Watching Countdown, I found it curious that in referring to the bailout bill being passed with 74 votes this evening, it was framed as surpassing the “60 vote majority needed to pass the bill.” Now, as far as I know, this bill was not being filibustered. It is a sad signal of just how obstructionist the Republicans have become in the Senate that we’ve just assumed that bills take 60 votes rather than taking 50 except on rare occasions.
Now, the Senate might as well be eliminated due to its massively disproportionate allotment of seats (one seat per 275,000 in Wyoming compared to one seat per 17 million or so in California), but it is even worse that beyond being poorly proportionate, it requires a supermajority. The calculation is that the Senators representing 20% of the country can effectively stop any action, or put another way, you may well need 80% support for a given policy to get it passed, even if the House and President are on-board. And you wonder why I hate James Madison.
Too often, our institutional design makes us seem like a sham democracy. Even if you forgive the way the system frustrates majority action (easy in the case of the Bill of Right’s minority protection, harder with regards to the above disproportionate representation and the checks and balances) there is still the issue of numerous people prevented from voting. Even if one justifies forbidding those under-18 or tax-paying non-citizens, which seems reasonable, it is much harder to justify the exclusion of former convicts (or even present convicts who certainly have an interest in many areas of policy). And this is just the legal prohibition of the vote, not the often significant illegal prohibitions.
Unfortunately, action to make our system more democratic has no great support as most changes would have political ramifications, and no matter the logic behind the argument, the change would be doomed under the claim of political intentions (such as Democrats opposing the elimination of the filibuster over judicial appointment before they won back the majority). It is much like taking steps to undercut incumbent advantages through a system that requires those incumbents to provide support. Systems are hard to change, because those who benefit from the present system are the ones who have the power necessary to change that system. And so we just have to deal with the fact that our system sucks and accept that things will always be a little less good than they could be.
