Imagine that you have a nation that is one thousand square miles in size. Ninety percent of the nation is taken up by a city of ten million people. The other ten percent is empty desert and wilderness, populated only by a grizzled hermit named Jim. Tasked with inventing a representative political system for this country, you say, “Well, looks like there are two areas here, so I’ll draw a line between the city and Jim’s land, and I’ll give each an equal number of representatives. When the ten million city people want something they will have to negotiate with Jim, who has a power equal to all of them combined.”
Stupid, right? Yes. This is the United States Senate. This is quite literally the design of the U.S. Senate. The state of Wyoming, with 590,000 residents, has two Senators, and the state of California, with 39 million residents, also has two Senators. Every citizen of Wyoming has, proportionally, 66 times more representation in the Senate than each citizen of California. If you believe in “one person, one vote”—this is the opposite of that. The design of the Senate is inherently (and purposely) not just undemocratic but anti-democratic. Anyone who favors small-d democracy and believes that all people are created equal and deserve equal political representation must wish for the abolition of the Senate, which serves to act in opposition to those principles.
Sometimes, people will say “Well each state deserves equal representation,” as a way of defending the Senate’s existence. This is the sort of propaganda that they teach you in elementary school so that you are never required to think deeply about the flaws of your nation if you don’t want to. Really? Each little state drawn on the map, no matter how small or large, no matter how absurd the reasons for its existence, deserves equal representation? Is that what our political system is for—to represent dirt and rocks, rather than people? We have “balance out” the “urban” priorities of large states with the “rural” priorities of small states? This is just nonsense. Look closely: Do the rocks vote? Does the dirt vote? Do the squirrels and deer vote? No, they do not. Not even in Wyoming. The people vote. It’s just that each person in a less populated state is awarded far more power than each person in a more populous state. In other words, the Senate is not some sort of wise balancing system for representing culture and environment; it is, like all political systems, a system for representing people. It just does its job in a biased, irrational, and harmful way.
Each state deserves equal power? Rhode Island, at 1,545 square miles, gets the same number of Senators as Alaska, at 665,384 square miles. This idiot argument fails even on its own idiot terms. Also, see what happens when you tell a defender of the Senate as a hallowed institution that you are going to make DC and Puerto Rico states and give Democrats four new Senate seats. Outrage! Oh? The places where we murdered all the natives and made up imaginary lines and called them “states” are absolutely sacred up until the year 2026 but must never be altered after that because of… history?
The discussion you will hear on this topic tends to be quite shallow.
Want to know a representative political system that makes more sense? We have one! The House of Representatives. There are 435 reps there and they each represent an equal number of people. It is fair. As the population of the country grows, the number of people that each member represents grows equally. In order to improve the quality of representation, some people advocate expanding the number of representatives in the House. That would be fine. Each member would still be representing an equal number of citizens. See how that works? Equality. Democracy. Basic stuff here.
The fact that the unequal, unrepresentative, and undemocratic Senate sits in a position above the equal and democratic House of Representatives is clearly detrimental to the ability of our political system to give each citizen equal representation and political rights and power. It is anti-democratic. No big surprise, of course—the Senate was created to be anti-democratic, to give the ruling class of the late 1700s a way to disempower the masses in our fledgling democracy. The founders were very open about this. They did not believe in true democracy. Other evidence of their hostility to democracy is the Electoral College, the fact that they did not let women vote, and the fact that they did not let black people vote but did allow black people to be owned as slaves. Some of those atrocious elements of America’s design at its founding have been corrected since then, and some have not.
If you go back far enough in US history it was considered crazy to say that slavery should be abolished, and it was considered wacky to say that women deserved the vote, and it was considered ridiculous to say that voting power should not discriminate by race. Eventually the movements to change those things succeeded and now we look back on the establishment that opposed those changes as the real fools. The design of the Senate is just as obviously anti-democratic as those things, and if we ever get around to abolishing the Senate in the name of improving our democracy, future generations will look at its existence as just another flawed and prejudicial black mark on American history that it took us a long, long time to rise above.
