Infographic shows the Blue Wave in action

[kmccrory]

Well, the Senate is enshrined in the Constitution. Primaries are a construct of the parties and, somewhat, of the states. They can and have changed over time. In fact the primary system as you think of it today didn’t exist prior to the early 1900s.

[klossner]

You have misinterpreted the graphic. At the time of the screenshot, there were certain to be 41 Democrat and 51 Republican senators in the new senate. Only 35 senate seats were up for election, not 92. 23 of those 35 seats – two thirds! – were won by Democrats and left-leaning independents, according to projections at this hour.

[GulliverFoyle]

@Papasan

The numbers of voters are heartening, now we must do it again in 2020.

Definitely, and in state and local elections in 2019 to restore some critical checks and balances on executive power.

[glenblank]

@frauenfelder

It’s not surprising that Democrats didn’t win the Senate. That system is rigged to favor conservative states with tiny populations.

No, the system is designed to treat each state equally, regardless of population.

@frauenfelder

Why should Wyoming (pop. 573,720) get the same number of senators as California (39 million)? T

Because Wyoming and California are each one state. The Senate is intended to represent the interests of the States, with each State in the Union having an equal vote.

If you want per-capita representation of the population (NB: NOT the voters!), that’s what the House of Representatives is for.

Hell, if you left it up to the Foundling Fathers, none of you lot would be allowed to vote on Senators AT ALL.

The Constitution left senatorial selection up to the state legislatures. No popular vote at all. It wasn’t until the the XVIIth Amendment in 1913 that senators were elected by popular vote.

(Similarly, with the Presidency. Originally, the Constitution had the state legislatures picking electors, who then vote for candidates, and their top two picks went to Electoral College ,with the final top-vote-getter being prez, and 2nd place, vice-pres.

Amendment XII in 1804 separated prez from veep in Elector voting, but otherwise leaves it to the state legislatures to decide how to pick Electors. They’re not required to use popular vote at all, even though they mostly do.)

And as others have pointed out here, you’re looking at votes for the 1 out of 3 senate seats up for election this cycle. The other 2 out of 3 weren’t even on this ballot.

At any rate, electing the legislative upper house in the bicameral legislature of a Union of sovereign States according to the long-established rules is not “cheating.”

Not everything is (or should be) done by popular vote.

This is a feature; not a bug,

(A buggy feature, perhaps – but hey, you wanna change the outcome, change the code. It’s been done before.)

[Brainspore]

@glenblank

This is a feature; not a bug,

That depends entirely on what state you happen to live in.

[NickyG]

@Manqueman

The world’s greatest democracy: No direct election of a national leader. Only a select minority rules, majority will be damned.

Heeeeey now… Don’t forgot all of the fascist dictatorships we have historically propped up, and are currently propping up, because it’s in the commercial interests of the power elite! And, our population supports such things, in general, for their own perceived comfort.

America.

i.e. carma.

Karma going to bite America in the ass, methinks. Hold on to your 401Ks, people. The fall of this empire is going to be messy.

[NickyG]

@Brainspore

That depends entirely on what state you happen to live in.

Well, even states with higher populations signed on to the rules. They’re not great rules, but they weren’t exactly hoodwinked into accepting them.

Now, the people who lived here before white folks, who were mostly killed so whites could live here? I’d say they were hoodwinked!

[gracchus]

I don’t see many ways of fixing the overall problem except by somehow reducing the power of the Senate, essentially turning it into a body that looks out for the interests of the several states but stays out of appointments – more Advice and less Consent (which would become more the domain of the House). At least that way a minority of bigoted bumpkins won’t end up foisting SCOTUS justices like Kavanaugh or Thomas on the majority for a generation.

This less powerful Senate would also bring us closer to a Westminster bicameral model, reflecting the pseudo-parliamentary 4-party system (Dem and GOP establishment and populist wings) that’s fracturing the American duopoly without breaking it.

Another option might be to adjust Senatorial terms so that the turnover occurs for the entire body every six years, with each party running two candidates and the top two taking the slots for the term. While not being a full corrective, it might more accurately represent and make room for the urban-rural divide within each state. There probably wouldn’t be a lot of change in the large, prosperous and sane states like CA, but you’d start seeing urban areas in states like SD putting in at least one Dem Senator instead of the usual two Republicans.

I doubt any of these options are realistic, though, especially when the federal government and duopoly parties have shown no real interest in making comparatively easier fixes like Electoral College reform, rotating presidential primary state order, a nation-wide election day bank holiday, real national voting systems standards, etc.

[Brainspore]

I don’t see a realistic fix on the horizon but one compromise could be “every state is guaranteed at least one Senator, but the remaining 50 are apportioned by population.” (Add 2 more Senators to the total for each new state that joins the Union.)

I recognize this kind of change is nigh impossible since everyone currently in power got there through the current system and has little or no incentive to change it.

