Monday, June 15, 2009
Our conservative Senate
Stephen Suh makes some good points regarding our very conservative Senate. I'd only add that the Senate, as an institution, has always been more conservative than the House and the public writ large. It was designed this way. Not that it makes their undermining of the progressive agenda that the American public voted for in 2008 any less frustrating but it's important to understand that this is a feature of the instiution, not a bug with the current occupants.
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One of the "great coincidences" that has made the American constitution work, in fact, is that political disparities between the House and Senate have tended to be modest and short lived and mostly a product of the lag produced by staggered six year terms, rather than its basis as an institution with representation per state rather than per population. As a result, the Senate has had less of an impact on policy than theory would have predicted.
This arises from the political process by which states are admitted and the intense stability of grass roots political tendencies even as party labels change meanings.
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