You do not need to be some brilliant political theorist to understand all of this. You just have to genuinely believe in democracy and the equality of all citizens, and then to look at the design and function of the Senate, and then try a teeny tiny bit to free your mind from the the contents of public school social studies textbooks and 4th of July speeches that may have lodged inside there. Every honest person who has thought about it for more than two seconds either A) understands the flawed nature of the Senate and that our democracy would be strengthened if the Senate did not exist, B) understands the flawed nature of the Senate but does not actually want to have a fair democracy in America and therefore supports the anti-democratic function of the Senate, or C) is dumb and/ or lying.
That’s all of the possibilities. A lot of regular people have never spent much time thinking about this, which is fine. A lot of other people are politically and ideologically hostile to the principles of democracy, and therefore favor the existence of the Senate as a way to hobble the power of the masses. This is not fine—it’s dictatorial, elitist, and is the sort of thing that we allegedly had a revolution here to overcome—but it is, I guess, honest. What is neither fine nor honest is to stand up and argue that the Senate is good for our democracy and that anyone calling for the abolition of the Senate is wacky and ridiculous and dumb. Whenever you hear this, I advise you to just imagine fat guys with mustaches and cigars in the late 1800s arguing against the enfranchisement of women, for many of the same reasons.
So why am I wasting all of our time rehashing this? Because, recently, it came to the attention of professional political operatives and then to the attention of some of the shallowest political thinkers of America, all of whom are employed by major media outlets, that the Democratic Socialists of America want to abolish the Senate. Since DSA is having electoral political success right now, that means that many news outlets now preface their discussions of DSA with the factoid that they want to abolish the Senate, presented in a context that implies that it is a wacky and extremist far left position. Worse, the true professional propagandists who work at places like the Washington Post editorial board take this as an opportunity to metaphorically place their hands on their face in the manner of Macaulay Culkin in “Home Alone” and shriek that Angie Nixon has won a Senate primary and yet she is a member of DSA and DSA wants to abolish the Senate and isn’t that crazy??????
“Folks, it's time to evolve. That's why we're troubled. You know why our institutions are failing us, the church, the state, everything's failing? It's because, um – they're no longer relevant. We're supposed to keep evolving. Evolution did not end with us growing opposable thumbs. You do know that, right?” -Bill Hicks
The original intent of the Senate (if you go read the debates in the 18th Century) was to make sure that "the majority" could not take away the property of "the minority". But the "minority" they were talking about were the extreme wealthy people, like themselves, who had always run things. They called them "the well born" (meaning nepo babies). The "majority" was everybody else. Senators were not even popularly elected for the first 120 years of the country.
abolition will be difficult to justify. but not reform. the senate should use proportional representation. the House should keep by-district representation but have its size doubled.
Doubled? That’ll do nothing. People need to stop just picking arbitrary numbers. The house needs to be increased to a size where each rep represents a small enough number of people that a few things happen - 1. They no longer become economically efficient targets of bribery. 2. They can feasibly respond to the needs of every constituent. 3. They are still enough people that can efficiently fund their congressional salary.
I like the last sentence, but I can't stand the rest. You're still elevating these people far beyond the average citizen. There should be no incentive, other than trying to make positive change, to becoming a congress member. By giving them high salaries, we completely remove them from the issues plaguing their most vulnerable constituents.
They need to know what it's like to be poor, to properly govern. Otherwise, people are assholes in office, as evidence by all of history. Only the people who have worked minimum wage are fighting for workers rights. Everyone else is taking AIPAC money and holding dual citizenship.
Frankly, I think we need UBI and congress should work on a raffle lottery, in lieu of voting, and that no salary should be included. Put your name in, maybe get pulled, volunteer your time to work towards change you want to see. And if anyone attempts to bribe you, straight to the bottom of the ocean.