[n8zilla]

2020 is basically the Republicans’ version of what the Dems experienced this year. They get to defend more seats, including the marginal ones they picked up in the 2014 election.
here’s a list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate_elections,_2020

right off the bat, Maine, Colorado, Alabama, Iowa, North Carolina and Arizona will clearly be contested. Only 1 of those currently has a Dem. In a presidential year, I wouldn’t be surprised if Georgia and Texas weren’t potential contests, after this year…

[d_r]

@Manqueman

The world’s greatest democracy: No direct election of a national leader.

True for many modern democracies.

[Manqueman]

With a parliament, you know you’re not necessarily the head of government you expect. Here, we “appear” to vote directly for POTUS and we get Trump, outvoted by ~3m votes. The winner lost, the loser won, and we all lost.

[Brainspore]

@d_r

True for many modern democracies.

Is there any other democracy that uses this kind of electoral college system that kinda-but-not-really puts the question directly to the people but in practice gives more power to voters in rural areas?

It seems to me that even Americans recognize that an electoral college doesn’t really make sense, otherwise we’d use it in other kinds of elections. Why aren’t gubernatorial elections decided this way, for example?

[d_r]

Your argument seems to be that in England (say), a voter understands how the system works, and therefore knows she’s not voting for the Prime Minister, whereas in the US a voter doesn’t know how the system works and therefore thinks she is voting for the President.

This might or might not be true – I was living in the UK during the 1987 general election, and my MP’s ads were very much “a vote for me is a vote for Maggie” – but the fact remains that “no direct election of a national leader” is a structural aspect of many modern democracies, not just the US.

ETA:

@Brainspore

Is there any other democracy that uses this kind of electoral college system that kinda-but-not-really puts the question directly to the people but in practice gives more power to voters in rural areas?

Did you follow the Brexit vote?

ETAETA:
Just to be clear, I’m not defending the Electoral College, but as always I think criticism should be based on content, not on optics. I sometimes get flak for that.

[rtresco]

with the Wyoming vs California example, isn’t that equity at work though. You can complain the “little guy” has too strong a voice or you can appreciate that the little guy is not overpowered.

[Wanderfound]

@Brainspore

Is there any other democracy that uses this kind of electoral college system that kinda-but-not-really puts the question directly to the people but in practice gives more power to voters in rural areas?

Oz is, in some ways, a blend of British and American systems. We’ve got an indirectly elected executive via Parliament, but we also have a system designed to amplify the voices of the less-populous regions.

The “rural gerrymander” gets expressed in two ways in Australia:

1. Electorates in low-density areas have lower populations than those in high-density areas, despite being geographically larger. A rural person’s vote counts for more than a city person.

2. Our Senate is partially based on population, but with a couple of extra Senators for each state just because they’re states. As a result, a Tasmanian person’s vote counts for more in the Senate than someone from NSW.

These are fairly small effects, however. In practice, Australian politics are still dominated by the cities and the most populous states.

[Brainspore]

Wyoming isn’t a “little guy.” It’s 586,000 little guys who each have far more political power than the 39.5 Million little guys in California.

[Wanderfound]

@j9c

In his own words:
https://www.uvm.edu/~dguber/POLS21/articles/zinn.htm

Bugger it, that’s too good for just a link.

A People’s Constitution: Some Truths Are Not Self-Evident

by HOWARD ZINN

The Nation , August 1, 1987, volume 245, pp. 87-88

This year Americans are talking about the Constitutionbut asking the wrong questions, such as, Could the Founding Fathers have done better? That concern is pointless, 200 years after the fact. Or, Does the Constitution provide the framework for a just and democratic society today? That question is also misplaced, because the Constitution, whatever its language and however interpreted by the Supreme Court, does not determine the degree of justice, liberty or democracy in our society.

The proper question, I believe, is not how good a documentis or was the Constitution but, What effect does it have on the quality of our lives? And the answer to that, it seems to me, is, Very little. The Constitution makes promises it cannot by itself keep, and therefore deludes us into complacency about the rights we have. It is conspicuously silent on certain other rights that all human beings deserve. And it pretends to set limits on governmental powers, when in fact those limits are easily ignored.

I am not arguing that the Constitution has no importance; words have moral power and principles can be useful even when ambiguous. But, like other historic documents, the Constitution is of minor importance compared with the actions that citizens take, especially when those actions are joined in social movements. Such movements have worked, historically, to secure the rights our human sensibilities tell us are self-evidently ours, whether or not those rights are “granted” by the Constitution.

Let me illustrate my point with five issues of liberty and justice:

First is the matter of racial equality. When slavery was abolished, it was not by constitutional fiat but by the joining of military necessity with the moral force of a great antislavery movement, acting outside the Constitution and often against the law. The Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments wrote into the Constitution rights that extralegal action had already won. But the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments were ignored for almost a hundred years. The right to equal protection of the law and the right to vote, even the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 underlining the meaning of the equal protection clause, did not become operative until blacks, in the fifteen years following the Montgomery bus boycott, shook up the nation by tumultuous actions inside and outside the law.

