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It's insane that the Democrats didn't significantly increase the size of the House in 2009, when they had a filibuster-proof 60 votes in the Senate. It probabl

It's insane that the Democrats didn't significantly increase the size of the House in 2009, when they had a filibuster-proof 60 votes in the Senate. It probably would have given them a lock on the House, and the presidency too in close elections such as 2016.

kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
Their corporate donors don't want power concentrated into the hands of cityfolk with too much of a social conscience.
codingslave 7y ago
This is the kind of thing that happens in third world countries and leads to violent riots. When politicians use their majority power to block out any kind of power for another party, its anti democratic and dangerous.
- vkou 7y ago
  It's anti-democratic to have some votes count for more than others, which is what the status quo is. Also, blatant gerrymandering (Which is a far more anti-democratic version of this phenomena) has been heavily practiced in the US for many, many decades, and has, to my knowledge never resulted in bloody riots in the streets. [1] [1] Most recently, the Supreme Court has ruled[2] that if you're not happy with how your government gerrymanders, you should vote it out. It's a wonderfully ironic non-solution... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gill_v._Whitford https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gill_v._Whitford
  - codingslave 7y ago
    One of the basic tenets of the founding fathers was that small groups can have out sized power. A flaw in democracy is when some group gets a majority vote and only votes for their own self interest (see Plato). States rights and the phenomenon of some small states having large sway in elections was originally intended to stop highly populated cities from dominating the rural plantation/farming states way back when. We continue to see this now, California is left partly because of the huge amount of international immigration it has seen in the last 50 years. I want to emphasize that I am not anti immigration, I am just pointing out that it has a massive effect on the future of elections, and ignoring this effect is intellectually dishonest. Using electoral college as a voting system acts as an aqueduct from any one area completely dominating the national voting. Without the electoral college, all the left would need to do (which they are trying to do now), is to flood California with poor people from mexico, and then capture their children's votes/their votes in national elections. We will still see this play out in 20 or 30 years, but the system so far has stopped anti democratic attacks like this
    - vkou 7y ago
      > One of the basic tenets of the founding fathers was that small groups can have out sized power. That's what the Senate is supposed to be for. We aren't talking about the Senate. > Without the electoral college, all the left would need to do (which they are trying to do now), is to flood California with poor people from mexico, People aren't cattle, and nobody is 'flooding California with them' to win elections.
      - codingslave 7y ago
        Sure my language was a bit inflammatory, and regardless of your opinion of their intentions, a massive shift in the voting base will be the effect of their immigration policies
        vkou 7y ago
        It is also the effect of the immigration, economic, and social policies of red states. When they hound, or allow discrimination against people who are just trying to live and mind their own fucking business, is it any surprise that this drives people out of them? Ironically, for some reason, they are allowed to benefit politically from disenfranchised people (Stripped of their voting rights due to crime, or due to inability to demonstrate sufficient documentation, or due to being permanent residents, as opposed to citizens), while not allowing them to vote. For some reason, though, the right rarely takes issue with this idea (While harping non-stop about legal and illegal immigrants skewing California's representation.) If you truly want to be fair, the number of seats each state gets should be determined based on voter turnout, as opposed to population. If a person is not permitted to, or does not care enough to vote, why should their state benefit from their representation? [1] Consider how morally reprehensible, and hypocritical the three-fifths compromise was. [1] This would, of course, make efforts at voter suppression delightfully counter-productive. If that's the can of worms we want to open, I'm fully behind it.
    - ejstronge 7y ago
      > One of the basic tenets of the founding fathers was that small groups can have out sized power This all sounds very reasonable, but if this is the case, why was the House of Representatives ever supposed to be proportional to population size?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- seiferteric 7y ago
