Liberal Talk Radio

Interesting take on the peculiar mathematics of the Senate as it relates to who, in fact, represents “the majority” (via Slate):

What about reality? Well, if each of every state’s two senators is taken to represent half that state’s population, then the Senate’s fifty-five Republicans represent 131 million people, while its forty-four Democrats represent 161 million. Looked at another way, the present Senate is the product of three elections, those of 2000, 2002, and 2004. In those elections, the total vote for Democratic senatorial candidates, winning and losing, was 99.7 million; for Republicans it was 97.3 million. The forty-four-person Senate Democratic minority, therefore, represents a two-million-plus popular majority—a circumstance that, unless acres trump people, is at variance with common-sense notions of democracy. So Democrats, as democrats, need not feel too terribly guilty about engaging in a spot of filibustering from time to time.

Of course, the Senate is designed as a collection of states, not people. So acres do trump people. Which is why, in general, I’m a conservative when it comes to mucking with the constitution. It’s all in perfect balance. When the 12th Amendment was passed, it made the Senate seem more populist than was originally intended. This, in turn, is giving Bill Frist the rhetorical leverage to claim that the Democrats are subverting the will of the majority of Americans who voted GOP in November. Even though it doesn’t wash with the numbers.

Amendments 13-15, of course, I’d like to keep. And many others, too, of course.