The Senate vs. Democracy
So much — TOO much — now depends on Joe Manchin, the swing-vote Democratic senator from West Virginia who is owned lock, stock and barrel by corporate forces. If Joe Biden has any hope of pushing his ambitious domestic spending plans through the 50-50 Senate, he must first win over Manchin, or even more unlikely “moderate” Republicans Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins — the Lucys who always snatch away the football from the Democratic Charley Browns at the last second. This is why no major progressive legislation has passed our House of Lords in years. The Senate is a plantation-era relic that favors the elites from small, conservative states and reinforces minority rule in America — along with the Electoral College, that other anti-democratic relic bequeathed to us by our venerated Founding Fathers, most of whom owned other human beings and ruled their domains by the lash.
It was good to see astute political reporter John Nichols dissect our U.S. Senate problem in the latest print edition of The Nation. And I can understand why the frustrated left-liberal publication also devoted space in the same issue to arguments for a parliamentary instead of a presidential system and even a blue-state secession from red America. But while these articles go too far beyond the fringe of what’s possible in the current U.S., Nichols is too constrained in his Senate reform demands.
Pitchfork mobs in our hallowed Capitol chambers might not be the answer. But we need to overthrow the corporatist power of this exclusive club. The sight of the ancient multimillionaire Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein hugging the reptilian Lindsey Graham after the right-wing cult-controlled, doll-eyed Amy Coney Barrett was rammed onto the Supreme Court nauseated millions of citizens across the land. But this kind of stomach-churning bipartisanship is the rule in the Senate.
Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer are now talking tough — because the country is a steaming mess and the Democratic rank-and-file are in no mood for appeasing Mitch McConnell. So yes, let’s start with restoring some democratic balance in the Senate as Nichols proposes, by ending the filibuster, making the District of Columbia the 51st state, and trashing the DNC playbook that keeps picking safe, centrist Senate candidates in red states who invariably get their asses kicked by Republicans (see Kentucky year after year).
But we ultimately need to go beyond these reforms. If democracy has a future in America, we can no longer allow this elite legislative body to stand in the way of urgent progress. As Nichols observes, a senator elected with just 136,000 votes in Wyoming can cancel a senator elected from California with over 6 million votes. This is not majority-rules democracy. This is a formula for continued rack and ruin in America.
