In a cloying little exchange of pleasantries before Arizona senator Kyrsten Sinema spoke from the podium of Mitch McConnell’s eponymous center at the University of Louisville on Monday, the Senate Republican leader called the Democrat “the most effective first-term senator” he’d ever seen. McConnell was probably being sincere given Sinema’s role, along with Joe Manchin, in saving the filibuster, the chief tool in the GOP’s obstructionist bag of tricks. He could have called her a “one-term senator” since her demise in 2024 seems all but certain after she alienated as many Arizona Democrats as she could, but that wouldn’t have been gracious. Instead, he went on to give her the highest token of his esteem, calling her a “deal-maker.”
For her part, Sinema noted that she and McConnell share a “respect for the Senate as an institution,” a statement she reinforced by calling for the restoration of 60-vote thresholds for executive and judicial-branch confirmations in the upper chamber, which were abolished by serial Democratic and Republican majorities in 2013 and 2017, respectively. Sinema is, you see, an old-school respecter of the Senate, which makes me sick to my stomach.
Anyone who spends time around the Senate (I worked there in the late 1980s and early 1990s and with Senate offices for years before and after that) is aware of the extremely high regard in which senators hold themselves “as an institution.” They don’t publicly bash House members as petty-minded, party-bossed parochial Lilliputians who have to spend all their time running for reelection. But the unstated though very real mutual disdain of the two congressional chambers is deeply rooted in the Senate’s distinctive constitutional role as an anti-democratic redoubt of entrenched privilege.
This is nowhere more apparent than in Sinema’s beloved filibuster, which in its most recent incarnation has made supermajorities a requirement for even routine legislation. But lest we forget, even if the filibuster went away, the Senate’s grant of equal power to all 50 states is profoundly undemocratic. The states themselves are not allowed to get away with such a gross misappropriation of legislative power. In the 1964 decision in Reynolds v. Sims, the U.S. Supreme Court held that, under the Equal Protection Act of the 14th Amendment, state legislatures had to respect the principal of “one person, one vote,” with seats in the upper as well as lower chambers being awarded in districts of equal population. As Chief Justice Earl Warren famously wrote in the Court’s opinion in a 8-1 decision:
“Legislators represent people, not trees or acres. Legislators are elected by voters, not farms or cities or economic interests. As long as ours is a representative form of government, and our legislatures are those instruments of government elected directly by and directly representative of the people, the right to elect legislators in a free and unimpaired fashion is a bedrock of our political system.”
The logic is the same with respect to the model for all those once-oligarchical state upper chambers, the U.S. Senate itself. But the Senate has its own separate, unassailable constitutional basis. The Article I, Section 3 provision of the Constitution providing for equal representation of states in the Senate is expressly exempted from amendment in Article V (“no state, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate”). So we are stuck with an anti-democratic chamber. But we don’t have to celebrate it.
It’s important to remember the two reasons we have a U.S. Senate. First, it represented a compromise with those in the founding generation who wanted an unelected body like Britain’s House of Lords to counteract “the people’s House,” the lower chamber. But more important, as James Madison made clear in “Federalist 62,” it was essential to the ratification of the Constitution that the country maintain its original character as a compact of states, not as a truly United States:
“It may be remarked, that the equal vote allowed to each state, is at once a constitutional recognition of the portion of sovereignty remaining in the individual states, and an instrument for preserving that residuary sovereignty …
“Another advantage accruing from this ingredient in the constitution of the senate is, the additional impediment it must prove against improper acts of legislation. No law or resolution can now be passed without the concurrence, first, of a majority of the people, and then, of a majority of the states.”
This understanding of the country as a modified confederation of states with a stronger central government than it originally had more or less perished with the outcome of the Civil War and the ratification of the Civil Rights Amendments (including the 14th Amendment, that great and still-evolving guarantee of individual rights against states rights). But the Senate remains as a relic of the era when McConnell’s hero Henry Clay and a host of other patriarchal slaveholders held the Union temporarily together by engaging in “deal-making” at the expense of human dignity. The 17th Amendment, ratified in 1913 and providing for the popular election of senators instead of letting state legislatures choose them, took the chamber as far toward democracy as a flawed Constitution would allow.
“Respect for the Senate as an institution” means contempt for democracy as a fundamental value. That is why those with respect for democracy — particularly those who profess to be a member of the Democratic Party — should do everything possible to minimize the Senate’s ability to function according to the Founders’ design instead of boasting about making the chamber even more susceptible to high-handed measures to frustrate the popular will.
ditto on what DC in CA said. I am doing phonebanking to the swing states and planning to do GOTV during the days before the election. I am glad the numbers are looking good- but shouldn’t we be focused on making them even better?
Splendid news! Let’s just hope (and pray-) that the crucial third debate goes as well as the first two did.
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BTW, what kind of “message” do you think Kerry should send to undecided voters in the debate? (I assume there will be some sort of closing statement again). Off the top of my head —
1) He should promise to be a “uniter” by solemnly pointing out the U.S. is at war and Congress likely will remain in Republican hands. He should hint that this might mean compromises on spending priorities, so that at least the deficits could be reduced. I think many fiscal conservatives and independents would like this.
2) He might touch the cultural issue (the red wine, fluent french, his windsurfing hobby etc.) and beg culturally conservative voters not to dismiss him out of hand if they agree with his economic policies.
3) He should point out that his opponent has expressed his unwavering determination to continue the same policies for another four years, if re-elected. In other words, the current policies in the Middle East will continue to be pursued and the handling of the federal economy won’t change. He should ask voters who think they were better off in 2000 to take a chance on him. I think it is a very powerful argument, since “Shrub” and his followers are strugging to portray 2001-04 in a positive light and mostly duck the issue altogether.
4) He should defuse the extremely silly “global test” smear/scare campaign by explaining that it is merely a common sense term for saving American lives and dollars before going to war. In 1991, the other Gulf states largely reimbursed the U.S. for the cost of Gulf War I. Not so this time.
5) Debate tactics. In the first debate, he was polite, well informed and surprisingly clear and succinct. More of the same, please! I would also like to see him damn the president with faint praise by first agreeing with the conventional wisdom that “Shrub” is a decent man who does what he thinks is best of the country. Having said that, he should then gently question whether “Shrub” really is qualified for the job, in the light of this Administration’s numerous screw-ups at home as well as abroad. “Grand vision” alone is not enough, he should say — the U.S. now needs competent management to turn Iraq and the federal economy around. It’s a very powerful argument. Saying “Shrub” is an immoral liar won’t work. Saying he simply isn’t up to the task of running the country just might work, since there is ample evidence for it.
MARCU$
These are all nothing more than a good start.
Yes, they are a very good and encouraging start, but let us all do what we can to keep those trend lines going.
A good start. Now let’s do what we can – canvassing, phone banking, and other GOTV activities – to make for a great finish.
Nice Cherrypicking, but here’s a few you forgot. Btw, ARG = Kerry’s Private Poll.
Marist: Bush 49, Kerry 46, Nader 1
Reuters/Zogby Tracking Poll: Bush 46, Kerry 44, Nader 2
Florida: Quinnipiac: Bush 51, Kerry 44
Rasmussen:
Pennsylvania: Bush 47% Kerry 47%
Colorado: Bush 48% Kerry 44%
Michigan: Bush 46% Kerry 46%
Virginia: Bush 50% Kerry 44%
I think tide is turning. After the debates, GW will finally be exposed as being way over his head as president. (if not already) I’m still one of those who think the race will be a route for Kerry, similar to Reagan over Carter in 1980