Depressing fact o’ the day

“By 2040, if population trends continue, 70% of Americans will be represented by just 30 senators, and 30% of Americans by 70 senators.”

In contrast to the underepresented majority, the 30% of Americans represented by those 70 senators would be white, rural, and poorly educated.

Even if the remaining 70% could manage to elect a President, it would be meaningless if the opposing party can control the House and 67 senators because, in the worst case scenario, the President and Vice-President could be impeached and convicted almost instantly after their inaugurations, thus making the Speaker of the House the President. (Per the Constitution, the House need not choose a member as its speaker. It could, for example, choose the person who just loss the election for the presidency.)

It is not realistic to expect the House of Representatives to maintain the sanity of the political process, because that body is increasingly filled with extremists from both sides of the spectrum, thanks to the widespread gerrymandering of “safe” districts.

40 thoughts on “Depressing fact o’ the day

  1. Here is what I think I know about the future in a general sense: People always think the future is going to be like the present only more so, and it never is. You can see that in the contrast between the “50’s” (which, in the US, stretched from the mid 1940’s to the early 1960’s) and the “60’s”, which ran from the early-mid 1960’s to the mid-1970’s). It shows up in science fiction written in those periods, which I used to read a lot of.

    This error is caused by an inability to see major changes coming, economic, social, technological, and so on. This is only to be expected. No one in the 1920’s could have seen the Great Depression coming, and that it would cause Hitler to happen in Germany, and so on. Not any more than the Chinese people could see the Great Leap Forward or the Cultural Revolution coming, or the rise of capitalism in China after the opening of the American market after Ronald Reagan opened the US market to them.

    In the 70’s people began to worry about overpopulation and pollution, and we got fiction like Soylent Green and the later novels of John Brunner. (I wonder if anyone reads Brunner today?) This became a standard trope in many movies – the future was a dystopian hellscape. That has not happened, at least not yet.
    I’m really tired of that trope, but it isn’t dead yet.

    Now, I am probably thinking in terms of social change. What we face now is climate change, and that is a far better documented and far less controllable change than the previous ones.

    The problem now seems to be that too many people are thinking the future will be like the present, and people are ignoring the change we can see coming in the form of climate change. Yet we are at least beginning to move on that, and we are a civilization with large economic, productive, and technological resources. We cannot tell if the end is coming, or just great changes.

    Politically? The hold of fanatics and oligarches on the red states relies on their ability to keep on deceiving people, and getting them to believe things that are not so, and getting them to hate people they have no real reason to hate. Who knows how long they can keep that up? Yes, they can fool some of the people all of the time, because those people WANT to be fooled. They want to hate.

    But how many are that bad? I think I will trust in the saying “Murder will out”. The truth comes out eventually. Reality sinks in on most people, even if they will not say so. You can get some people to ignore it or scream it down, but evenutally it gets accepted. Seen many holocaust deniers around lately? I am sure they are still out there, but it’s not a growing thing any more.

    I hope so, anyway. A lot of this post has been things I think that I hope are true. (Fingers crossed.) The thing is not to lose heart about the future. It may tough. But we can start laying the foundations of a decent one. The first step on that is not giving into despair. (I am scarcely a ray of sunshine myself, but I know despair does not lead anywhere good.)

    Anyway, at the end, let me repeat what I said at the beginning: People always think the future is going to be like the present, only more so. It never is. Take from that what you will.

    1. That’s true. It’s the reason why so many sci-fi portrayals of the future turn out to miss the mark by so much. History tends to be cyclical, not linear, and the reason why it is not linear is because negative trends eventually get recognized as such, and that recognition spurs human intervention to reverse them.

      That said, some bad trends may not be reversible. The world may be able to reverse Trumpism some time in the not too distant future, but we may not be able to reverse or even stem the tide of cataclysmic climate change and extreme weather events. It may be too late already. And that, in turn, could create new waves of Trump-like ultra-nationalism as countries try to hoard precious resources (water, e.g.).

    2. My new year’s resolution this year was the motto: No One Knows The Future.

      Mostly a reminder that extrapolation is not reality. Things come to pass in due time that had been one of many possibilities & seemed improbable.

      Foreknowledge is not assured. Is not as magically powerful as we think. We’ll always need to react, & that’s how we should prepare.

      COVID outed how unprepared we were. But we really should have known that, before. We just didn’t want to know. Heads-in-the-sand.

      I haven’t lost heart, bc that’s a choice. It’s not contingent on reality, not really. Still, a life’s worth of getting my ducks lined up & a tank full of gas doesn’t make me feel as set as my “security” tells me I should.

      Instead, I feel I’ll always need to keep my toes tapping. The world keeps getting less navigable. There’s no Easy button & no coasting. When I cross the finish line, I’ll still be running full tilt.

