom deals, zipping major legislation through in hours such as the tax bill that impacts every citizen in the country, and totally cut Democrats out of the legislative process, that is not democracy.
150 years ago, the United States fought a civil war and some 60,000 soldiers died. As Lincoln said, "... we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
Republicans should read what Lincoln once wrote and read the Constitution. They are no longer following it.
25
It may have been drilled into you that Texas could split into five states if it ever wanted to, @SMB, but you were mislead by those who were busily doing that.
The idea is based on a misreading of the conditions under which Texas joined the Union, and referred to a debate whether Texas would come in as a single state or as many as five. That was resolved in 1845.
In 1865, Texas and a few other states were reminded that you couldn't retroactively alter or rescind your entry into the Union.
The Constitution is clear that a state can elect to be divided only with authorization from Congress, not on its own accord. Congress has done this all of once.
3
@John Dumas
Thank you. That doesn't surprise me. I think there was some early Constitution in Texas that included the other version.
1
@SMB I think it was some 620,000 to 750,000 deaths in the "Civil War" 1861-1865. FYI
This analysis puts into stark contrast our undemocratic system and those adversely affected by it. If it is not changed soon, our democracy will collapse. I, for one, am tired of the anti-democratic environment we now live in. Minority rule of government must end. If it means dissolving our union, so be it.
10
Let's do this from the ground up: childhood, with it's! wisdom of how to be fair and simple to the next generation. Conditions, outcomes, rules, and services people might still need, including depending on how good it makes people feel, as far as adults often must go, are a good way to talk about issues. Contortions, violence, collusion, and tolerance for these things are unacceptable. Why be Grinches when the Christmas tree's lights seem broken, in the deep philosophical never-ending perplexity of some sickening privilege, claiming that all the animals on the farm are okay? The earth is bigger and better than that.
1
I think you overestimate Susan Collins' popularity, which went down the tubes when she gave that bizarre speech supporting Kavanaugh.
126
@Islandgirl
I laugh every time I hear Susan Collins talk about her "deep concern" over some proposed Republican atrocity. She always figures out a way to justify voting in favor of it. The act is wearing thin, and people in Maine aren't stupid.
2
@Islandgirl
So who has stepped forward to run against Collins?
No one. Come on Maine! Where is your New England
determination??
All the ideas in this column are non-starters. Perhaps the democrats could try advocating for policies that people want to vote for! That might help them at election time.
14
Very well said. As long as Mitch McConnell is around, he will stop what the Democrats want to do. He got away with the Garland obstruction and will raise the stakes even higher if there's a Democratic President.
The Senate will certainly be tough to win, now and moving forward. It keeps going against the will of the people, only pushing what old, White, rich males want.
15
@Wilson
The Senate needs to be done away with so that we have a unicameral legislative branch, like Nebraska. Or, they need to be powerless, something like the U.K. House of Lords.
@Wilson
I don't understand why people from Kentucky keep electing McConnel to the Senate. Just what has he done for that state? Coal mining is dead, few industries, crumbling infrastructure, and their minimum wage is dismal that is one reason folks are so poor. It is time for the people of Kentucky to awaken and vote some one else into office.
3
I agree that DC and PR should be given statehood and that it will improve representation in the Senate. But I think the better solution for improving the Senate is to rebalance its power vis-a-vis the House.
For example, add a constitutional amendment that does the following:
-Provide that for any bill that the Senate does not pass within 90 days of it passing the House, the House can re-vote and it gets sent to the President if it passes two-thirds of the House.
-Move nominations of cabinet positions, all federal judges (including SCOTUS) and all federal officials other than ambassadors over to the House (and require two-thirds approval, again, to discourage partisan picks from the President)
-For the sake of ensuring that the filibuster is dead (and the Hastert rule and the Merrick Garland rule, as well), require that each chamber hold a floor vote for any bill or nomination within 3 days of one-third of that chamber's members pledging support.
