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Comedian Amy Schumer, left, and actress Emily Ratajkowski, right, gesture after being detained along with hundreds of protesters at the Hart Senate Office Building in Washington on Oct. 4. (Erik S. Lesser / EPA-EFE / REX) S Lesser / EPA-EFE / REX / Shutterstock)
Aaron Blake
Senior political reporter, writing for The Fix
Democrats just suffered yet another crushing loss. And this one with potentially long-lasting implications: a clear conservative majority on the Supreme Court that cements Republican domination of all levers of power in U.S. government.
And naturally, that has led to some rationalizing.
Brett M. Kavanaugh's Confirmation of Democracy and Democracy of the United States. Previously, this was mostly about gerrymandering in the House and the electoral college, which in 2016 delivered the GOP its second popular-vote-losing president in 16 years. Now, it's also about the Senate, where small GOP-dominated states are being passed on to the backing of a minority of Americans behind them. Still others are still talking about Democrats, if and when they retake power, packing the Supreme Court with additional justices to tilt it to the left.
That's basically all the major levers of power in the United States, which Democrats feel like in some way, and must be rectified.
With the exception of a very gradual, state-of-state, rollback of gerrymandering, none of these changes are likely to come soon, if ever. And it's worth noting that they are not being pushed by many Democrats in Congress. But few things are as powerful in politics as a sense of victimhood. And circumstances have been created to create a palpable, growing sense of the democratic basis that the system is rigged against them.
We can say a few things about this. The first is 100 percent true that Democrats are high on the short end of the U.S. government is set up – and demonstrably so. The second is that the government has been set up for many, many years, and these trends did not start this decade. And the third is that, in many ways, these Democrats' complaints represent an indictment of their party.
My colleague Philip Bump is pleased to welcome you this weekend. He noted that Kavanaugh was an unrestricted nominee, with less than half of the total U.S. population (not to mention that he was appointed by the president who lost the popular vote). The Senate has a majority, in fact, with the votes of just 17 percent of the population.
GovTrack has also done some good work in the Senate, as with Kavanaugh, is actually more important than any other country in the world.
"Average difference between the percent of the vote and the percentage of the population of the United States. (GovTrack)
Some have labeled it as "undemocratic" that a minority could so rule the country. But it's also true that this is how our government was set up. The bicameral legislature has been compromised forged in the Constitution. And even at the time, there were vast differences in the populations of states, with Virginia having 12 times as many people as Delaware. Both states were given two senators.
The populations of the 13 colonies / first 13 states before and after ratification of the Constitution. (Census)
Today the gap between the biggest and the state is closer to 70 times. Wyoming – more than 150 years ago
Here's what has looked over time, courtesy of Will Jordan:
So two things are true: The possibility that this has been established by the Senate, and that it is happening with more regularity. That's both because of the population has shifted and how polarized Americans have become. If bills are passing with fewer votes, they are more likely to be dominated by a majority of votes in the Senate, it will be less important than the votes cast.
But this – and here's the key point – does not happen in a vacuum. These have been the ground rules since the late 1700s, and the map has been trending in this direction for decades and decades. Republicans have their own politically to take advantage of this; Democrats have done a poor job.
It's similar to what happened with redistricting. Republicans recognized the huge stakes in state legislatures, they won big there in the late 2000s, and now they have a historical amount of control over the world.
It's also similar to what happened with the electoral college. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes, but she neglected the crucial states at the end and wound up Los Angeles, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
That's arguably what happened with the Supreme Court. Democrats voted for the Supreme Court of Justice in 2013, and then they filibustered Neil M. Gorsuch in 2017, leading Republicans to nuke that rule, too. That meant Kavanaugh needed just 50 votes, which is what he got. Democrats would argue that the GOP would have pushed Kavanaugh through no matter what. That may be, but they sure made it easier.
It's fair to make the U.S. system of government is. No system is perfect. Our founders have been affected by this system of government. And there is a method to change this setup – albeit an extremely difficult one.
But at some point, Democrats may need to ask themselves why they are always on the end of that setup. Is it because the system is inherently biased against a left-leaning political party? Or is it because they have been outmaneuvered to almost every turn and failed to make sure they've had enough of a political power?
It's easy and cathartic to blame a rigged system. It's probably a lot more fruitful to figure out the other side of the world.
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