      1. Do you think he’ll have better luck than those Mayans? I guess we won’t be around to verify it.

  2. If you don’t like it, petion your state legislators and congressional representatives and senators to amend the Constitution. It’s been done before, Senates used to be selected by their state’s legislators, not by statewide elections as they are now. (Good luck getting Senators to vote in the affirmative to reduce or dilute their power.)

    The real problem is the House of Representatives needs to be reapportioned. That can be done by an act if Congress and signed by the Chief Executive.

    1. If I recall correctly, Antonin Scalia wrote that he was in favor of making it easier to pass and ratify constitutional amendments as an alternative to the Supreme Court reinterpreting the existing provisions to make them more workable today. The problem with amending the Constitution today is that nothing the slightest bit controversial could be proposed and ratified.

      I am not sure what you mean by reapportioning the House. First, reapportionment is passed by the states, not the federal government. Do you mean that the federal government should pass a law making gerrymandering illegal? If so, I have my doubts such a law would be constitutional. Then again, maybe it would be.

      1. The membership of the House of Representatives was fixed at 435 (before Alaska and Hawaii) in 1929. (Now it’s 438.) There are debates about what the total membership should be, based off of how many constituents each representative represents.

        Changing the size of the House of Representatives would change the electoral collage, because the electoral college is senators + representatives. We are not going to add more senators unless we admit more states, so the real way to make the electoral college accurately reflect the population (and the political representation) of all the states is to increase the size of the House.

        1. I had never considered that as a way to make the electoral college fairer to residents of larger states. It’s actually a really good idea. In 1929 the US population was 121 million, up from 76 million in 1900. That’s a huge population increase in less than 30 years. My back of the envelope math tells me a congressional district contained approximately 278,000 people after the size of the House was increased to 435 members. It was 435, not 438. The electoral college has 538 because the 23rd Amendment gave the District of Columbia 3 electoral votes. Today, a congressional district has roughly 761,000 people, almost 3 times as many people. So irregardless of making the electoral college more fair to residents of larger states, there are arguments for increasing the size of the House.

          However, I can see a couple of problems with increasing the number of representatives. First, tripling the number of representatives wouldn’t make the House chamber physically larger so seating that many congress people might be an issue. The other problem is that increasing the number of representatives to make the electoral college fairer to residents of larger states would make the electoral college fairer to residents of larger states. Another way to put that is it would reduce the Republicans structural advantage in the electoral college. Getting Republicans to go along with the change in our current hyper partisan climate would be difficult if not impossible. While the change would only require a statute, not a constitutional amendment, the senate filibuster would be an obstacle. I suppose you might be able to get more Republicans to go along with increasing the House if the legislation didn’t go in to effect for 10 or 20 years. But even with that it might be a bridge too far for most Republicans in Congress.

          1. We solve that by adding another or increasing the federal district and expanding or building additional buildings for Congress.

            That’s the fix.

          2. It’s not really the case that smaller states favor Republicans, at least not by much.

            States with one or two districts that are Republican:
            1.Alaska (increasingly competitive)
            2.Idaho
            3.Montana
            4.North Dakota
            5.South Dakota
            6.West Virginia (down from 3 Congressional districts)
            7.Wyoming

            Democratic states with one or two Congressional districts
            1.Delaware
            2.Hawaii
            3.Maine (can be competitive)
            4.New Hampshire (can be competitive)
            5.Rhode Island
            6.Vermont

            So, prior to the redistricting after the latest census, there were 6 states with less than 1.5 million or so people that were Democratic and 6 states that were Republican.

            Also, states generally refer not to remain small population, and don’t necessarily have much say in the matter (freedom of movement) and states that had just 2 Congressional districts not that long ago – Utah and Nevada – both now have four.

            The one thing that might be closest to the truth, is that slower growing states by population like Alabama, Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi and Ohio are heavily Republican or are trending heavily Republican, but that’s more or less offset by faster growing states that are still solidly Republican like Florida and Texas and is also offset by slow population growth Democratic states, especially in New England and the Northern Midwest.

            While it is something of a new cliche to say that increasingly the ‘losers’ of the modern economy are voting Republican, and the ‘winners’ are voting Democratic, the evidence to back this up, especially at this macro level, is still thin to nonexistent.

          3. Or the USA could just give the office to the person with the most votes, and avoid all those complicated machinations. That would make every American’s vote have the same value, pretty much the same as any sensible country.

  3. Just popping in to point out the house is definitely not populated by “extremists of both spectrums”.

    You’ve got a very small handful of goofballs on the left. Then you’ve got a LARGE number of sedition-happy nitwits who aren’t qualified to manage a Wendy’s on the bad side of town over on the right.

    In this current climate the two sides are NOT equal thanks to Trumpism, QAnon, etc. You cannot find ANYONE equal to a Boebert or Gaetz on the left. Not remotely close. They make AOC and her ilk look like elder statesmen.

