Summations Only

Again, more nonsense from you.I think I may have mentioned it but in case I didn't. I'll repeat some basics.The US has a Bicameral Legislature.In the Senate, representation is on a State basis and every state has exactly the same representation.In the House, representation is based on population and more populous states have greater representation than less populous ones.That arrangement was a compromise to assure that neither the populous areas or the less populous areas held absolute say.It works well.

That rather depends on your meaning, jar.It "works well" at attaining its stated goal.Whether that goal works well for society as a whole in the first place, however, is perhaps less certain.I honestly have difficulty fathoming why Delaware should have the same representation as California in the Senate. I understand why the compromise was made in the beginning, and agree that it was likely the best solution available at the time, but if I could make the system anew however I chose, I don't think I'd take that specific tactic for ensuring representation and protection of the minority.

I never said there was a House filibuster. I am not the idiot you suppose.The House votes on bills that the majority party and the House speaker allow to come to the floor. The majority party can refuse to entertain a vote on bills that are not supported by the majority of its party, despite the fact that the bills might have bipartisan support.In the House this means that small portions of the majority party, quite often the extremist, can and do hold up legislation.

Well, in addition, in the Constitution, each body serves different functions. The intent was to make compromise necessary.Unfortunately because the electorate in the US does not know or understand the functions of the government as set up, what has happened is that we continue to elect folk based on popularity at the moment instead of competency. We got the politicians we wanted.The problem faced in remaking the system is that there are only a few non violent ways to proceed; by amendment of the existing Constitution or by calling a new Constitutional Convention.A third option would be to try to force the elected officials to actually do what the Constitution requires but historically, that has simply not worked. The Supreme Court may well have legal jurisdiction but it has no enforcement capability.

Yes, I know that, jar. I had civics in 8th grade, too. It's just that 8th grade civics isn't where my understanding of American politics begins and ends. But it doesn't work well, in that it gives a small minority of rural Americans dramatic overrepresentation in the Senate, with the result that the Senate cannot pass legislation. The interests of rural Americans aren't just protected, they're the only interests the Senate pursues.It doesn't work well, that's the point, jar. And many of the Founding Fathers had the foresight to predict it.

And yet far more bills come up for a vote in the House than do in the Senate, so again, I just don't think you have any "counterexamples" to put forward. Certainly you can obstruct in the House, but it takes a consensus of the majority party to do so and therefore in practice is relatively rare; in the Senate, votes can be held up by a single senator and therefore the practice is commonplace.Certainly Hastert's "Majority of the majority" standard is abominable and should be stricken (while we're reforming Congress.) But its the Senate that results in the most antidemocratic outcomes.

LOLIt is meant to give states equal representation in the Senate and that is what it does.

Well, no. (There's no evidence that "competent" politicians are any better at getting through the Senate filibuster than incompetent ones.) What happened is that most of you grew up during an unusual age when ideological lines - liberal vs. conservative - cut across party lines due to the legacy of civil rights in the south and the lack of movement conservativism pre-Goldwater.With conservative Dems from the south and liberal Republicans in the north, you'd get votes that looked bipartisan but we're really just people voting along the lines of two meta-parties that had each mad members among both Democrats and Republicans. But with the rise of movement conservatives, conservatives all migrated to the Republican party and everybody else went to the Democrats. There's still a few "blue dog" conservative Democrats who hold legacy seats, basically, but for the most part the parties have aligned themselves along the ideological divide that has always been there but was disguised by the party system. That's why it seems "normal" for the Senate to be a bipartisan place, that's why it seems like there's been this enormous decline in bipartisanship, but it was always an illusion. It's the bipartisan Senate that really represents the departure from the historical trend.Politicians haven't gotten any worse than they used to be; what's actually happened is that the political parties better represent their natural constituencies. It's just that the rules of the Senate don't make it a place where legislation can successfully pass when your senators represent a country divided into two competing ideologies. In a better-designed body, the party that won elections and gained a majority would be allowed to implement the agenda that the American people nominated. If that agenda was a failure, then the majority party would lose elections and the minority party could enact their agenda. Bipartisanship by alternation.The current rules of the Senate require the consent of the minority to avoid gridlock, but give the minority every incentive not to cooperate (since voters will ascribe any and all legislative successes to the majority party, or even more absurdly, to the President.) Paralysis is the inevitable (and foreseeable) result. It has nothing to do with the personality of our politicians or their competence, and everything to do with the system we elect them into.

But you keep avoiding the issue. Why should states, and not citizens, be represented?What's the merit in representing a land area? All you said was "people from rural states know why." Well, I'm from four rural states, Jar, and it makes zero sense to me. And I suspect it makes zero sense to you, you just don't want to admit it to me.

LOLBecause it is the Senate, not the House.It really is that simple.

Now you're just acting like an idiot.It was a compromise. It didn't exactly have resounding support, particularly at a Constitutional convention that had just experienced the paralysis and gridlock of the Articles of Confederation, and many oft he Founding Fathers were afraid that a disproportionate Senate would give too much power to the minority.And they were correct. But, ol' Jar thinks he knows better than the founding fathers!

You are free of course to make any silly claims like "Now you're just acting like an idiot."Of course it was a compromise and I believe a very good one that works well.Despite your claims, every session bills pass both House and Senate and get signed into law by the President.

Interesting.Which ones would you exclude?Are you an elitist and, if so, is that a bad thing? I honestly don’t know.Why can a real democracy not work?Edited by Dogmafood, : title

I happen to think that the US developed a pretty good basic description of how things should work.No matter how popular it is to deny equal rights to one group, that should not be allowed.No matter how popular short term programs might be, the long term programs should take precedent.The reason pure democracy will not work is that the electorate is not educated in the classical sense, to include a knowledge of history, the process itself, the limits built into the system, economics, and most importantly on techniques and tools like critical thinking.

The America of my time line is a laboratory example of what can happen to democracies, what has eventually happened to all perfect democracies throughout all histories. A perfect democracy, a "warm body" democracy in which every adult may vote and all votes count equally, has no internal feedback for self-correction. Once a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invader.

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Robert A.Heinlein, To Sail Beyond the Sunset

Emphasis added.