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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 b

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.

hemp_is_canvas 1y ago
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.
- harimau777 1y ago
  I'm not sure it's possible to reform the system. Its way too stacked towards corporate interests.
- idle_zealot 1y ago
  > No, we need the House of Lords, otherwise the plebeians might do something crazy like tax us!
- wat10000 1y ago
  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.
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > the least representative parts of our government are the ones pushing towards illiberality and populism Source? The President and--until like 24 hours ago--the House have been leading the charge on illiberalism and populism.
    - wat10000 1y ago
      The Supreme Court is leading the charge. The presidency is a close second. Congress is pretty much just watching.
- whimsicalism 1y ago
  There are plenty of little-r republican institutions that can put a check on populism without blatant disproportionate representation.
JumpCrisscross 1y ago
> It's fundamentally undemocratic and the reasons for having it are long gone Undemocratic is insufficient for removing a governing body per se. (Courts are technically undemocratic. That doesn't make them bad.) Compared with the House, the Senate has behaved as designed--a far more mature body that actually deliberates from time to time.
- wat10000 1y ago
  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.
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > 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]. [1] https://www.npr.org/2013/09/30/227292952/a-short-history-of-government-shutdowns https://www.npr.org/2013/09/30/227292952/a-short-history-of-...
    - wat10000 1y ago
      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.

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.

hemp_is_canvas 1y ago

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.

harimau777 1y ago
I'm not sure it's possible to reform the system. Its way too stacked towards corporate interests.
idle_zealot 1y ago
> No, we need the House of Lords, otherwise the plebeians might do something crazy like tax us!
wat10000 1y ago
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.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > the least representative parts of our government are the ones pushing towards illiberality and populism Source? The President and--until like 24 hours ago--the House have been leading the charge on illiberalism and populism.
  - wat10000 1y ago
    The Supreme Court is leading the charge. The presidency is a close second. Congress is pretty much just watching.
whimsicalism 1y ago
There are plenty of little-r republican institutions that can put a check on populism without blatant disproportionate representation.

JumpCrisscross 1y ago

> It's fundamentally undemocratic and the reasons for having it are long gone Undemocratic is insufficient for removing a governing body per se. (Courts are technically undemocratic. That doesn't make them bad.) Compared with the House, the Senate has behaved as designed--a far more mature body that actually deliberates from time to time.

wat10000 1y ago
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.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > 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]. [1] https://www.npr.org/2013/09/30/227292952/a-short-history-of-government-shutdowns https://www.npr.org/2013/09/30/227292952/a-short-history-of-...
  - wat10000 1y ago
    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.