5
How about this? Democrats continue to focus on those policies that receive popular support from the majority of citizens, regardless of the state they're in. Higher taxes on the wealthy, living wages, reasonable immigration reform, health care for all in some fashion, consumer protections, saving the planet, etc. And, oh yeah, not having a buffoon as the head of the party. At some point people will come to realize that the Democrats are better positioned to enact policies that benefit the broader population. Voters who are single issue voters (e.g. abortion), might never be swayed. But the broad middle should be. There is nothing inherently anti-red state in any of these positions.
3
The Senate is a problem, exactly. But another solution would be for Democrats to compete for votes in rural areas, with policies responsive to the needs of those areas. Trump has been a disaster for rural America. Voters will respond accordingly if Democrats offer alternatives on healthy food and healthy markets, where there is now a huge void. Trump is killing science at USDA and is hostile even to soil conservation programs, and getting away with it. If Democrats step in with attention to rural America commensurate with the enormous stakes, the Senate will flip in 2020.
11
How many democrats would have to move to each of these states to change their republican leanings? What would it take to convince enough democrats to move to just three republican leaning states?last time I checked we can live and work in any state. Seems to me that campaigns spend hundreds of millions of dollars to find voters in tough states. Instead of skillful fishing in a given lake shouldn’t we just stock it? What is more cost effective? If a 100,000 more democratic leaning voters move,live and work in Wyoming? What is the likely outcome in senate races?
2
@Progressive Farmer you are right. Democrats need a 50 state strategy and then extreme revision of the Senate will not seem like a necessity.
2
The idea of statehood for DC and Puerto Rico is excellent and the founding fathers considered making Haiti and Puerto Rico and Cuba states from the outset but they were afraid they would upset France and Spain as we were fighting with England. The current status of Puerto Rico is unfair although many inhabitants like the tax free status. The idea of splitting California has been toyed with for over one hundred years. One idea that would make sense is to make Mexico and Central America as well as Haiti and all of Hispaniola states of the USA. A glance in any US public school, including my children's, makes it clear that in a generation the US will be demographically fairly similar to Central America, and Cuba. Kind of a mixture between Haiti, Central America and everywhere else. Why should the people who are producing the future population of the USA be excluded from the political process? The majority of these countries inhabitants have been reported in survey after survey to be eager to come to the US if there was no border. Let us not fight demography, let us embrace it and make something good out of it.
3
One structural change that the Democrats have now, that they didn't have in the past, is an understanding that Republicans no longer stand for anything. Democrats, in the past, rightfully worried that any loosening of the rules would encourage further loosening of the rules when the Republicans were in power. Now that the Republicans have thrown out the rulebook, along with the constitution, we can act recklessly without fear of reprisals. Emolument clauses, obstruction of justice, nepotism, free trade, court packing, deficits, voter suppression, all have been thrown to the winds or embraced when the matter suits them. Therefore Democrats, when in the majority, should have no compulsion to follow or change rules as they see fit. 11 judges on the Supreme Court? No problem. Gun safety, healthcare, income inequity, they're declared national emergencies now and won't need input from the Senate. DC and PR gain representation and add Guam to that list as well. Forfeit the filibuster for majority rule, get back to a five day workweek and impeach any member who refuses to follow their constitutional duty as Mitch did with Merrick. No longer do we have to worry about consequences because the Republicans have shown us the truth. There are no consequences.
13
@Rick Gage Well said Rick Gage! What we need is to have all our Media talking about just what you have posted so more people will see how right you are if we are ever going to have anything that resembles a really free and fair democracy. Thanks again.
Mr. Bouie mentions some good ideas but to do any of them would first require that the Democrats control the House, Senate, and White House.
I love the Democrats but they generally do seem very averse to running for office and winning elections. They love to do protests and demonstrations and write opinion pieces
but what counts is winning on election day. I am fearful that the Democrats will not keep things together enough to retain control of the House in 2020.
