It's nothing new. It's fundamentally undemocratic and the reasons for having it are long gone. I don't care who controls it, it should go or at the very least be dramatically reformed.
There is the concept of illiberal democracy. The Senate, according to most political scientists who study this, is an important part of cutting that off that because bicameralism along with independent courts etc are good.
It's mostly populism rising and not realizing how dangerous it would be to have another check on power removed. Reform the system, don't just turn to blind populism.
Do those political scientists say that it has to be so extremely unequal in its representation?
Right now, the least representative parts of our government are the ones pushing towards illiberality and populism. "Better democracy can be dangerous" really falls flat when our existing worse democracy is actively being dangerous.
We just had the federal government shut down for six weeks because the Senate is broken. Maybe that's behaving as designed, but I don't really care if it's doing what some people 250 years ago thought it should do or not.
> We just had the federal government shut down for six weeks because the Senate is broken
You could turn the Senate into a purely-representative body and you'd still have the same problem.
You could abolish the Senate and have a unicameral House. But then we'd never have survived 250 years as a democracy. (What do you think Mike Johnson and Trump with unilateral power would have done over the last 6 months?)
> I don't really care if it's doing what some people 250 years ago thought
The government didn't shut down 250 years ago. Shutdowns are a modern phenomenon, mostly dating to a Carter-era legal opinion that said "if any work continued in an agency where there wasn't money, the employees were behaving like illegal volunteers" [1].
The fact that the Senate can't pass things without a 60% majority, despite that not being a thing in the constitution, is just another facet of its undemocratic nature. The body has decided for itself, no matter what the people want or what the constitution says.
And this is definitely not a necessary aspect of the system. Even if you want to argue that the Senate itself is essential, the ridiculous modern filibuster demonstrably is not, since it only became this way in recent decades.
I'd be fine with a bicameral legislature as long as both houses were actually representative. Maybe you'd have one with short terms and one with long terms. But having a body where California and Wyoming both get two representatives is just ridiculous.
I'm curious what you think Johnson and Trump would have done over the last 6 months without the Senate. It looks to me like they're doing pretty much whatever they want aside from passing the recent spending bill, and to the extent that they aren't, it's because of a handful of Republican holdouts in the House, not because the Senate stands in their way. And if we had the Senate rules from thirty years ago the Senate wouldn't stand in their way either.
> body has decided for itself, no matter what the people want or what the constitution says
All representative bodies have rules. They have to in order to function. The House, like the Senate, has rules. And both of them can amend them by simple majority.
(Until recently, the public didn't have a particular opinion on the filibuster [1].)
> the ridiculous modern filibuster demonstrably is not, since it only became this way in recent decades
Sure. Agreed. I'd honestly argue the concept of shutting down the government is dumber and setting a debt ceiling for already-appropriated and spent funds is unconstitutional.
> curious what you think Johnson and Trump would have done over the last 6 months without the Senate
All the crap Trump is doing by fiat would have been passed into law. That, in turn, would strongly reduce the ability for the courts to call foul.
> if we had the Senate rules from thirty years ago the Senate wouldn't stand in their way either
The filibuster has only been invoked this session around this budget dispute.
A fundamental aspects that makes the Senate different is each Senator is elected by more people, and thus must cater to more-diverse interests, than a Congressman, and they have longer terms. That means more people in the Senate must think about how what they're doing today will look after 2028.
> All representative bodies have rules. They have to in order to function. The House, like the Senate, has rules. And both of them can amend them by simple majority.
You're missing the point. Of course they have rules. But to effectively make it so that you need 60% to pass anything is very different from ordinary parliamentary rules.
> (Until recently, the public didn't have a particular opinion on the filibuster [1].)
Until recently, the Senate filibuster was completely different from what we have now. It used to be something that sometimes allowed Senators to make a show of delaying legislation. This thing where nearly nothing can be passed without 60 votes is new.
> The filibuster has only been invoked this session around this budget dispute.
This means nothing. The rule isn't a secret. Things that couldn't achieve 60 votes will generally not be brought up in the first place, since it would be a waste of time.
If having a body where each representative represents more people and has longer terms is important, we can have that while still having it be reasonably proportional. The fundamental thing that sets the Senate apart is that it's meant to represent the states themselves, not the people. Thus each state is equally represented, and until the early 20th century they were not elected by the people. That no longer serves a purpose and that's what I'd like to see changed.
> Compared with the House, the Senate has behaved as designed--a far more mature body that actually deliberates from time to time.
Do you earnestly think this is a function of the rural-urban skew? In my view it is almost certainly due to the differences in number of people being represented by a senator and possibly term limit differences.
