John Dingell: Abolish the Senate

[Florida Man for Crime]

Atlas is so funny sometimes. If you people had been around in the French Revolution, you'd all be screeching that people "didn't understand" the reasoning behind the Estates General. In fact, we understand the senate perfectly: it was a compromise with a faction of the American elite most afraid of democracy and losing their power (as well as the elite of smaller states worried about being crowded out, a stance which makes no sense in the modern United States). In no other democratic country is the legislative chamber explicitly designed as an anti democratic force given superior status to the actually democratic chamber. At the very least, the senate should be hobbled of its power.

(Also the vague post hoc excuse that the senate somehow protects rural areas is extremely unconvincing)

[Florida Man for Crime]

Guys, guys. The Senate is a sacred institution! It allows the states to have a say in governance! We cant get rid of it.

 We should instead admit DC and PR as states! 4 easy senators! Maybe some of the islands as well...

Every single block of Los Angeles, Boston, and NYC (except for the smallish # of Republican voting blocks) should be admitted as a new state.

True, the new states will have small populations, but don't you know that the Senate is not supposed to be about representing people, it is about giving the STATES representation. So let the states be represented. I am sure Republicans will have no problem with this.

Note also that each of these new states would have 3 electoral votes in the electoral college, which will make it impossible for a Republican to win the Presidency even if they massively win the national popular vote... but after, don't you know that the popular vote is not supposed to matter for the Presidency?

[Florida Man for Crime]

States aren't special and don't need protection qua states.

Agreed.

Also, you used the word "qua" --- qua qua qua qua qua qua qua qua qua qua

[Florida Man for Crime]

My usual spiel that you can't abolish the Senate without the consent of all 50 states as no Constitutional Amendment can strip a state of its equal suffrage in the Senate without its consent. (Note: no suffrage is not suffrage even if it is "equal" in a mathematical sense.) And good luck getting every last state to agree, much less 3/4 ths.

Not that this would happen anyway (due to the difficulty of passing an amendment), but all you need is a constitutional amendment removing the equal suffrage part of Article V, followed by another amendment changing the Senate.

Uggh, why is this always brought up with this issue.

Did they really need to spell out that you can't change the part that lists what you can't change? What's the point of the provision even being there if it is effectively inoperable? You want it to be self-referential? It's just a framework document, not a theorem.

Alternatively, you could have an amendment strip the Senate of its power without actually abolishing it.

That may have a bit more plausibility as a proposal, but ultimately amounts to the same workaround. I'm not saying you couldn't alter or remove some of its powers, but stripping it of all of its power is effectively abolishing it.

I mean, define "all" of its power. I would think a purely advisory Senate like the UK House of Lords or the Canadian Senate would be silly, but there's no question you could do that.

And, yes, clearly they would need to make that section non-amendable for it to be non-amendable. The Constitution has a built-in amendment process, and, unless something is specifically carved out, it's amendable.

The amendment process is itself amendable. That means that you can amend the part where it says, about the amendment process, that you can't get rid of states' representation. It is true that that would be undoubtedly challenged in court, but that is why you pack the Supreme Court (or else make sure that it will rule in favor of you).

Alternatively, you can just pass an amendment that makes the Senate do nothing whatsoever and have no power, never meet, have no place to ever meet, and have its members draw no salaries or benefits of any kind. You could also make it not even have any elected members, but allow states to appoint people to it if they want to (this would be pointless though, since the Senate would do literally nothing).

If you like bicameralism, then you can just create another body via amendment, and call it "Senate 2.0" rather than "Senate." And then you could give "Senate 2.0" whatever powers and the like you think that it should have. The "Senate 2.0" could be set up to be elected in an actual representative/democratic manner using whatever sort of democratic/representative electoral system is desired, with some actual relation to the numbers of voters.

Or if you don't like bicameralism, then you just stick with the Senate being powerless and only have the House. Either way, one of those two things definitely needs to happen, because the current Senate is fundamentally broken and it is the #1 reason why the American system of government is collapsing.

[Florida Man for Crime]

There is no way you could get 3/4 of the stated to agree to diminish the power of the senate .


Thanks to the constitution, the senate will never be abolished or even have its power reduced

You admit a couple hundred (or thousand, or however many need be) new states, with each new state consisting of 1 block in Los Angeles, or with each new state consisting of only the homes of carefully selected activists who have pledged to support the abolition of the Senate.

Then you can get 3/4 of the states to agree to it, no problem.

[Florida Man for Crime]

When did people start bringing up post-coup government reformation fantasies as legit political platforms?

When it entered even the remotest parts of the realm of possibility.

There could very well be a point in the next 20 years where the senate tries to block popular legislation passed by the house and the president just says “I’ll sign it’, sparking a major constitutional crisis...since he/she could just have the federal government execute the law without senate passage.

That's a horrifying possibility and the answer to it should be to make the Senate stronger, rather than abolish it, to make sure that a President can't tear down our constitution in that manner.

Or, rather than attempting to block Democracy, you could instead propose to reform it to make it democratic.

History has shown that if you attempt to block democracy, this eventually leads to revolution. That is what happened in Russia in the time of the czars, what happened in France in the time of King Louis, etc.

