I believe we do need the experts’ congress and the regular one. Having one smaller chamber with lower turnover and one larger chamber with frequent elections is a good way to balance the needs of a congress to react to a changing world (and popular sentiment) with its similar needs to have policy expertise.
That said, the Senate can’t continue with equal representation for each state. It will eventually lead to a situation where the 500MM people in New York have the same representation as the remaining 11 people in Idaho.
So scrap direct state representation. Keep states as semi-independent entities, but remove their direct representation. Create instead 100 Senate Districts that are independent of state boundaries. Done.
I’m sorry, don’t wanna derail here, but I kinda gotta. Are you proposing a future where the population of NYC exceeds the current population of the United States?
The NYC metro area alone is 20MM. 1 out of every 16 Americans live here.
It’s already deeply under-represented in government.
It won’t outweigh the whole US of course, but the trend will only continue. Today, New York City (the city alone: no burbs at all) would by itself be the 13th largest state.
If NYC were broken up into its five boroughs, FOUR OF THEM are larger than eight states by themselves.
Wyoming shouldn’t have any senators. If it still gets 2, then NYC should have 9.
This kind of reminds me as to how the math no longer works out based on what the Framers intended for the Constitution when they set up the so-called Great Compromise of the Senate and House. The differences in population between the “big” and “small” states back then were no where near as large as they are now. This trickles into the Senate, the Electoral College, everything that has some sort of equal state representation calculated into it.
If I’m understanding correctly, your notion of keeping the House more or less as-is but creating Senate districts has some appeal to me in addressing some of these issues.
Either we need a stronger central government with more fair representation, or we need to cede far more power to the local states so that the central government can’t mess things up. We’re kind of in a precarious middle situation right now that is showing some severe issues.
I truly believe if this were to happen, the coastal blue cities would explode in growth and progress, and the deep south/midwest would descend into inescapable poverty.
That’s kind of already happening to a lesser extent. If you look at the numbers, something like 9 of the top 10 most economically prosperous states are blue with Texas (probably due to oil money or something) being the only exception. The converse is true for the least prosperous states. I wouldn’t be surprised if this lack of economic opportunity also influences why so many people in the armed forces come from these poorer, red states. They enlist as much out of lack of any other opportunities as a desire to serve.
And maybe I’m being a bit of a jerk here, but this would be like, “you made your bed, now lie in it” to me. I feel that perhaps they only way those states can get their act together at this point is with some “tough love” like that. Now, once they start getting their act together, I wouldn’t be opposed to helping bail them out, but I’m a bit tired of rewarding self-destructive behavior. Besides, nothing would necessarily be keeping those people from moving to the coastal blue states/cities in search of better economic opportunity. I may even be in favor of subsidizing those moves, if necessary.
While everything ya’ll are talking is great, it’s kinda hoity-toity, pie-in-the-sky sort of way. We’re not getting special senate districts or abolishing the senate or anything of the sort. I like debating the ideal way to organize a government as much as the next guy, but the reality of it is, it’s not 1770, we’re not lawyers wearing powder wigs, or members of a British mercantilist colony.
Side note: This is an image taken from within the NYC metro area. Large chunks of it aren’t as blue as you’d like to believe, and have little to do with the city itself.
We will have to at some point. Otherwise there is a real future where the worst Americans control the Senate in perpetuity. It literally cannot be sustained, and our government will grind over the decades to come to a complete and permanent halt.
Even worse, by that point, all of the ways to amend the constitution to address it would be controlled by the same backward states: we would literally have no recourse.
Rym,
I’ll let my most cynical self speak here: what the hell process starts this changing?
The smaller polities that express disproportionate power aren’t going to surrender power lightly. What incentives do they see on an emotional and cultural level to change things?
Places like that are outnumbered by the surrounding population. Most of the congressional districts lean something like +30 Democrat.
Westchester county went 65% Clinton. Queens went 75%. Manhattan 87%. Nassau, which is already extremely suburban and breaks out of the metro area, still went 51% (versus 45% Trump).
Staten Island is Republican. But it’s also a tiny population that’s isolated from the rest of the metro area and largely irrelevant.
New York state as a whole paints a very clear picture.
None. They’re majority anti-LGBT, majority anti-abortion, majority anti-immigration. Nearly every issue they rank highly in importance is one where there can be no incentive and no compromise.
My little side note was only in response to this. That picture is taken within the NYC metro area, specifically long island. I’m not saying they’re not hilariously outnumbered, they are. It’s just you can’t picture the NYC metro area as some palace of leftism. It’s not. It includes farmers and cows, who’re very very red.
Blue/Red maps don’t show the whole picture because that red area could be anywhere between 100% and 51% red. Get some percentages on those districts to see past the gerrymandering and get the whole picture. Also on that map you can’t see the sheer quantity of districts in the NYC area.
Also, out on Long Island are not just farms, but also rich people’s weekend homes.
There’s also some 20th century infrastructure out there. Crumbling parking structures and genero old places that most industry pulled out of. it’s a tiny piece of middle America just chillin’ in the north east.
