G.O.P. obstruction did a lot of damage even during the Obama years
As I write this,
it seems extremely likely that Joe
Biden has won the presidency. And he clearly received millions more votes
than his opponent. He can and should claim that he has been given a strong
mandate to govern the nation.
But there are real questions about whether he will, in fact, be able to govern.
At the moment, it seems likely that the Senate — which is wildly
unrepresentative of the American people — will remain in the hands of an
extremist party that will sabotage Biden in every way it can.
Before I get into
the problems this confrontation is likely to cause, let’s talk about just how
unrepresentative the Senate is.
Every state, of
course, has two senators — which means that Wyoming’s 579,000 residents have as
much weight as California’s 39 million. The overweighted states tend to be much
less urbanized than the nation as a whole. And given the growing political
divide between metropolitan and rural areas, this gives the Senate a strong
rightward tilt.
An analysis by the
website FiveThirtyEight.com found that the Senate in effect represents an
electorate almost seven percentage points more Republican than the average
voter. Cases like Susan Collins, who held on in a Democratic state, are
exceptions; the underlying right-wing skew of the Senate is the main reason the
G.O.P. will probably retain control despite a substantial Democratic victory in
the presidential popular vote.
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