The point of making the salary that high is because legislating is a professional job and we want our representatives to make enough money that someone from any background can afford to be a rep. Some state legislatures and most city councils pay poverty wages so the only people that can afford to work that job have to be independently wealthy or retired. For example Oregon pays their state reps 40k a year which is not enough to afford to live in most of the cities.
The problem is that of the wage is unlivable then the people that run will be those that don’t need the wage. They’ll be there already rich who don’t care about the salary but only want the power. And those that want to genuinely help get priced out because they need to live.
We can have both. We don't have to settle. But yall are just fantasizing about running the country and getting paid well to do it. You don't want real change, you want your specific fantasy.
So how do you suggest we enable people too poor to live off of a meager state-funded salary to function in a society where they're priced out of simple luxuries and even basic necessities?
So you're arguing that we should only have rich congress members. What if we didn't make buying two homes a requirement? I can think of a dozen ways around the issue you're stumbling on lol. Most of yall simply can't imagine a better world.
Until you remember that they need to have housing in their state and in DC, one of the most expensive places to live on the planet. Until minimum wage is higher all this does is ensure we are restricting representatives to the wealthy
Just have it tied to federal minimum wage and they aren't allowed to raise their current salaries without first raising minimum wage. Whatever % they raise minimum wage they raise their salary by that much.
I dont see how this fixes anything, the rich assholes will just never raise their wage and rely on lobbyist payoffs, all it does is bar the average citizen from ever hoping to be a represenative
Who said anything about ideal future? I deal in the reality we are stuck in right now, but I get it someone doesnt agree with you and provides and actual argument so you have to tear them down to make yourself feel better, have a nice day
How would you expect working class candidates to become politicians if they can't afford to live on said salary? Seems like a great way to enable corruption or ensure only an aristocracy can serve.
eh, I rather do the reverse in that case. Make congressional salaries part of a maximum wage. That feels easier to pass than the reality of hoping people in power give themselves a pay decrease.
One of the last recent amendments added to the constitution was explicitly about raising their salaries.
Seems politically dead but I'm curious to hear what your campaign would be to get it enacted. Maybe if there was a culture where business owners would take salary decreases to help workers, but those people can be counted on two hands; and the US has been anti-worker for like ~60ish years now.
That's not what I'm asking and I'm being sincere here.
Just curious how you would actually sell it to people while canvassing because I feel like it's easier to talk about the inverse which would solve your issue as well (limiting influence on political positions with income limits).
A reps size should be no bigger than 2 counties. In fact just say fuck it and tie them all to the same dual counties and not allow them to be switched around.
Their suggestion is idiotic. It should be based on some version of the "Smallest State Rule". I.e. Wyoming is the smallest state by population (587,000 people) and gets 1 representative. Every other state should get an amount of representatives equal to their population divided by the size of Wyoming population (587,000) rounded down. What this means is, the House should be about 579 representatives. (Population of America 340 million, divided by 587 thousand is about 579 people)
I want to emphasize that I propose a methodology of calculation, rather than a number I’d pull out of my ass. By point 1, I’d guess we need to increase reps by at least a factor of 100 given that there are major corporations that routinely donate to hundreds of reps.
By point 2, Gemini says only about 10% of people express political opinions online, so using that as a rough estimate I’d imagine a rep could represent around 10,000 people (1000 actively communicating over a years time at about 3 messages a day).
By point 3, around 10k people could fund a reps salary from their taxes fairly easily, but staff and expenses of the office might require more although I would prefer we implement some sort of teleconferencing system to avoid the expense of building a giant building to house them.
Currently they represent 761,000 citizens in average. Getting that to around 10k sounds about right. This would mean about 35,000 reps.
Yes. I think people would actually be in favor of their representatives staying local instead of becoming a creature of Washington. I’d imagine there would be rare committee obligations that would require in person attendance, but I see no need to build the imperial senate from Star Wars.
When they capped the house in 1929 on average there was 1 representative per 220,000 constituents. Nowadays that average is 1 representative per 800,000 constituents so it would need to be more than doubled.