Whoever was in charge of the 2018 elections for democratic members of the House did a good job. I trust that Ms. Pelosi had a lot to do with that; she has a good understanding of retail politics where you go out to meet voters and hustle for votes. She said that when you discuss legislation in the House you need to have 218 votes lined up; otherwise you just having an academic discussion. The democrats need more people like Ms. Pelosi.
5
Electoral reform is the key. We already have 4-5 states breaking the gerrymander. If that continues across the country, the Republicans will be consigned to the dustbin of history.
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Didn't all the mid-western states support progressive policies like the New Deal for decades? Maybe it takes extreme financial hardship like the Great Depression to get people to act. I can't believe all these white people won't support progressive policies because they are so against women and people of color. That sounds like a cop-out. But maybe I am being naive.
I do believe there are people in these red states that are comfortable with zero-sum results as long as they are on the winning side. The Great Depression taught people what it felt like to be on the losing side, so for decades they were interested in fairness, to make more people winners so they could be a winner too.
But they are losing right now. It is just more gradual than the market crash of 1929. I think it is possible to make a progressive case in these red states to turn them blue. But it means building a new coalition that doesn't fit inside either the Democratic or Republican Party that's ruled since the 1980's.
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@DB
The '08 Great Depression II was nearly as bad as '29. What is your point? Didn't you experience extreme financial hardship? I sure did.
I understand the tendency to focus on the President, his actions and the lack of checks and balances between the 3 branches of government. Two inter twined realities; the Electoral College and President Trump's re-election I find daunting almost every day. Mr Bouie paints a bleak picture in his Opinion piece but let's not throw in the towel. If we seek to change the political landscape we must begin at the state level. Intensely focused volunteer driven campaigns in every state but on wins in the House of Representatives, take state houses and Governors races and whittle down the number of republicans in the US Senate. To cry foul without being in the game is to give up power to the opposition. Organize, march, inform, leaflet, register to vote, get out the vote. The process may be difficult but winning is possible. To cry about the rules serves no purpose. To restate to win requires organizing, marching, leafleting, registering voters, getting out the vote dedicate yourself from now until the inauguration in 2020. Be better than the opposition at organizing, finding candidates, working in campaigns, registering voters, voting and winning!
4
The way to regain political power in America is to be as sufficiently centrist as is necessary to actually win elections in the various States,
particularly the crucial swing States which are centrist and not on
the far left.
A far left platform will not win the Senate nor a majority in the Electoral College in 2020.
Please keep your eyes on the prize.
2
@David you do realize that in 2010 Republicans won the highest number of seats in the House in a midterm election since the 1930s by swinging hard right (and haven't swung back to the center since) and a centrist lost the Electoral College in 2016 right?
3
@cerebralscrub
I think Hillary was too far left for the crucial centrist swing States to win the electoral college. While she won many more popular votes in NYC, LA, and San Francisco than was necessary to win the electoral votes of NY and California, her high margin of victory in the popular vote is factually irrelevant to the electoral college, and she lost the national election because she lost the centrist States. Ditto in the Senate and the House.
The fact remains that if the Democrats are going to win the Senate and the electoral college in 2020, they must be as centrist as is necessary to actually win the election in the centrist swing States that the Dems lost in 2016 but won in 2018. The Dems won back the House with a sweep of almost entirely centrist candidates in 2018. I submit that is the only possible winning formula for winning in 2020.
Any winning Democratic candidate for President in 2020 would need to be far more centrist than Hillary was in 2016.
Mitch McConnell is the least popular senator in history, who has enriched himself greatly off his seat, and yet there is no way he will lose his election, and he can keep opportunistically gaming the system. Something else is deeply wrong with the Senate, not just the demographics.
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@David Weintraub Something's wrong with Kentucky, which keeps electing McConnell even though he doesn't lift a finger to help his constituents and actively hurts them with his support for ACA repeal.
5
The Senate is more important than the presidency to flip in 2020, in my opinion. It is discouraging to see so many senators vying for the presidential nomination, and so few stellar senatorial candidates stepping up. There must be some out there.