  blocked out by democracy?
  - codingslave 7y ago
    Its similar to one party impeaching another for political purposes, the rules of our government allow it, but is it democratic?
- screye 7y ago
  It is anti-democratic to make a democracy more representative ? What kind of backwards logic is that. The Democrats have ran the country like idiots, where they have repeatedly made good faith assumptions about the republicans and been betrayed every time. When the system is broken, the least you do is fix it.
  - codingslave 7y ago
    We could dive into a whole political argument here. I am to add, not a republican either, I just think both sides have massive failings and need to be disrupted.
- Someone1234 7y ago
  By "that kind of thing" you mean more democratically elected representatives per voter? But I don't disagree, there are some really good democratic countries in the "third world" (e.g. Mauritius).
ejstronge 7y ago
That's pretty interesting! What do you think might have happened in the short term? The 2010 elections were fairly unkind to Democrats, and a large wall of opposition might have impeded the Obama administration even further...
- JshWright 7y ago
  They were "unkind" in large part due to the exaggerated impact of less populated (typical Republican leaning) states described in this article, and the very effective job Republican state legislatures have done gerrymandering their states. The difference between the popular vote and the resulting representation in Congress was pretty substantial.
Avshalom 7y ago
60 democrats is not 60 votes.
- blacksqr 7y ago
  That's the insane part. That they wouldn't take a vote so plainly in their political self interest, that was also in the spirit of the Constitution by increasing representation.
kevinmchugh 7y ago
The Democrats had 60 votes only very briefly, and that included Joe Lieberman.
- masonic 7y ago
  It doesn't matter. The Filibuster is just a Senate rule, and the party in power can rewrite the rules any way they wish when organizing after each biennial ekection. They eventually did exactly that but only for judicial confirmation.
tunesmith 7y ago
An increased House would have led to Gore over Bush, but would not have led to Clinton over Trump. The reasoning behind it is a little confusing and when I try to remember it I usually state it wrong, but I think it's because the states won by Trump had more people (not voters, people) than the states won by Clinton.
Scipio_Afri 7y ago
They very briefly had 60 votes, for about 4-5 months total, July-Aug 2009 and again in Sept-February 2010. They started with 55 seats in January 2009. As someone else mentioned, one of those was Joe Lieberman who was one of the most conservative of approximately 12 "blue dog" democrats in the senate. "Blue dog" democrats are were/are basically very centrist/moderate to the point that you could consider some of them moderate or even right leaning republicans. Fast forward and Arlen Specter, a fairly moderate republican.. actually arguably more liberal than Lieberman, switched parties in April 28, 2009 and gave the democrats +1 (to 57 +2 independents who caucus with democrats). Al Franken didn't get seated until about 8 months after he was elected due to it being contested with lawsuits. And then Ted Kennedy died. Again then there was always that issue that there were about 12 democrats in the Senate that called themselves "blue dog" democrats It was during time when they did have 60 seats that they passed Healthcare reform, known as Obamacare. It was the best reform they could do to get everyone in the democratic party to sign on, with the moderates blocking a public option. The rollback of which (which includes medicaid expansion) has (arguably) helped cause the recent losses for republicans seen in Louisiana and Kentucky. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/111th_United_States_Congress#Party_summary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/111th_United_States_Congress#P... Senate: April 30, 2009 57 + 2 independent (Specter) July 7, 2009 58 + 2 independent (Kennedy in the Senate still, but at home sick, as he had been for sometime) August 25, 2009 57 + 2 independent (Kennedy died) September 25, 2009 58 + 2 independent (Kennedy's Replacement, seated - Paul G. Kirk (D)) February 4, 2010 57 + 2 independent (Paul G. Kirk, a Democrat was defeated in a special election, in Massachusetts.. you know that same state where Elizabeth Warren is a sitting Senator) So considering all that, especially that the democrats lost a seat in an election in Massachusetts, you better believe the public sentiment was against democrats at the time and those that were moderates didn't want to do sign onto anything that would have them lose their seat in a purple-ish state. I found a slightly more in depth commentary on this here: https://www.beaconjournal.com/article/20120909/NEWS/309099447 https://www.beaconjournal.com/article/20120909/NEWS/30909944...
- blacksqr 7y ago
  Great summary.