    1. Last time I looked, Democrats weren’t actively trying to overthrow Democracy, so yeah, “both sides” is total bullshit.

      1. They are certainly not equivalent.

        The extremists on both sides are irresponsible, but the irresponsible Democrats don’t issue death threats, don’t oppose the rule of law, and don’t try to overthrow the government.

        The adults are still in control of the Democratic Party, but there is no assurance that this is a permanent state of affairs.

    2. I didn’t suggest the two sides were equal.

      Since so many seats are safe, it is the primaries that actually determine who goes to Washington, and safe primary winners trend away from the center.

      I think it is a matter of opinion, but if you were to create an alternate universe where absolute power went to one person, I’m not convinced that the Earth-2 run by Lauren Boebert would be any worse than the Earth-3 run by Ilhan Omar.

      But they would be bad for different reasons.

      I know I would not like to live in either.

  4. That’s assuming that hellholes like California will continue to grow when in reality there’s already a mass exodus from it.

    1. Nominate for Most Disconnected From Reality Post In This Thread.

      California is a big place. It’s home to many styles of living. Not that each area isn’t a hellhole in its own way. But its cities & burbs are much like those in other states. Most of the land is farm, forest, mountains & desert. The people who choose to live on that land probably don’t fit into your “hellhole” image very well.

      There are lots of out in the middle of nowhere places. Where people can live & experience peace. I don’t happen to be someone who craves that. For me, peace is loneliness. As always, YMMV.

  5. It’s important to remember too that the House can choose ANYBODY to be the Speaker. Doesn’t have to be an elected Member.

    1. Very true. Here is the nightmare scenario: the losing Presidential candidate is made Speaker of the House. The House impeaches and the Senate convicts the winning President and VP. The losing candidate becomes President.

      In the sane world we once knew, this would be utterly inconceivable, but the norms we once thought inviolate are now being violated one by one.

  6. IIRC made this post on other crap previously. From (4) yrs ago ~ it’s probably got worse. The only fair way to do the electoral college would be to use fractions iow very messy.

    Population:

    AK
    ID
    MT
    WY
    UT
    ND
    SD
    NE
    KS
    OK
    AR
    LA
    MS
    AL
    —–

    14 States = 72 Electoral Votes = 32,840,000 pop.

    CA = 55 Electoral Votes = 39,144,000 pop.

    America is not a representative anything and each state has their own election laws.

    And all the small pop red states listed have (2) Rep senators, except MT.

    Interesting NE just elected a female Dem governor that’s how bad Brownback
    screwed up! Kinda like cheney/bush screwing up soooo fuckin’ bad America
    elected a black Muslim potus! 😉

    Bill Maher joked why do we need (2) Dakotas?

    As always, America survives despite itself!

    Yielding back the balance of my time …

    1. And of course Republicants are trying to rig the Electoral College. It’s already rigged, eh.

      1. Good news ~ because of climate change ie rising surface temps 90 yrs from now the Earth will be unliveable. 😮 Scorpions/cockroaches unite!

        1. My own good news is… I just changed my Amazon Smile charity to UNICEF, was Nature Conservancy, thanks to latest John Oliver outing their carbon offsets fraud.

        2. I think it will be around 2040ish that the Earth will be in a really bad way. Once the poles melt and they go from reflecting energy to absorbing it, the oceans are going to heat up very very quickly.
          When Earth’s temperature gets hot enough, pollen is no longer viable and food sources are going to get bad very quickly.
          Here in Oklahoma this summer, my tomato plants sat in 105 degree heat for about 2 or 3 months and the plants did not fruit at all. I watered them every day, and they were lush and covered in flowers, but the pollen failed.
          I’m an optimist overall, but even I can see that Lake Mead and the Colorado river is only a few years away from being done.
          And this is only 2022. Like I said, I give it until 2040 at the very latest. I really really hope I’m wrong.

    2. It was Kansas that elected a Dem.

      Louisiana did the same. Yes Jindal was a dope. His GOP replacements were also dopes. No wonder Edwards keeps getting elected.

      The problem is they don’t mind sending dysfunctional idiots to Washington. They want the Federal government to be dysfunctional.

      1. Once upon a time, so long ago that I was going to be a Republican for four or five more years (I had basically been one since 1956), Jindal begged the GOP to “stop being the stupid party”. But since then, he has come to love Big Stupid.

        1. I have no idea what Jindal is doing now, but I read this curious fact on Wikipedia: “As of July 13, 2021, Jindal is the only living former Louisiana Governor”

          Seems odd when you consider that we have five living ex-Presidents.