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California has thrown around the idea of splitting itself into 5 separate states, each with two Senators. A couple of the states would be more conservative but it would probably mean there would be at least 6 progressives and probable 2 conservatives out of the extra 4 states. It would take a long time to accomplish considering the economic consequences. A better solution might be to allow states with a minimum of two Senators and add a Senator for every 10 electoral votes after 30.
3
I will readily admit that it is crucial to win back the White House, and then a majority in the Senate in 2020, but what is even MORE crucial is all of the state elections and Governorship(s).
You see, we are coming along to a census year - where all of the electoral maps will be drawn based on the numbers, by the state legislatures, and then signed off by the Governor of that state.
We have seen how republicans are fooling around with the question of citizenship on the census, and we already know that they engage in voter suppression. In the states they already control, they are rolling back human rights as fast as they can.
SO, when you get into that voting booth, aye, select accordingly for your candidate for Senate and President and so on, but please - do not forget all of the down ballot races.
Your country is hanging in the balance.
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The Senate was lost in 2014 because too many people didn't bother to vote. If the Senate is not regained in 2020, it maybe too late to ever take it back, given the assault on voting rights.
Should the Democrats ever occupy the White House again, it would be helpful if the president didn't drain the Senate or governors for cabinet positions. Arizona and Kansas lost good governors because of such short-term thinking.
If the Senate doesn't flip, change may require huge numbers of people dying from a lack of ability to get medical care or a major upheaval in the climate that gets even Inhofe's attention.
1
A focus on political strategy is counter-productive. The landlocked and southern states are full of people who need help from the government. When one or another party cuts through the noise and name-calling to present a viable plan, the tide will begin to turn. Sending subsidies to corporate agriculture and resource barrons is a mistake we can't correct, but Medicare for All, free tuition, and debt relief will start to loosen the strangle-hold of fear mongers.
2
Another problem of the Senate for Democrats is that the Supreme Crt (and lower crts) are extensions of the Senate and the presidency and neither the presidency nor especially Senate has democratic legitimacy.
This is a problem for Dems whenever the Supreme Crt guts a liberal law and a problem for Democrats when many ordinary voters (including myself) refuse to vote for a federal-level Democrat because the Supreme Crt is a threat to many things we hold dear.
Although it's common to criticize life tenure for Supreme Crt justices, I see it as a bigger problem that the Supreme Crt itself is an overpowered institution that can gut any law, federal or state, even if there is no consensus among elected officials, the legal community, and the public that a law is indeed unconstitutional. The power of judicial review is nothing less than the nuclear weapon of American government.
A solution to the problem of the Supreme Crt that I think would reduce the stakes and intensity of American elections and congressional conflict is to require a 6-3 majority for the Supreme Crt to declare a law unconstitutional. We this the case, regular voters and members of Congress could relax a little bit, knowing that voting for or supporting an opposite-party politician isn't equivalent to handing the nuclear weapon of A'can govt to your opponent.
Since judicial review isn't in the constitution, declaring a 6-3 majority to be necessary for a law to be unconstitutional could be done via statute.
1
@In NJ Of course judicial review is in the constitution. The Supreme Court said so.
What if Republicans said the only way to save the country was to develop new voting regions that created a new, permanent Republican majority?
It's a terrible idea, regardless of which party is advocating it.
7
There are other solutions as well. For example, California could “export” voters. Say California retirees establish residency in Wyoming, North Dakota, Montana and other low population red states. This would counter the Koch’s money machine and could flip the Senate.
Note that you don’t have to reside in a state full-time for residency purposes. That’s a good thing, as I sure would not want to spend winter in North Dakota!
3
Certainly true. And hard to solve.
Necessary step: Democratic control of the Senate.
Easier said than done.
1
@Democracy / Plutocracy...
Plutocracy and Oligarchy continue to grow ... and unless there is a Public Onslaught against a nation Ruled by the Few and against the Electoral College, for Starters, we will face a full-blown autocracy already poised to be realized here and there around the country.