kevin_thibedeau 7y ago

Their corporate donors don't want power concentrated into the hands of cityfolk with too much of a social conscience.

codingslave 7y ago

This is the kind of thing that happens in third world countries and leads to violent riots. When politicians use their majority power to block out any kind of power for another party, its anti democratic and dangerous.

vkou 7y ago
It's anti-democratic to have some votes count for more than others, which is what the status quo is. Also, blatant gerrymandering (Which is a far more anti-democratic version of this phenomena) has been heavily practiced in the US for many, many decades, and has, to my knowledge never resulted in bloody riots in the streets. [1] [1] Most recently, the Supreme Court has ruled[2] that if you're not happy with how your government gerrymanders, you should vote it out. It's a wonderfully ironic non-solution... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gill_v._Whitford https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gill_v._Whitford
- codingslave 7y ago
  One of the basic tenets of the founding fathers was that small groups can have out sized power. A flaw in democracy is when some group gets a majority vote and only votes for their own self interest (see Plato). States rights and the phenomenon of some small states having large sway in elections was originally intended to stop highly populated cities from dominating the rural plantation/farming states way back when. We continue to see this now, California is left partly because of the huge amount of international immigration it has seen in the last 50 years. I want to emphasize that I am not anti immigration, I am just pointing out that it has a massive effect on the future of elections, and ignoring this effect is intellectually dishonest. Using electoral college as a voting system acts as an aqueduct from any one area completely dominating the national voting. Without the electoral college, all the left would need to do (which they are trying to do now), is to flood California with poor people from mexico, and then capture their children's votes/their votes in national elections. We will still see this play out in 20 or 30 years, but the system so far has stopped anti democratic attacks like this
  - vkou 7y ago
    > One of the basic tenets of the founding fathers was that small groups can have out sized power. That's what the Senate is supposed to be for. We aren't talking about the Senate. > Without the electoral college, all the left would need to do (which they are trying to do now), is to flood California with poor people from mexico, People aren't cattle, and nobody is 'flooding California with them' to win elections.
    - codingslave 7y ago
      Sure my language was a bit inflammatory, and regardless of your opinion of their intentions, a massive shift in the voting base will be the effect of their immigration policies
      - vkou 7y ago
        It is also the effect of the immigration, economic, and social policies of red states. When they hound, or allow discrimination against people who are just trying to live and mind their own fucking business, is it any surprise that this drives people out of them? Ironically, for some reason, they are allowed to benefit politically from disenfranchised people (Stripped of their voting rights due to crime, or due to inability to demonstrate sufficient documentation, or due to being permanent residents, as opposed to citizens), while not allowing them to vote. For some reason, though, the right rarely takes issue with this idea (While harping non-stop about legal and illegal immigrants skewing California's representation.) If you truly want to be fair, the number of seats each state gets should be determined based on voter turnout, as opposed to population. If a person is not permitted to, or does not care enough to vote, why should their state benefit from their representation? [1] Consider how morally reprehensible, and hypocritical the three-fifths compromise was. [1] This would, of course, make efforts at voter suppression delightfully counter-productive. If that's the can of worms we want to open, I'm fully behind it.
  - ejstronge 7y ago
    > One of the basic tenets of the founding fathers was that small groups can have out sized power This all sounds very reasonable, but if this is the case, why was the House of Representatives ever supposed to be proportional to population size?
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
seiferteric 7y ago
blocked out by democracy?
- codingslave 7y ago
  Its similar to one party impeaching another for political purposes, the rules of our government allow it, but is it democratic?
screye 7y ago
It is anti-democratic to make a democracy more representative ? What kind of backwards logic is that. The Democrats have ran the country like idiots, where they have repeatedly made good faith assumptions about the republicans and been betrayed every time. When the system is broken, the least you do is fix it.
- codingslave 7y ago
  We could dive into a whole political argument here. I am to add, not a republican either, I just think both sides have massive failings and need to be disrupted.
Someone1234 7y ago
By "that kind of thing" you mean more democratically elected representatives per voter? But I don't disagree, there are some really good democratic countries in the "third world" (e.g. Mauritius).

