In 2010, if the Tea Party had not prevailed in Republican primaries for senate in Alaska, Nevada, Colorado, and Delaware, the GOP might already be in control of the upper chamber of Congress. This year, the Tea Party is going for a repeat in states like Wisconsin, Nebraska, Arizona, Texas, and Indiana. They think they will have more success this time around, but my guess is that they will lose at least one seat that they would have otherwise won. Whether they win some of these elections or all of them, the result will be an even more dysfunctional Senate. The Founding Fathers designed the Senate to be removed from the day-to-day passions of the electorate. They gave them six-year terms and had them selected not directly by the voters, but indirectly by the state legislatures. We changed that in the early 20th-Century because we were tired of the corruption involved in buying off state legislators, but we should probably reconsider the assumption that we’d have a better Senate if they were more accountable to the people. The Senate was supposed to be immune to the political pathologies of the moment, but they have proven to be no different from the House of Representatives in that regard.
It is, of course, totally unrealistic to think that we’d go back to the old way of electing senators, but maybe we should consider more attainable reforms. For example, maybe senate races should be non-partisan. Candidates could not run as members of a political party. Committee slots could be determined by lottery.
Or the Senate could simply be abolished, since it has become redundant. It will soon be necessary to kill the filibuster, so there will no longer remain any significant difference between the House and Senate except for the Senate’s undemocratic composition that awards Rhode Island as many votes as Texas.
In any case, the Senate doesn’t work any more. Adding more Tea Party members will just make that more clear to everyone.
Why did you include Alaska? Since when did Murkowski stop joining routine GOP filibusters?
I suppose that’s true. The GOP wound up with that seat anyway.
I never thought I’d see two of my favorite bloggers, Booman and Greer write the same thing at the same time. Here’s Greer on the same topic today:
The rest is worth a read too.
Wow. That last paragraph of the quote explains so much, doesn’t it? An America gone from massive direct participation in governing processes to a nation of individuals passively consuming electronic infotainment — that bodes ill, very ill for our future.
Exactly.
Greer goes on to point out that what’s replaced it is ineffective consensus processes that speedily bring promising movements like OWS to an end. (I remember Al Giordano railing about how worthless consensus processes are a few years ago, and remember him speaking up again last year as OWS was getting hijacked.)
But movements like #OWS were always in danger of getting hijacked. That’s the way it always works. But what really was more pertinent was the police response.
Al has exactly zero time for OWS.
We should be thankful OWS accomplished what it had to do. The way it worked, it couldn’t have had a long shelf life and could have been a lot less effective than it was, even disastrous.
Al has exactly zero time for OWS.
Of course, because the only thing Al believes in is doing things his way.
that’s a powerful and worthy post.
It gave me a few ideas.
I think this clarifies the difference between democracy and “crowd sourcing”. The latter, including polls, takes on the trappings of democracy but without the essential process. This downgrade is further intensified by the lack of real discussion, which has been replaced by advertising and pathetic excuses for “debates”.
When I was a kid my mother was president of the local grade school PTA. Roberts Rules of Order was almost a sacred text, and it seems like everybody sort of knew the rules and followed them. They limited peoples’ “liberty”, but allowed for the democratic process to work: anybody could speak their minds and get consideration. That’s largely missing today. An inevitable consequence of the mass national society made possible by modern tech?
Non-partisan elections aren’t the answer.
In Seattle, the Republicans keep pushing to have various races become “non-partisan” because they know we would never elect someone with an R by their name.
It’s just a way to make low information voters (and for things like port commission, how many people aren’t low information?) not vote a party line for races they don’t follow.
It allows stealth Republicans. But Republicans should be publicly known.
The senate’s problem is hardly that it is too responsive to democracy.
Its problem is that it is a bastion of conservatism and was built to be that, drastically overrepresenting the conservative voters of rural and thinly populated states.
Add to that the rules the senate has adopted for itself to further frustrate democracy and protect the inexcusable power of the right.
This is the lesson.
Abolish the senate.
There are two reasonably defensible arguments.
I can go along with either argument. But if we’re going with the latter, it needs to actually be insulated. And it needs to be able to make decisions.
Prior to 2008, the Senate was annoying in that the rules prevented the majority from ruling without objection. Now the minority has become so powerful that the majority cannot function.
The filibuster needs to be weakened and made reasonable. The hold system needs to be eliminated.
The senatorial perks for minority should be retained, but simply reduced.
Or,
I strongly prefer 1.
The British, too, are effectively unicameral without the chaos and instability of many other parliamentary systems.
Fewer members than the current House and terms of perhaps 3 or 4 years would help.