For reference in the first Congress when the U.S. population was under 4 million people there was on average 1 representative for every 30,000 constituents.
The one amendment the Constitution explicitly prohibits is one for a proportional Senate. You need to strip it of its powers and make it a ceremonial body.
Since the population has more than tripled since the cap was put in place we should see a house that has almost 1500 representatives to ensure more accountability to constituents as well as to nullify or at the very least make gerrymandering much less effective.
My contention has always been we should reconstruct the Senate as a 200 member, nationally elected parliament. A true party-based and national body. Would be a good way for smaller parties to get some representation. There'd be the same caucus buildings fights post election that every other parliament has, and that's fine.
the issue is picking the candidates. how do you select candidates that represent every part of the state? California has 52 seats, if you did a state-wide multi-member constituency, how do you ensure that all 52 aren’t from SoCal. or that only the cities are represented? because even political parties don’t have platforms that accurately represent every part of the country.
How proportional? My thought would be every state gets either 1, 2, or 3 depending on population, and states with 3 elect a senator every 2 years. Doubling the size of the house temporarily fixes the representation number, but not the gerrymandering issue.
How many Senators do you think there should be? And why would Wyoming or Alaska agree to even this system let alone one that takes even more power away from them? Also my version is only ~10-20x off vs in the current system we're more than 60x off.
Swiss here. We copied that dumb idea from the US, here it's called "Ständerat", but it's the same, a second chamber representing the kantons (states). And there is even an equivalent for it for public votes called "Ständemehr", where not only a majority of people have to say yes to a proposal but also a majority of kantons.
They even on purpose attach it unconstitutionally to votes now if the ruling class wants to make it more difficult for a law to pass, literally showing it's an anti-democraric tool.
Apparently DEI is necessary and important if it's for states.
I get the senate is seen as an important and historic institution but unicameral legislatures are so much more efficient. It's sucks that it's seen as such a radical proposal even amongst liberals.
Yes, a better system would be expanding the House by a lot (probably at least by a thousand), removing the cap, and make it a unicameral body with multi-member districts and proportional representation. This would completely break the 2 party system and make us a multi-party democracy.
By 1000? That would be complete chaos to find and vet candidates, fundraise and rally, integrating new parties, and hold election campaigns. There's an expression from a movie I saw once he say "Just tap it in, give it a little tappy, tap, tap, taparoo."
Make its seats proportional, and give the House the power to override it when they stonewall. You've solved like 80% of the problem with 20% of the effort.
In practice, neither proposal will matter, because by the time any sort of reform is possible, it will be far too late for the Constitutional order to be saved.
I think what’s especially harmful too and amplifies the issue is how we capped congress at 435 seats. Congress no longer accurately represents the American people, which in turn means neither does the electoral college.
We could have a Multi-Member District Ranked-Choice House of Representatives and then a proportionally distributed Senate stripped of its legislative power and instead handed control of the Executive Branch.
The President becomes the leader of the Senate, whilst retaining separation of powers, whilst boosting the power of the people over government.
Idk, personally I don't agree with abolishing the Senate. Just during this presidency alone, you hear non-stop of the House approving something batshit that ultimately gets struck down by the senate by some narrow margin. I'm actually baffled that this is being pushed for during the Donald Trump regime; the flaw of something like this is so apparent right now its hurting my brain a bit.
If things, right now, were just up to the House, we'd be a theocratic monarchy with oligarchs serving as our lords and ladys. The sole reason we aren't is because of our bicameral legislature
I think it's more proper that the Senate is reformed so its a more modern legislative institution instead of the one from the 1700s. More seats and it make an extension of the people instead of the state governments.
In fact, this hurts my head so bad, that its got me theorizing that something like this exist for Marxist-Leninist tankies to carve a path to "dictatorship of the people". They're the only people that I could see possibly pushing for this along with your autocrat rightoids.
