A hundred guys and a thousand sheep in Wyoming have two senators.
A hundred guys and a thousand polar bears in Alaska have two senators.
That seems fair and balanced until you realize 40 million people in California also have two senators.
Now some of you will immediately start whining about the original intent of the Founders, but that’s silly here because of two anomalies. First of course is that African slaves were counted as three-fifths of a person for population purposes but had no constitutional rights at all.
Second, the framers never considered that one state could grow to have 13 times as many people as lived in their entire nation.
There’s a third consideration too. If you read the writings of James Madison, Thomas Jefferson and others, they never saw the constitution they put together as the equivalent of two tablets brought down from Mount Sinai. Jefferson himself said he thought the constitution might last for a generation or two.
They would never have envisioned a system where 12 percent of the people (California) would be represented to the tune of 2 percent of the Senate.
If you wonder why I’m focusing on the Senate, it’s because the Senate is the biggest obstacle to progress. States representing about a fifth of the population can block any action with 41 votes.
I’m not even sure what the Senate’s role in all this is supposed to be. For one thing, the original intent of the framers was to have representatives elected by popular vote and senators chosen by the state legislatures. Presumably, people who were already public servants would be more high-minded than Joe the Blacksmith or Goodwife Sarah, who could see Scotland from her house.
People can say what they like about federalism, and usually the way they feel about it depends on whether they benefit from it or are hurt by it.
But I guarantee you that 40 million Californians aren’t going to continue being crapped on my sheep and polar bears, especially when folks in the Golden State pay more to the federal government in taxes than they get back in services.
Something needs to happen to fix the Senate. People keep talking about the filibuster, which had nothing to do with the Founders and everything to do with Southern states battling again civil rights.
There is nothing in the Constitution about bills requiring 60 votes to pass or about bills requiring bipartisan support.
It’s actually quite possible that when historians look back at our era, Donald Trump won’t be remembered as the greatest villain of them all. Mitch McConnell might own that distinction for failing even to bring hundreds of bills up for a vote in the Senate.
There is no reasonable way for McConnell to pretend he’s doing what is right for America.
He’s doing what’s right for Mitch.
Don’t let him fool you.
If it seems like I started writing about the problem with the Senate and wound up writing about one particular senator, well, following the bouncing ball.
The Senate doesn’t get fixed till Moscow Mitch is pushing up daisies.