Here is a quick look at some demographics data.
*The 10 largest states (CA/TX/FL/NY/PA/IL/OH/GA/NC/MI) are sending 10 democratic senators and 10 republican senators. In other words the most populous states have a equally partisan Senate delegation. Yeah, sorry democrats, large states are not just California.
*The 10 smallest states (WY, VT, ND, AK, SD, DE, RI, MT, ME, NH) are, (BIG SURPRISE) also sending a equal number of democratic and republicans senators. You see, liberals ? Sparsely populated states are not just WY or SD, they are also VT and DE (the states from where your two main presidential contenders are coming from)
There's cherrypicking, and then there's cherrypicking.
Take the ten smallest states you mentioned: New Hampshire has more than
twice the population of Wyoming or Vermont. It doesn't matter that it's in the bottom 10; it's much closer to the 5 states above it in population than those two.
Your point about the top ten states ignores that the next 5 most populous send a total of 1 Republican to the senate - so the 15 most populous states (making up a little more than 60% of the US population, excluding DC) have 19 Dems and 11 Republicans. Already we're getting a little out of whack.
If we do slightly more sophisticated analysis, and assume 1 Senator represents half a state's population (allowing for split states to have their representation counted evenly), and count Sanders and King as Dems, we find that the 47 Democratic Senators represent ~51.9% of the 50 states, and the 53 Republicans represent ~48.1% - this, again, is excluding DC, which is a whole other ballgame about lack of representation.
Of course, this shouldn't surprise anyone;
the Senate was literally designed to favour wealthy landholders. The states that voted for it at the Constitutional Convention constituted only about a third of the US population at the time - the Senate has, from its inception, been unrepresentative. It wasn't a genius, irremovable lynchpin of the US system;
Madison openly admitted it was a matter of compromise. He'd originally favoured proportional representation.
I also don't accept your point that for progressives it's all about stacking the chamber. If you switched to proportional representation (and awarded Senators each state proportionally according to the vote in each state, something like Australia's system), you automatically enfranchise the millions of Republican voters in California and New York. There aren't even millions of
people in Montana, Wyoming and Alaska, let alone the requisite Democrats to cancel out those new Republican voters that suddenly have a voice. Representation means just that: representation. Conservatives never like it; their entire movement is predicated on thwarting it at every turn.