It is better to reform than to increase the pressure that will otherwise inevitably rise for revolution.

[Florida Man for Crime]

When did people start bringing up post-coup government reformation fantasies as legit political platforms?

When it entered even the remotest parts of the realm of possibility.

There could very well be a point in the next 20 years where the senate tries to block popular legislation passed by the house and the president just says “I’ll sign it’, sparking a major constitutional crisis...since he/she could just have the federal government execute the law without senate passage.

That's a horrifying possibility and the answer to it should be to make the Senate stronger, rather than abolish it, to make sure that a President can't tear down our constitution in that manner.

Or, rather than attempting to block Democracy, you could instead propose to reform it to make it democratic.

History has shown that if you attempt to block democracy, this eventually leads to revolution. That is what happened in Russia in the time of the czars, what happened in France in the time of King Louis, etc.

It is better to reform than to increase the pressure that will otherwise inevitably rise for revolution.

Those are Monarchies. This is a democracy. The anti-democratic forces are the ones who demand that any obstacle to their desired populist reforms be removed.

The United States is most certainly not a Democracy. We have a President who was elected - yes - but he was elected with a minority of the vote. And the Republican Senate was likewise elected - yes - but with the minority of the vote. Rule of the minority is not democracy, it is tyranny.

If you stop to think about what you are saying for a moment, you ought to feel a sense of shame for pretending to support democracy and calling those who support democracy "anti-democratic" when you yourself are the one who is speaking out against democracy.

[Florida Man for Crime]

There is no way you could get 3/4 of the stated to agree to diminish the power of the senate .


Thanks to the constitution, the senate will never be abolished or even have its power reduced

You admit a couple hundred (or thousand, or however many need be) new states, with each new state consisting of 1 block in Los Angeles, or with each new state consisting of only the homes of carefully selected activists who have pledged to support the abolition of the Senate.

Then you can get 3/4 of the states to agree to it, no problem.

LMAO they couldn't break up CA into 3 states, let alone trying to break it up in hundreds. Also that would never happen because that would destroy completely the Governability of those Areas.

They can be states for a week or so, pass the amendments to fix the deep rooted structural problems with American government, and then can be re-incorporated back into California. So it really will have no effect on governability.

[Florida Man for Crime]

LOL Thats not even close to how things work. For the state to be broken up they would have to vote on a ballot initiative and then I believe the US Congress has to approve it as well.

Obviously Congress needs to approve it - you really want to have a Trifecta when doing this. As for any possible issues regarding ballot initiatives in CA, I don't think you are right that that is necessary, but even supposing you are correct, it is pretty much irrelevant because you can just do it in Boston or wherever else instead.

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Even supposing you are right, that there are problems with re-incorporating the temporary states back into California, that is entirely irrelevant because you can just pass another amendment to make whatever problem there is go away. For example, an amendment can be passed saying "The states of ___insert-list-here____ shall be automatically re-incorporated back into Massachusetts on the date of ___insert-date-here___."

In the end, the only way any of these things are actually insurmountable problems is if all you want to do is just close your eyes and cover your ears.

[Florida Man for Crime]

A court blocked an attempt to break CA up into 3 states , what makes you think they wouldn’t to breaking it up into several hundreds

Old School Republican:



Again, even supposing you are right, just do it in MA.

But there is no reason why when states break into 2, it has to be done with a ballot initiative. The CA state legislature, for example, is perfectly capable of approving it.

Or the MA state legislature.

Or whoever. You only need a single state and a Congress that is willing to accept the new states temporarily in order to do this, also probably a friendly President/Senate/SCOTUS (or a newly packed SCOTUS just to be on the safe side).

[Florida Man for Crime]

I think this all comes to a head in 2020 when Trump wins re-election with a 4 point popular vote deficit and the Democrat gets over 50%.

If that happens there will be hell to pay and the government will have 0 legitimacy.

[Florida Man for Crime]

Serious question for anyone who thinks that it is not a problem how grossly unrepresentative the Senate is.

Currently people in Wyoming count 69 times more than people in California in the Senate.

If you don't think that 69 times more is a problem, how high would it have to go for you to consider it to be a problem and a fatal flaw in the American system of government?

100 times more?

1000 times more?

100,000 times more?

1,000,000 times more?

What?

Infinity?

[Florida Man for Crime]

However, the big thing that both parties need to do is expand their bases. a little more ideological heterogeneity would do dems and reps some good. (See reps in CA and dems in IA)

A pony would do both parties a some good. Ponies for both parties!

[Florida Man for Crime]

It's been discussed on and off on this forum for years. If the search feature works, you should be able to find the threads.

So we're talking about Atlas Democrats, not Democrats at Large. Correct?

Though I guess the fact that the single retired once-prominent House member supports abolishing the scented hardly means it's a widely adhered to belief among Democrats generally.

If you are talking about the general population, of course the general population of Democrats has no particular beliefs (much like the general population of Republicans). But that is because the general population is generally uninformed and uninterested in politics.

So it is pretty stupid to think that anyone is talking about the general population with regards to any of this.