      2. Yea KS not NE ~ typo from (4) yrs ago. KS also “progressive” re: abortion.

        Toto, have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore. 😮

        carry on …

  7. I’m even more depressed by the state & direction of the world than Scoopy. I’m sure not the right person to make a case for a more optimistic view. I’d vote for Scoopy, come to that. I can’t predict much happening to improve the way things work. OTOH, some good things can & will happen that I also can’t predict. So, there’s that. A candle in the dark.

    I agree that the Senate has too much power. SCOTUS, above that, POTUS right up there somewhere, too. State & local, in my view, heavily corrupted by power. I mean, look at SF, bc its politics has gotten some attention lately. The politics is nasty, the attention has been bc voters are fed up. A public that hangs together & readily adopts good practices in the face of COVID, still suffers injustice, division. All the perils of human nature.

    As for “poorly educated,” I have an opinion about that. While I do have the doubt, that the good we read into data about outcomes correlated to higher education are more selection effects rather than caused by the learning itself… IOW, raising standard of living by educating the populace plateaus at mere literacy.

    Yet, I’ll never shake the wishful thought that a bigger fraction of us going to college promotes the good in us vs. the venal. Seeing a wider world gives us brain space to take in a more panoramic view of humanity. And, w/ that thought, I’ll chug the rest of my beer.

  8. Due to Article Five of the Constitution, ” … no State, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate” by an amendment. So, equal senators for each state is “baked in”. Changing state borders is easier, but still very unlikely.

    1. There’s always a work-around. Nothing in the Constitution prevents the dramatic reduction of the powers of the Senate, comparable to the way the UK has gradually reduced the power of the House of Lords, in which case the equal Suffrage would have almost no meaning.

      (None of that, of course, is going to happen. This sort of argument is just mental masturbation. The current system will endure.)

  9. To which I say, “So what?”. The Senate isn’t the legislative body that’s supposed to have proportional representation. That’s what the House is for. And Congress was designed that way on purpose.

    And given the current population trends with many people moving out of Blue states and heading to Red ones, those percentages are likely to shift as years go by.

    Political winds never stop shifting… for better or worse.

    1. Even the House itself is not really proportional to voter alignment because of gerrymandering. In 2016, for example, Republicans won only 49% of the votes cast for the House candidates, but ended up with 55.4% of the seats.

      ———-

      The Senate was created that way because they had no choice if they wanted to have the colonies united. Both Jefferson, father of the Declaration, and Madison, father of the Constitution, opposed it. In Federalist #62, Madison revealed that the equal suffrage in the Senate was a compromise, a “concession which the peculiarity of our political situation rendered indispensable.”

      And the core of that peculiarity? Slavery.

      As for the creation of the Senate to strengthen the small states, Madison himself argued that was basically a pretext. When the convention reconsidered the makeup of what would ultimately become the Senate, Madison pointed out that “the real difference of interests lay not between the large and small, but between the Northern and Southern States. The institution of slavery and its consequences formed the line of discrimination.”

      1. The point is this: it’s not the makeup of the senate that’s the problem, it’s the function. We’ve had one imbecile from the trailer park of the nation ruling as if he were emperor, and that shows you something is severely broken. Many somethings. The senate has too much power, the filibuster has to go, and that’s just for starters. Being able to eject senators and reps from parties is also a must. “Don’t want to play ball? Good luck caucusing with the other guys, you’re now (i) numbnuts.” Getting stuck with double agents who are absolutely playing for the other team is bullshit, as the last couple years have shown. It hasn’t been 50/50 its been 49/51.

        1. As I said, the Constitution forbids changing the parity system in the Senate, but it does not prevent an amendment from reducing the Senate’s power, as the UK did with the House of Lords.

          It’s just … well … it ain’t gonna happen.

          Might be a good idea. Might be a bad one. But it ain’t a realistic one.

          1. I am not sure that Article 5 makes it impossible to change the parity of states Senate representation. Article 5 says “no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate” but it doesn’t say anything about an amendment that replaced Article 5. I am not sure that would work, mainly because it would be up to the Supreme Court. I am fairly sure that the Supreme Court as currently constituted would allow such an amendment, but who knows what the future will bring? I realize that many people might not have a great deal of respect for the conservatives on the Court after the Dobbs decision. But while increasingly numbers of Republicans seem to care more about getting and keeping power than in following the law, Supreme Court justices don’t have to worry about winning partisan primaries. Remember, the Court, including all 3 of Trump’s nominees, refused to overturn the 2020 election.

            But the biggest obstacle to making the number of senators be dependent on population is the fact that 3/4 of the states have to ratify a constitutional amendment before it can take effect. That means that 38 states, including at least some with smaller populations have to agree to give up their outsized Senate representation. I think that is the same reason the electoral college is unlikely to be replaced.

          2. The day of the constitutional amendment has passed, and not just for that purpose. There has been no amendment for 30 years, and no significant amendment in more than 50 years.

            If the ERA ever passes, which is looking increasingly unlikely, it will be the last for many more decades, if not forever.

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