The Senate could also be expanded to add Senators based on population. Ideally it would change to one Senator per state regardless of size and additional Senators added based on a population figure determined by the census similar to what happens in the House. The smallest states would still be over represented, but not to the tune of 67 percent.
5
At my second Women's March, in January 2018, the new mantra (chanted, but also displayed on countless protest signs, was Flip the House). The singular objective was to oust a Republican majority from one branch of government. And with inspired candidates, dogged work, and a fed-up electorate, it worked.
I assumed a similar effort would then emerge to Flip the Senate. But if it's happening, it's very quiet. Granted, it's a longshot, but I fully expected that the historic midterms of 2018 would generate both optimism and momentum... not crickets.
As Mr. Bouie says, replacing Trump with a Democrat is critical, but we'll fall short of the ultimate accomplishment if, when Trump is gone, the next POTUS suffers Obama-like obstruction from Mitch McConnell. I highly doubt we'll be breaking up states between now and the next election, but the party leadership has to find and disseminate a strategy to focus a (fatigued) electorate on what needs to be done.
It wouldn't hurt if more high-powered Democratic candidates wanted to run for the Senate -- though I can understand why the prospect of finding yourself in the daily company of Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, et. al. makes almost any other job preferable.
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One of the things that endears Americans to me is their belief in miracles. At 71 I believe there are no miracles and if there is a God even She is subject to universal law.
Only civil war or a 21st century constitution might return a liberal democracy. Even if there were the infinitesimal chance of a space alien invasion that invasion would see Americans taking opposite sides which would aid or fight the invasion.
America's divide is much deeper than its politics, you really define irreconcilable differences. Even if the hatred wasn't so palpable the chance of ever seeing a united United States of America is a lottery winning long shot. Republicans and Democrats believe in two very different Americas which will never be solved by elections.
I understand why Pompeo believes in a rapture and apocalypse but here t'wixt Gog and Magog there are no signs of the four horsemen or anything that might have me believe any deity is ready to abandon adherence to the universal laws and allow miracles.
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Speaker Pelosi's dire prediction about Trump using any excuse to dispute a narrow defeat also extends to the Senate, should he win re-election. If we are saddled with another four years of Trump and Democrats are fortunate enough to flip the Senate, it has to be decisive, by an overwhelming number of seats, or by margins, or both. If Trump loses his Senate anti-impeachment insurance policy, today's Constitutional crisis will be tomorrow's Emergency Declaration suspending the Constitution for the National Good. The fear mongering will be, like everything else in Trump-world, tremendous!
1
@MCV207
If Trump happens to win, you can bet the senate won't be flipped!
The situation would already be better of McConnell did not have veto power. By having the right to choose to not bring up bills for vote (or even discussion), he has a veto. It is this veto that has crippled this country so badly. This veto shields his party's senators from having to take a stance on many issues that would (rightfully) harm them in subsequent elections.
I hope the NYTimes can begin calling McConnell's veto power what it is, and help to gradually create an understanding that he, and Pelosi, are the most powerful people in the country, not the president.
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@Frank S I agree with you that the Senate Majority leader has veto power, and the same thing would go for the Speaker of the House, and every presiding officer in each state legislative chamber. I agree with you that the term "veto power" must be used.
A simple solution to this which would not require any constitutional amendment is to share control over the Senate calendar between the two parties, so that each has the power to bring bills up to an up-or-down vote.
It's ridiculous that a party that has only 51% of the seats in a chamber has 100% control over the legislative calendar without any shared power, but for some archaic reason, that's the system Congress has built.
21
In 1790, the smallest state was not Delaware but Rhode Island (still the smallest state in the union). Delaware might have had the least population but that's another story.
The largest state might have been Virginia but it also might have been Georgia - it tough to say with certainty because cartography wasn't an exacting science back then.
@Michael
Since the Constitution gives zero relevance to land area of a state, and counts only its population, I think it was abundantly clear what Mr. Bouie meant when he referred to the "smallest state."