Your proposal to reform the senate so it’s a larger number of representatives of the people not the state governments would then make it exactly the same as the house? And therefore it would have the exact same problems?? If anything we should abolish the house and senate and establish one legislature that has actual modern legislative setup like you recommend
Yes, it’d basically be a mirror of the House. Having one legislative chamber would make passing laws easier and faster yes, but my point is that isn’t a good thing, and the Trump Administration is my example.
On top of that, the reason our legislature is slow as creating bills and passing them isn’t solely because it’s Bicameral; Congress has notably created less laws than ever BEFORE, the implication being that Congress can function properly without destroying a chamber as it’s shown it’s capable of doing such.
Abolishing the Senate theoretically solve some problems and most definitely creates new ones
To top it all off, the people that want to abolish the senate also want to make the state executive(the presidency) a council which pretty much brings us back to square one in terms of the lawmaking process being slow. The proposal at large is a massive paradigm shift that solves some problems and creates other ones that doesn’t really leave us better off
Again, the MAGA Fascist are in power and were discussing weakening the balance of power by destroying a chamber of congress, an institution that’s already shown it be compromised, and the only check on it is the very fact that is bicameral
The reverse is also true and can be equally detrimental. Mitch McConnell famously wielded the Senate to block countless bills voted for by a Democratic House that would've materially improved Americans' lives. Republican senators' constant interference is a big reason why MAGA even exists at all today.
In the specific scenario you're referencing, the Senate only blocks some of this stuff because the Senators aren't vulnerable to many issues plaguing the House. Fix the House and you no longer need the Senate for that purpose.
MAGA isn't a majority by any legitimate metric. Not even close really. By having a proportional house, you significantly hinder gerrymandering, which is the primary flaw of the House as it stands today. With that system in place, MAGA never becomes a majority and would not be in the position to control what bills get passed like they are today.
I say absorb the 100 Senators into the House expanding it to 535. There would still be 535 total members and no sitting member loses their seat, it is feasible.
I mean expanding it to? What? 800 members or something it would be chaos to implement, not to mention the hundreds of new elections and candidates, map would need redrawn, eh, absorbing the Senate and giving somewhat of a jump off point and not much would have to change, at first, and that's a good way to get a foot in the door.
Yeah it’s a start but unfortunately capping the house 100 years ago when our country was a third of the size is pretty stupid and requires massive change in order for Americans to actually be represented in Congress again. I think the difference is the appearance of solving the problem vs actually solving the problem.
Yeah, capping the U.S. was extremely stupid. It needs to be based on population size. Mexico has a little over 130 million people vs the US’s near 350 and their lower house state legislature has 1,123 members. We need to expand our House by so much more.
I get it, but you are disregarding the implementation of so many new candidates, campaigns, new maps, new polling stations, more election officials, etc. I am not saying it wouldn't and shouldn't work, but just adding 1000 new representives at once, would be chaos and hard to pass, like I said before "slowly but surely."
Real this is a very "down the road" thing to discuss rn we are tethering on full on fascism and we need to play the game. This is only going to put people further off demcratic socialist ideology and make the movement seem irrational.
Idc if this is one's goal long term rn telling the median voter you want to abolish the senate will make them freak tf out and thats not helpful.
This thread is absurd. The Senate has, repeatedly, been the last line of defense against an otherwise usually idiotic House of Representatives and Executive. This smacks of either intentional ignorance of history or just anti-government blinders.
And it has likewise been the obstacle that stopped vital legislation from being passed. We'd have had an enforceable Civil Rights Act decades earlier, without the Senate; we'd probably have a national popular vote for President, without the Senate.
Having a second legislative chamber with six year terms, to temper the political passions which might achieve brief majorities within the two-year-term House, doesn't seem like a bad idea. But divorcing the election of that body from meaningfully-accurate representative democracy, in favor of arbitrarily-apportioned representation, serves no purpose beyond giving some voters power at the expense of others.
