Today’s Moronic Hot Take: The Senate Results Are Unfair Because Democrats Won The “Senate Popular Vote”
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Dems are grumpy that representation in Washington remains to some extent a function of geography, just as it always has, rather than a raw poll of the national population with House seats doled out to each side proportionally.
The idea of a “House popular vote” is goofy, but insofar as House seats are subject to redistricting there’s at least a germ of legitimate grievance in it.
By tinkering with the geographical boundaries for each congressional district, a state legislature can heavily dilute the other party’s electoral power.
“House popular vote” can be (but isn’t always) just a byword for the idea that if district lines were drawn more equitably the party that got the most votes statewide and/or nationally would have more representatives in Congress.
Obviously, though, that idea breaks down into complete stuttering idiocy when it’s applied to the Senate, where the boundaries of each “district” are THE STATE'S BOUNDARIES. They don’t change.
There are people online today who’ve taken this stupidity to its illogical conclusion, complaining about “gerrymandering” in … the Senate.
Complaining about the “Senate popular vote” is one of those things that seems so deeply stupid that it makes me suspicious that there’s a nuance to the argument that I’m missing.
People can’t possibly be whining that the a legislative body that’s designed to control for population differences between the states isn’t … accurately reflecting population differences between the states. Can they?
The House is the chamber that reflects population differences by apportioning more seats to more populous states. The Senate’s the chamber that places all 50 states on an equal footing. Different structures for different functions. By design. Since the beginning
Signed and endorsed by the Founders themselves. What am I missing?
It gets stupider. One of the less interesting Senate races last night for Republicans was Kevin de Leon’s challenge to Dianne Feinstein in California. Feinstein is a Democrat, of course. De Leon … is also a Democrat.
California has a “jungle primary” system in which all candidates compete in the same race and then the top two finishers advance to the general election, regardless of party.
California is so blue that both of those finishers this year were Dems. Feinstein got 3.4 million votes last night while de Leon raked in 2.8 million — more than six million between them, thanks to the fact that the country’s most populous state is dominated by liberals.
The “Senate popular vote” scolds are either ignoring California’s outsized effect on the overall “popular vote” margins or they’re suggesting without really stating that California simply deserves more senators.
Never mind that — say it one more time — the entire point of the Senate is to give big states and small ones equal power. If you’re a Californian who doesn’t like that, move.
The “Senate popular vote” is such a dumb, clearly flawed talking point that it’s already being cycled out for whinier yet more coherent complaints about America’s white women letting the sisterhood down by not voting uniformly for Democrats.
