Here’s a couple of fun facts about the US Senate. Senators have a term of six years (as opposed to the 2-year term for members of the House of Representatives). And each state in the union gets exactly 2 seats in the senate, regardless of the population of that state.
So California, with its almost 40,000,000 residents, has exactly 2 senators. And on the other end of the spectrum, consider Wyoming, with less than 600,000 residents, which also has 2 senators. This means that a voter in Casper, Wyoming has 67x more representation in the senate than a voter in San Fransisco. A voter in Billings, Montana has 17x more representation in the senate than one in Brooklyn, NY.
If you’re wondering why public opinion doesn’t seem to match up with legislative agenda (the vast majority of citizens support female reproductive rights, gun safety, same sex marriage, etc.) this is a big reason why.
The majority leader in the Senate has immense power to stop anything from getting done, by simply not bringing bills to the floor for a vote. So when the opposition owns the Senate, it can completely block a president’s agenda and then make the case that the majority isn’t accomplishing anything. Cute trick, yeah?
Power begets power. If you’re wondering why the Supreme Court is so incredibly out of step with public opinion, consider the power of a single senator:
- In March 2016, with six months to go before election day, Justice Antonin Scalia died. Mitch McConnell, senate majority leader, refused to hold a confirmation hearing for Obama’s pick. His rationale for this incredible power grab? We were too close to an election and the next president should make the nomination.
- In September 2020, with two months to go before election day, Justice Ruth Ginsberg died. Mitch McConnell, still the majority leader, rushed through Trump’s pick before the election. In his single term as president, Donald Trump contributed three justices to the Supreme Court, skewing it further right than was representative of popular opinion.
When Donald Trump arrived in office in January 2016, he immediately started appointing federal judges, remarking that his predecessor, “left a big, beautiful present for all of us”, in the form of 105 vacant judicial seats. What he didn’t mention was that the Republican controlled judiciary committee in the Senate slow-walked judicial confirmations during Obama’s presidency, creating vacancies that would later be filled quickly by a Republican president.
Republicans aren’t the only ones who have used these tactics to slow things down. But the degree to which it’s being done now is unprecedented and way out of the norm. Why is that? Could it be because they fear younger voters who increasingly don’t believe in their platform?
I Learned Something Today 