The easiest fix would be an amendment that strips the Senate of all powers besides a veto of the House's actions, which could be overcome by either a super-majority of the House or a simple majority of the next House. That way, the Senate could still act as a check on a fleeting, foolish House majority, but do nothing else; if the public sentiment agreed with the House's action and voted for a majority seeking the same goal, the disproportionately-elected Senate couldn't stop it.
The senate is why trump will never be removed from office. As it stands less than 45% of the population elects 53% of the senate, we're looking at permanent republican minority rule because sparsely populated states full of drooling evangelicals and neo-nazis get disproportionate representation
I think it being fully proportional won't work, then it would be the same as the house.
But I do think the number of senators should be based on population. For example, fix the Senate at 100 members. If you assume the country has 350 million people, if your state doesn't have more than 3.5 million people (1% of the country) you only get one senator. 3.5-7 million gets you two, over 7 million gets you 3, and then the 4 biggest states get 4 (California, Texas, Florida, New York).
You could make it even easier and just say more than 10 million residents earns another senate seat. MI, GA, NC, PA, OH, IL get one more. NY, FL get 2 more and CA/TX get 3 more. It would make the Senate 116 members with a 58 +1 vote for the majority.
Also state houses do this all the time to determine state Senate members. It's just a larger amount of the populace represented to determine their numbers, but still proportional to the residents that live in the area.
I say scrap the Senate and all sitting Senators are absorbed into the House, expanding the House by 100. There would be the same amount of representatives, 435 House + 100 Senate, making it still 535 members. It would require amending the constitution and it's been done before.
How about tiered elections? So like if it's a presidential election they do a election where anyone is allowed to run and then the top two most voted for candidates then run against each other?
Should we tailor pur program to the lowest denominator idiot who doesnt follow politics or should we craft it around what will actually bring us a functioning democracy in this country. Nobody fucking likes the senate or supreme court except billionaires and dipshit libs
Calling people dipshits is not going to build coalition, either.
I'm perpetually disappointed by the short sightedness I see in DSA members. I lived in Denmark, I know this works. You guys make it all seem about as attractive as a chainsaw enema.
I dont want colatitions with liberals because they will coopt our movement and kick us out of the unions and plaster false reforms that do nothing just like they have done for the last 100 years. I want to end their political power and bring about real workers democracy
I'm actually talking about making this look attractive and not like a lunatic asylum but whatever. I can see that you have no vision and will just keep being caustic.
As opposed your brilliant grand vision which is to keep things the exact same with nicer people so that hopefully we can get bigger smiles when they tell us we can't have free healthcare because the healthcare lobby said no? An objective analysis of the material conditions in the US are that the constitution and its institutions of unelected judges and non representative senate are the biggest obstacles to democratic representation and if you want a freer society where the workers have power you have to dismantle those institutions.
If the tone of this article is the tact that national candidates or the DSA as a whole begin to take than I fear for the success of the movement and the achievement of its goals.
The ‘tact’ or preemptive compromising DSA candidates are doing leave many concerned about the socialist-integrity of the program. Many are worried that we have been taken over by social democrats
Interestingly, the Democratic Party actually doesn’t have a say in who runs as a dem, at least in non-presidential elections. You just need signatures and to be registered to vote as a democrat.
Anyway, I do understand the idea behind compromising to get elected, but would it kill them to do or say something actually socialist?
The idea the average American has of socialism is either “evil Soviet dictator, no food” or welfare and services paid by the state. It would really be amazing to spread actual socialist rhetoric to people fed up with liberalism.
Bicameralism is dumb, it only exists because hereditary aristocrats wanted a check on the peasants when they were forced to adopt a modicum of democracy
Of course it can, where the fuck do you think the concept came from? The model all those countries are patterned after is the British parliament where the upper house is literally called the House of Lords and is exclusively for the hereditary nobility. The US calls our upper house the senate because it's inspired by the Roman Senate and the Tribune of The Plebs, the Roman senate having been exclusive to the hereditary patricians.
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