And, anyway, in our system nobody goes home and new elections are not called every time some coalition of members breaks up.
But all would be for naught if the House decided to become gentlemanly, full of comity and dignity, and deferential to minorities.
The day they adopt the filibuster will be the day to burn down the capitol and roll a guillotine into Lafayette Park.
Well now, that post got me to thinking. Back in the time of the framers of the Constitution, the difference in population between the largest state (Virginia) and the smallest state (Delaware) was roughly 13-to-1, slave population included.
Today, the ratio of the populations of California to Wyoming is about 66-to-1.
In the spirit of Constitutional originalism, shouldn’t California get five times as many Senators as Delaware?
Nice point. Or we could give Wyoming one-thirteenth of a vote. Or something.
Retaining the size of the Senate as twice the number of states and redefining the minimum to one senate seat per state and district with a population > than the smallest state and the maximum to three for the most populous states would make it less dysfunctional. Still doesn’t touch on the problem that most would remain political hacks and not the wise men originally envisioned.
Wyoming. I meant Wyoming.
It’s worth noting that there is one state in the union with a unicameral legislature — Nebraska. It is also nonpartisan in certain respects.
http://knowledgecenter.csg.org/drupal/content/legislative-branch-no-other-nebraska-unicameral-remain
s-unique-part-nations-political-system
“Of course, partisan politics inevitably influence the lawmaking process, even in a body that is officially bipartisan, but according to Patrick J. O’Donnell, long-time clerk of the Unicameral Legislature, the nonpartisan nature of the state’s legislative body remains apparent in several meaningful ways.
“Candidates for the Legislature run in open primaries without party affiliations listed on the ballot. Legislative officers and committee chairs are elected by members themselves instead of appointed by partisan caucus leaders, and minority party members still do get elected to serve as committee chairs.
“O’Donnell says that policy debates frequently tend to be less partisan in tone because of the unique nature of the Nebraska Unicameral and that final decisions are usually made on the merits of an issue rather than on the basis of political considerations alone.”
I say non-partisan in certain respects, but hell, this is the U S of A after all . . .
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1916342
Polarization Without Parties: The Rise of Legislative Partisanship in Nebraska’s Unicameral Legislature
Seth E. Masket
University of Denver
Boris Shor
University of Chicago – Irving B. Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies
August 24, 2011
Abstract:
Despite a history of nonpartisanship dating back to the 1930s, the Nebraska state legislature appears to be polarizing. How does polarization happen without parties? Using interviews, roll call votes, and campaign finance records, we examine politics in the modern Nebraska Unicam. We find that term limits, which began removing incumbents from office in 2006, created opportunities for the state’s political parties to recruit and finance candidates, and they have done so in an increasingly partisan fashion. Social network analysis suggests that there is an increasing level of structure to campaign donations, with political elites less likely to contribute across party lines than they used to be. The results offer a compelling example of parties overcoming an institutional rule designed to eliminate them.
And even before 2006, Nebraska was stupid rightwing so it’s not like non-partisanship has done any good at all.
Nonpartisan elections are largely a joke, frankly. In 2010 Houstonians were treated to the highly amusing sight of a teabagger activist running for the “nonpartisan” city council and claiming to want to work for ALL the people.
The Senate doesn’t work, and at the least its rules have to be deeply changed or it needs to be abolished. But it’s only a subset of a political system that doesn’t work, in the sense of engaging the citizens in reasoned discussion of policy, information, and ideas. We’ve seen that SCOTUS is not necessarily a great idea, and neither is Congress. But the Constitution has done such a good job of protecting the work of centuries ago from change that we are unable to amend it meaningfully just when we most need to. The more vicious and unreasoning our politics become, the more we need to consider root-level change to the structure, and the less we’re able to accomplish that.
It seems obvious that the real heart of the problem is that a system based on faith in reason and the common good has been overthrown by advertising and a corrupt media, supported now by unlimited money for buying the government. What we really need to work for is ending or defanging political advertising and radically limiting campaign donations and spending. An essential first step is to limit political contributions to those qualified to vote.
Well, a radical idea that just came to mind is to make the Senate a senate. I believe the word “Senate” means something like “Body of Elders” in Latin. Do we have a Classical Scholar in the
housepond?Senior Congresspersons would be elected by the House to vacant Senate seats. Use the 66% rule so that partisanship cannot rule and truly distinguished Congresspersons would be appointed (for life like the Roman Senate). Ex-Speakers and Presidents would be automatic members. Yes, I realize Newt and W would be members. Would they be any worse than Jeff Sessions or Lieberman?
Just an idea, maybe good, maybe bad.
How French and Napoleonic.
And anti-democratic.