2
Thank you for this wonderfully cogent piece. Far too many people
seem to overlook, what will be, Mitch McConnell’s twelve year reign of obstruction and his systematic destruction of any hope for bipartisanship. The Senate has continually enabled the Trump nightmares ongoing horror show.
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There are some interesting ideas here for addressing the looming problem of an increasingly undemocratic Senate. But to the extent any of these changes requires amending the Constitution, they are impossible, because doing so would require Democrats to win a supermajority of the states (not voters, but *states*). Admitting new states or splitting California can be done without an amendment. But granting Senate representation to tribes or other non-state entities won't happen, because the existing small states would never agree to the necessary changes to the Constitution.
And let me say pre-emptively: It is no response to say the US is a "Republic, not a democracy." The Federalist Papers define a republic as a system in which citizens choose representatives to enact legislation rather than voting on every measure themselves. We are democratic republic. Being a "republic" has nothing to do with the idea that some citizens' votes should count for vastly more than others. (And as this article points out, the Senate has become significantly less democratic than it was at the enactment of the Constitution. It is difficult to imagine any of the 13 colonies agreeing to the kind of disparity in power that now exists between California and Wyoming.)
27
@J, you say it's difficult to imagine any of the 13 colonies agreeing to the tyranny of the minority...
Except for that whole "Civil War" thing, which allowed slavery to continue for many decades longer than it might have under a more democratic and less demonic system. Arguably, the entire 19th century was spent in the attempt to right that wrong.
Back then, a vastly smaller minority (property-owning white men living in states where even few whites had the economic power to join the elite, and education was denied the public for no other reason than to perpetuate the advantage of the elite) were able to craft a similar 50/50 power-share that paralyzed Congress, and perpetuated a truly grotesque system; that failure reverberates to this day.
The Senate’s 60-Vote Rule, which makes filibusters possible, is clearly unconstitutional. Federal courts have ruled many times that all issues that the Constitution al provides that all issues brought before Congress are to be settled by a simple majority vote, with the exceptions of treaty conformations, impeachments and constitutional amendments.
It is true that the Constitution permits Congress to devise its own parliamentary rules, but not rules that override or contradict the Constitution.
The purpose of the 60-Vote Rule is to retain a semblance of balance between Democrats and Republicans; it provides the minority party some leverage over legislation. However, the Constitution does not recognize political parties and does not assign them a role on government. Not all Americans have acquiesced to rule by political party. More voters are independent than Republican or Democrat.
Under the constitutional checks and balance system, the House counterbalances the Senate. Democratic parties are not supped to be part of the checks and balance system.
2
And while we're mentioning the problems facing Democrats in a Republican-controlled Senate, let's not forget the ever-growing list of Democratic presidential hopefuls who also happen to be Senators.
No doubt this is something that brings a smile to Mitch McConnell's face as he plots the future obstruction of anyone winning who isn't Donald Trump -- and goodness knows he's had years of practice to perfect it.
12
Gaining the Senate will be difficult. Geography is a problem for Democrats. The DNC wins in states with large population centers but does poorly in rural states. Should something akin to the takeover of the House of Representatives occur next year, then Democrats might have a chance winning the upper chamber. Success taking the Senate should not mean changing the rules to remove the filibuster. That's a Republican tactic, not a Democratic one.
1
Thank you. It’s refreshing to read clear discussions of some of our structural imbalances and shift some focus off the ‘problem of Trump.’
4
If the Democrats continue to forfeit these states by putting up lackluster candidates and then under-funding them, nothing will ever change. The progressives in the party have to be willing to get their message out, so universally and so frequently that even people in the red states can repeat it in their sleep. It might not work in one election cycle, but its effect will build over time, particularity with younger voters. Trying to run DINO's like Joe Manchin in these states is also a waste of time.
9
@stan continople
At some point voters are going to have to grow some as well but I totally agree with the progressive message push.
