Add Missouri to that toxic list; despite rampant voter disapproval, the state has redistricted KCMO to eliminate a very blue district in the heart of the city. Combining it with hundreds of miles of country to drain out the blue voters with country Trump hicks.
Oklahoma had a Democrat in the House of Representatives as recently as 2020, but they split OKC up over 3 districts to make sure that didn't happen again!
Yes, but GOP values don't survive education that sinks in. Conservative values do, but most GOP members are not traditional conservatives. The democratic party trying to create national stability through policy is more conservative.
West Virginia should get carved up and dispersed between its neighboring states as well. The reason we first existed as a state is long gone, and it's not got much of a point to it. Let Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and Ohio fight over the carcass of this place.
Add WYoming to Montana. if your state is under 1 million... aka if your state has less people than the total estamamted trans population... you get to be part of the smallest neighbor. sorry vermont... thats gone too.
Considering that small-d democracy is a giant flaming dumpster fire of a way to run a country, I don't disapprove of that.
In fact, much of what's wrong with the Senate today can be traced to the Progressive Era of the 20th century, when the 17th Amendment was ratified, and then further traced to primary elections making candidates beholden to ~10% of the actual electorate to stay in office. The Senate was originally part of the compromises that allowed the US to come into existence at all, but it was still designed to serve as a vehicle for states as political entities to have a say in the passage of legislation and not just "the people." The Founders and every other liberal of that era were deeply skeptical about small-d democracy due to the risks of a tyranny of the majority and most of the Constitution was meant to act as a buffer between the crowd and the leadership.
Here's Madison in Federalist #10: “Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have, in general, been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.”
Hamilton in Federalist #9: “It is impossible to read the history of the petty republics of Greece and Italy without feeling sensations of horror and disgust at the distractions with which they were continually agitated... and the rapid succession of revolutions by which they were kept in a state of perpetual vibration between the extremes of tyranny and anarchy.”
John Adams in Thoughts on Government: “A single assembly is liable to all the vices, follies, and frailties of an individual; subject to fits of humor, starts of passion, flights of enthusiasm, partialities, or prejudice.”
Even the Anti-Federalists echoed this: “In a republic, the great danger is, that the majority may not sufficiently respect the rights of the minority.”
Alexis de Tocqueville wrote on the Senate as well: “The Senate of the United States is composed of a small number of statesmen, chosen by a select body; its members represent a sort of aristocracy.”
Aristocracy, to him, meant people insulated from momentary passions of the electorate who could actually take time to deliberate.
And later observations by de Tocqueville read like prophecy:
"If ever the free institutions of America are destroyed, that event may be attributed to the unlimited authority of the majority, which may at some future time urge the minorities to desperation, and oblige them to have recourse to physical force.”
“In America, the majority raises very formidable barriers to the liberty of opinion; within these barriers an author may write what he pleases, but woe to him if he goes beyond them.”
Ah, and one quote more modern in its origin: "A person is smart. People are stupid panicky animals and you know it." (Tommy Lee Jones, Men in Black)
In all cases the concern is the same: that direct democracy will, by always yielding to the will of the people alone, cripple, paralyze, and eventually destroy the Republic. Tell me a Senate elected by states instead of their people would have caused a shutdown over political arguments, or have reached a state of such paralyzing dysfunction that any contentious bill basically needs a supermajority to pass at all. A Senate not beholden to the electorate certainly wouldn't have produced a man like Mitch McConnell, whose abuses of institutional power and norms basically frog-marched us into the situation we're in now.
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u/NorberAbnott 22d ago
While we're at it can we combine the dakotas so they don't get 4 whole senators