The Constitution played a helpful but marginal role in all that. Black people, in the political context of the 1960s, would have demanded equality whether or not the Constitution called for it, just as the antislavery movement demanded abolition even in the absence of constitutional support.

What about the most vaunted of constitutional rights, free speech? Historically, the Supreme Court has given the right to free speech only shaky support, seesawing erratically by sometimes affirming and sometimes overriding restrictions. Whatever a distant Court decided, the real right of citizens to free expression has been determined by the immediate power of the local police on the street, by the employer in the workplace and by the financial limits on the ability to use the mass media.

The existence of a First Amendment has been inspirational but its protection elusive. Its reality has depended on the willingness of citizens, whether labor organizers, socialists or Jehovah’s Witnesses, to insist on their right to speak and write. Liberties have not been given; they have been taken. And whether in the future we have a right to say what we want, or air what we say, will be determined not by the existence of the First Amendment or the latest Supreme Court decision but by whether we are courageous enough to speak up at the risk of being jailed or fired, organized enough to defend our speech against official interference and can command resources enough to get our ideas before a reasonably large public.

What of economic justice? The Constitution is silent on the right to earn a moderate income, silent on the rights to medical care and decent housing as legitimate claims of every human being from infancy to old age. Whatever degree of economic justice has been attained in this country (impressive compared with others, shameful compared with our resources) cannot be attributed to something in the Constitution. It is the result of the concerted action of laborers and farmers over the centuries, using strikes, boycotts and minor rebellions of all sorts, to get redress of grievances directly from employers and indirectly from legislators. In the future, as in the past, the Constitution will sleep as citizens battle over the distribution of the nation’s wealth, and will be awakened only to mark the score.

On sexual equality the Constitution is also silent. What women have achieved thus far is the result of their own determination, in the feminist upsurge of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and the more recent women’s liberation movement. Women have accomplished this outside the Constitution, by raising female and male consciousness and inducing courts and legislators to recognize what the Constitution ignores.

Finally, in an age in which war approaches genocide, the irrelevance of the Constitution is especially striking. Long, ravaging conflicts in Korea and Vietnam were waged without following Constitutional procedures, and if there is a nuclear exchange, the decision to launch U.S. missiles will be made, as it was in those cases, by the President and a few advisers. The public will be shut out of the process and deliberately kept uninformed by an intricate web of secrecy and deceit. The current Iran/contra scandal hearings before Congressional select committees should be understood as exposing not an aberration but a steady state of foreign policy.

It was not constitutional checks and balances but an aroused populace that prodded Lyndon Johnson and then Richard Nixon into deciding to extricate the United States from Vietnam. In the immediate future, our lives will depend not on the existence of the Constitution but on the power of an aroused citizenry demanding that we not go to war, and on Americans refusing, as did so many G.I.s and civilians in the Vietnam era, to cooperate in the conduct of a war.

The Constitution, like the Bible, has some good words. It is also, like the Bible, easily manipulated, distorted, ignored and used to make us feel comfortable and protected. But we risk the loss of our lives and liberties if we depend on a mere document to defend them. A constitution is a fine adornment for a democratic society, but it is no substitute for the energy, boldness and concerted action of the citizens.

[j9c]

Hey thanks for this.
I was too chicken to quote it in full or in part.
I do realize Zinn’s writing is not for everyone. I think he’s the bee’s knees.

I appreciate Zinn’s direct, lucid analysis. Bracing!

@Wanderfound

“A constitution is a fine adornment for a democratic society, but it is no substitute for the energy, boldness and concerted action of the citizens.” — Howard Zinn

As a very young friend once said to me in a mournful tone, “seems like the older I get, the more chores I have” and one day I know I’ll have to break it to him that being a grownup is indeed chock full of chores requiring energy, boldness and that bugaboo “concerted action.”

As I get older and more tired, I realize that if the Blue Wave is to succeed over the long term, it’s gotta be way more fun for us, with better food and better music and cooler people and show it thus that the other, failed, cynical politics of The Greed Community. The Blue Wave etc. must be irresistibly more desirable than what The Other Side offers.

Here’s another infographic I’ve been chewing on, here in ATX:

2018 midterms: EXIT POLLING | CNN

More work to be done. We go on.

ETA: clicked a stray key and oops it posted before I got done

[Wanderfound]

@j9c

As I get older and more tired, I realize that if the Blue Wave is to succeed over the long term, it’s gotta be way more fun for us, with better food and better music and cooler people and show it thus that the other, failed, cynical politics of The Greed Community. The Blue Wave etc. must be irresistibly more desirable than what The Other Side offers.

AKA Serve the People.

Not celebrity endorsements and marketing. Human connections, local, hands-on.

And good music, too.