3
@stan continople
"Under a new policy, the powerful Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee will refuse to hire pollsters, ad makers or other campaign consultants if they also work with a candidate trying to defeat a sitting Democrat in a primary". ("Democratic rule causes rift", Jennifer Haberkorn, Los Angeles Times, 5/10/19). There's the "modern" Democratic Party at work - trying to quell any progressive move so as to bully and marginalize the party's growing "liberal wing". "This is a party that should stand for competition, exchange of ideas...and allowing for fair elections. This undercuts that", said Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont). "
Keep it up, Dems, and see more and more people register Independent or stay home.
1
Things do change.
The author is assuming that all Republicans are Trump fanatics and rabid conservatives and always will be. This is not necessarily true.
It might be more advisable in the long run to find creative ways to restore the Republican Party to what it was before the current disaster. For example, the Democrats might be willing to not run a powerful candidate in a district if a centrist Republican is chosen in the primary.
Ultimately, it's important to remember that Democrats and Republicans need each other.
Democrats need Republicans to remind them that their wonderful ideas need to be somehow paid for and might have unintended consequences.
And Republicans need Democrats so that they don't have to step over starving sick people on their way to church on Sunday.
4
@Al Luongo
You need to restore the Republican Party to what it was before Newt Gingrich at least. St. Ronnie and Tricky Dicky were also pieces of work.
Wishful thinking. If you believe things are going to change in Washington then I have a bridge in Brooklyn for sell if anyone is interested :)
This entire situation is a huge problem. Effectively we now have to live in a single party system to get anything done. No matter who wins in 2020 or in the near future this is a gigantic problem for American governance. At some point all parties shift and morph into organizations that no longer resemble themselves and I don't have faith that the Democratic Party of today - a party I've been forced to join because the disenfranchisement of remaining an independent is not tolerable - will always be a party I can agree with. As they say absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Without massive constitutional changes we're unlikely to get there but we'd be better off in a parliamentary system. You will end up with abominations like white nationalist parties and if they get the votes they'll deserve the representation but you won't have behemoth catch all parties pandering to that grossness. We'd be much better off if everyone could join smaller parties that match peoples interests and key political concerns who then have to deal with one another in order to accomplish anything. This two party nonsense is just a shambling corpse at this point.
11
The way to fight back is thru the purse. Start public shaming
of the deadbeat states and threaten to pass a law that no
state can receive more Fed funds than they contribute.
37
@Susanna “Start public shaming of the deadbeat states.” Please stop. Alabama is shamed daily. We take an outsize share of federal revenue because we are poor. We need help with education, healthcare, and infrastructure. We would be less mean if we were not so pinched.
When I was a kid, if you showed promise, somebody would take you aside and tell you to get an education and get out of Alabama. Many did. That kind of “brain drain” creates wealth elsewhere but leaves a vacuum. It’s unbalanced. If you want the heartland to share in progressive values, educated people need to move back to rural areas.
We have big blue dots in Southern cities of any size, including Birmingham, Huntsville, and Tuscaloosa. I love Kamala Harris’s idea of supporting teacher salaries. That’s just the kind of incentive that would help move a state like ours toward greater equity and prosperity.
This strikes me as some kind of national level gerrymandering.
Specifically and intentionally creating new voting areas and representation to create an essentially permanent Democratic majority.
I don't go along with this, and I'm a Democrat. I especially don't go along with saying it's patriotic.
23
@Talbot
There is already a fairly permanent Democratic majority if you define a democratic majority as a majority of voters. Even after all manner of Democratic voter-targeted voter suppression and disenfranchisement in red states. The only exception in the past nearly 30 years: Bush's second term.
Meanwhile the current solid Republican majority in the Senate represents just 44% of the US population.
And mostly Republican controlled state level gerrymandering has resulted in a somewhat similar imbalance in the House.
Example: in 2012 Republican controlled states Republicans won 53% of the vote while taking 72% of the congressional seats and took control of the House with 55% of the seats while losing the aggregate Congressional vote (49% to 51%).
And then we have a Supreme Court majority that is generally considered the most conservative in 90 years and maybe the most openly partisan Republican ever.
Meanwhile Democrats won the popular vote in every presidential election but one since 1992.