ejstronge 7y ago

That's pretty interesting! What do you think might have happened in the short term? The 2010 elections were fairly unkind to Democrats, and a large wall of opposition might have impeded the Obama administration even further...

JshWright 7y ago
They were "unkind" in large part due to the exaggerated impact of less populated (typical Republican leaning) states described in this article, and the very effective job Republican state legislatures have done gerrymandering their states. The difference between the popular vote and the resulting representation in Congress was pretty substantial.

Avshalom 7y ago

60 democrats is not 60 votes.

blacksqr 7y ago
That's the insane part. That they wouldn't take a vote so plainly in their political self interest, that was also in the spirit of the Constitution by increasing representation.

kevinmchugh 7y ago

The Democrats had 60 votes only very briefly, and that included Joe Lieberman.

masonic 7y ago
It doesn't matter. The Filibuster is just a Senate rule, and the party in power can rewrite the rules any way they wish when organizing after each biennial ekection. They eventually did exactly that but only for judicial confirmation.

tunesmith 7y ago

An increased House would have led to Gore over Bush, but would not have led to Clinton over Trump. The reasoning behind it is a little confusing and when I try to remember it I usually state it wrong, but I think it's because the states won by Trump had more people (not voters, people) than the states won by Clinton.

Scipio_Afri 7y ago

They very briefly had 60 votes, for about 4-5 months total, July-Aug 2009 and again in Sept-February 2010. They started with 55 seats in January 2009. As someone else mentioned, one of those was Joe Lieberman who was one of the most conservative of approximately 12 "blue dog" democrats in the senate. "Blue dog" democrats are were/are basically very centrist/moderate to the point that you could consider some of them moderate or even right leaning republicans. Fast forward and Arlen Specter, a fairly moderate republican.. actually arguably more liberal than Lieberman, switched parties in April 28, 2009 and gave the democrats +1 (to 57 +2 independents who caucus with democrats). Al Franken didn't get seated until about 8 months after he was elected due to it being contested with lawsuits. And then Ted Kennedy died. Again then there was always that issue that there were about 12 democrats in the Senate that called themselves "blue dog" democrats It was during time when they did have 60 seats that they passed Healthcare reform, known as Obamacare. It was the best reform they could do to get everyone in the democratic party to sign on, with the moderates blocking a public option. The rollback of which (which includes medicaid expansion) has (arguably) helped cause the recent losses for republicans seen in Louisiana and Kentucky. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/111th_United_States_Congress#Party_summary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/111th_United_States_Congress#P... Senate: April 30, 2009 57 + 2 independent (Specter) July 7, 2009 58 + 2 independent (Kennedy in the Senate still, but at home sick, as he had been for sometime) August 25, 2009 57 + 2 independent (Kennedy died) September 25, 2009 58 + 2 independent (Kennedy's Replacement, seated - Paul G. Kirk (D)) February 4, 2010 57 + 2 independent (Paul G. Kirk, a Democrat was defeated in a special election, in Massachusetts.. you know that same state where Elizabeth Warren is a sitting Senator) So considering all that, especially that the democrats lost a seat in an election in Massachusetts, you better believe the public sentiment was against democrats at the time and those that were moderates didn't want to do sign onto anything that would have them lose their seat in a purple-ish state. I found a slightly more in depth commentary on this here: https://www.beaconjournal.com/article/20120909/NEWS/309099447 https://www.beaconjournal.com/article/20120909/NEWS/30909944...

blacksqr 7y ago
Great summary.