Re: We are all Slave now.
 

All you’re saying is the SF libs win the primaries. I’m sick of doing all the math around here, go cut out the south from the last Sebate vote and let’s see how safe a north only senate seat is?

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Not sure Dianne Feinstein really counts as a liberal, for that matter. [eta: Dianne Feinstein is a liberal, but she is not on the party's left wing.]

I think you may be barking up the wrong tree in looking at party affiliation for this exercise. The bigger issue is that rural interests are over-represented in the Senate, and big cities are under-represented. The current mix of Senates means, e.g., that the country spends too much on farm subsidies and not enough on mass transit. Maybe you solve this by saying that the Senate continues as-is, but that Alaska, Idaho, Montana, the Dakotas, Wyoming, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma all have to share two Senators. Without doing any math, I'm guessing those states' combined population is less than Michigan's.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

This is the problem with distributing Senate Seats based on population - should they go to the states or should they go to roughly equal sized districts? So if California has 6 senators they apportion them instead of electing them all statewide.

Given the size of those districts, they'll all be urban dominated, just by different cities. Fundamentally, rural America doesn't count for much anymore in population, GDP or anything else, except for voting power. And the pork they get from that may be all that keeps rural America afloat.

I'd note the urban areas on the coasts are doing just fine despite having to support the rural areas financially.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Speaking of SF liberals, maybe we could ban Aaron Peskin from having beds in his home so that he has to spend money on a hotel to boost the economy.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Can we limit this so it only bans office coffee? Because office coffee is an abomination to the Lord.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

I read this as "I think Hank is bad at math."

I get the current plan unfairly gives senators to small states. it was a plan when there were 13 states that we are now stuck with. And listen, if we go Brave New World and redistribute senate seats like the house, I'm sure Michigan gets 3. I get all that. I got 670 on the math part of my SATs.

My point is that once California gets 10 senate seats they'll all go to liberal dems because LA/SF will outweigh the rest of the state. Last actual senate race the R got 37%* of the vote- can you live with 3.7 of the 10 California senators being R? Rhetorical, I know you wouldn't, but face it, you ain't about making it fair, and representative, you're about making the senate forever liberal.

And what's so special about the California border? Break it in two- Lower and upper. And NY? Make it urbania and Hudsonville- Florida? SouthBeachatopia and RedNeckville. But don't tell me you want all people represented.

*and you had one job- go look at senate election returns and back out the LA area and see what happens to the 63/37 split. Do you so lack intellectual curiosity that you reply to me as if my IQ is in the 90s instead of actually doing the work to have an intelligent discussion?

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

you're saying have a second house, just with bigger districts? they why have two houses? aren't they supposed to be different in make up?

And that wouldn't result in more dem senators, unless the dems gerrymander.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

- I think GGG is wrong in suggesting that small states are just as urban as big states.

- I think GGG is right in saying that if California has ten Senators, they don't have to be selected by statewide vote.

- Tom Draper spent a lot of money on an initiative to split California into smaller states, but the courts struck it from the ballot.

- I don't think there is any present danger that the Senate is going to change.

- I give work to outside lawyers, not the other way around.

- When the country was founded, people would use the plural tense referring to the country -- the United States are .... Now it's singular.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

The guy who did the PBS Cival War said prior to the war people said “these United States,” and after “the United States.” Not sure what that has to do with any of this, but there you go.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Can you read? I said some small states are and gave examples.

For details on degree of urbanization of states, see here.

Small states where more than 90% of the population is urban: Rhode Island, Nevada, Utah, Hawaii

As an aside, the rural population of New York exceeds the total population of almost half the states. It's sort of odd that they're an afterthought for a couple Senators while other rural populations a fraction of the size of NY's get their own Senators.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Six year terms versus two year terms is also a very significant difference.

The Senate was designed to solve a problem, which was states viewing themselves as retaining significant sovereignty and a need to get the different states to unify. In Lebanon, the longest lived (and perhaps soon the only) democracy in the Middle East, they have had to address a different issue than our regionalism or state's rights, which is sectarianism. So they've had representation divided among religious groups, with a pre-defined balance of power (it did take a war to deal with some demographic shifts). In Europe, senior houses often have been used to give fading aristocracies their last breath of representation, and have had to change as power structures change. Maybe the Senate today could be redesigned to solve different problems and be more representative, much as the House of Lords today looks kind of different than the late 18th century House of Lords.

But, regardless, Puerto Rico for the 51st State!

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

I have been trying to ignore this entire discussion about the Senate. But is it really so hard to understand that two chambers of Congress, one with proportional representation and one with equal representation was literally a precondition of the constitutional union of the states? It is quite literally called the Great Compromise, because states both populous and rural had these exact same concerns then, especially when the western colonies were claiming land all the way to the west coast.

Same thing with the electoral college, which has also fallen out of favor on the left, which was also put in place so Hillary would have to visit states like Wisconsin and not just NY and CA or TX. I guess I don't understand why there's not more effort to just appeal to voters in the middle of the country, rather than try to constantly complain about something you're not going to be able to change.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

fairly sure we all know the discussion is academic, and why stuff is how it is.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

She seems to imply academic discussion is a bad thing.

I mean, we're lawyers.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

So on things you may have more interest in, are you enjoying watching the slow-mo train wreck that is US trade policy these days?