The country is inexorably, demographically turning Democratic while the Republicans continue to hold, even strengthen their hold on many of the levers of power.
That’s neither democratic or patriotic.
4
@Talbot, You make a good point, but here is the counterpoint. You as a US citizen living in NY have the right to vote for President or Congress. If you move to Puerto Rico, you lose your right to vote in national elections. It's the current situation that's gerrymandered and unpatriotic. The author is correct, all US citizens should be permitted to vote for national offices.
And let's not forget the Supreme Court. Obama wasn't able to get Merrick Garland a public hearing because the Judiciary committee was Republican dominated and toxic. It will be even worse now after Kavanaugh.
312
Actually, breaking up Texas would benefit Democrats as well, since the huge cities there tend to be left-leaning (like cities elsewhere).
104
@Lisa - and those large cities elect people like Shelia Jackson Lee, who asked if the Mars rover could take a picture of the flag astronauts left behind..
1
I agree that the Senate's malapportionment is an indefensible injustice. Senate malapportionment isn't a "Great Compromise," it was a surrender to threats to secede made by small states, namely Delaware.
Rather than a mere detail of America's constitutional structure, Senate malapportionment should be seen as a deep flaw that has significant consequences for presidential power, Supreme Court power, and federal spending.
Few myths about America deserve as much mockery as that the Senate is "the world's greatest deliberative body."
However, since the US Constitution is virtually unchangeable (which is itself a problem) and admitting low-population Indian tribes and federal territories is extreme "constitutional hardball" that would budgetarily backfire on populous Democratic states, I think Democrats should move to reform the Senate's parliamentary procedure by eliminating the filibuster and arranging for there to be bipartisan control of the Senate calendar so popular ideas (from either party) can at least get a vote.
How is it not absurd that a Senate majority of 51 has 100% control over the Senate calendar?
If good ideas from either party could get votes, then voters would be able to vote for the person not the party, in Senate elections and moderates who belong to the "wrong party" could more easily win.
1/2
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@In NJ
"Senate malapportionment isn't a "Great Compromise," it was a surrender to threats to secede made by small states, namely Delaware."
Delaware...i.e. Joe Biden's state. Also the state in which the least civic-minded US corporations -- not to mention the the the "foundations" of both Donald Trump and Bill and Hillary Clinton -- maintain drop-box "headquarters."
Perhaps we ought to give states like Delaware another opportunity to secede.
4
@In NJl
You are absolutely correct about "The Great Compromise." School children have been fed the lie that senate representation by two Senators was a functional choice, when in fact it was truly a compromise to keep the Constitutional Convention in tact. Arguments about Senate representation were about to blow up the deliberations.
"The Senate is the most malapportioned legislative body in the world, based on one person, one vote." (Sizing up the Senate, The Unequal Consequences of Equal Representation by Lee and Oppenheimer) I jokingly say the founders had no idea, so many people would want to live in California, and so few in Wyoming. But the Senate skew in favor of large geographic areas, with small populations is no joke at all. Everyone should read why the Dakotas entered the Union as two states. The reason? They could have four senators.
3
Yes McConnell is as much a problem as Trump. McConnell would not join Obama in warning the country about Russian interference in our 2016 election as it would hurt Trump and told Obama he would claim Obama was helping hILLARY WIN. McConnell represents the donor class and his tax bill all GOP helped his donor class not the people of Kentucky a poor state who gets more in aid than they pay in like blue states do. Dems need to take the senate to put the brakes on the GOP driven push to stack the courts with right wing judges and push back vs another tax cut for the rich. The GOP back Trump as they believe in party before country and if we become a right wing dictatorship the GOP is fine with that as they are the ruling party.
50
@REBCO
I don't think anyone holds the people of Kentucky in more contempt than Mitch McConnell; during his six terms they've remained near the bottom of the barrel in every measure of human well-being and yet they continue to send him back to the senate again and again. To assuage any guilt, I'm sure McConnell asks himself, "Why bestow empathy on people so careless of their own welfare?"
13