It's dangerous when the minority party rules everyone else

[dajoki]

It’s dangerous when the minority party rules everyone else
Republicans get fewer votes, but they’re about to lock down the Supreme Court.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/minority-party-electoral-college-court-trump/2020/09/25/1163b954-fdfc-11ea-8d05-9beaaa91c71f_story.html

Before the end of the year, Amy Coney Barett will probably be sworn in as a Supreme Court justice — and she may serve for decades. She will have been appointed by an impeached president who lost the popular vote in 2016 and may well continue in office after losing it again in 2020. She will almost certainly be approved by senators representing less than 45 percent of the American population.

Our nation is moving even deeper into minority rule: The House aside, the U.S. government is controlled by the less popular party in a polarized two-party system. We may call this unfair, but that would trivialize the problem. It is entirely permissible under the Constitution, and it is dangerous. When the majority of a nation’s citizens can’t get its candidates elected or its preferred policies passed, the government’s legitimacy is compromised and destabilizing pressure begins to build.

The tendency toward minority rule in the United States, present since the founding, has become more acute. That’s certainly true in the Senate: California has 68 times as many residents that Wyoming has, but the same number of senators. The disparity in population size between the biggest and smallest states is far greater than anything the founders knew.

Residents of rural, sparsely populated states are vastly overrepresented in the Senate. And because the electoral college is based on the number of federal representatives, this rural-state overrepresentation plays out in the selection of presidents, as well. Former vice president Joe Biden could well win the popular vote by three or four percentage points, or even more, this fall and still not be elected.

The House, the most democratic institution in the three branches of government, has no role in selecting Supreme Court justices. That’s the purview of the president and the Senate, which means that the composition of the high court has a minoritarian, rural-state bias built into it as well. (According to a Washington Post-ABC News Poll, only 38 percent of Americans say the replacement for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg should be nominated by Trump and confirmed by the current Senate; 57 percent say the nomination should be left to the winner of the presidential election, and put to a Senate vote next year.) Should a Trump nominee be confirmed, the Supreme Court will consist of six justices appointed by Republicans, even though the party has won the popular presidential vote only once in the past seven elections (George W. Bush, in 2004).

snip//

[radius777]

1. +1. A retrograde white minority is establishing rule

over a diverse majority for decades to come, enabled by serious imbalances (Senate, EC, USSC, etc) the founders could not have foreseen.

[beachbumbob]

2. yep, lots of 1930 Germans would say the same as an even smaller minority took over Germany

[Yavin4]

3. This is only true because of 2 things:

1. The majority does not engage in the political process. See the low turnout in 2016 nor in mid-term elections.

2. The majority, when in power, does not exercise the full might of its power. For too long, the majority has put being bi-partisan above doing what is best for its constituents.

[The Magistrate]

4. The Second Item, Sir, Is the Most Unfortunate

For better or worse, part of our system's design is that all parties should zealously press their interests. When one does and the other does not, the system breaks down.

Once the prosecutor has presented his case, the defense attorney does not rise and begin his presentation by saying 'My friend has made a number of good points in favor of viewing my client as guilty, and you jurors should take them into account when you deliberate'. It is his job to say that the prosecutor has talked a lot of nonesense and that not one word his alleged witnesses have uttered contains a grain of truth.

[Yavin4]

5. The only way to get Republicans to moderate is to legislate big things.

In order for them to overturn these big things, they have to have the legislative power to do so. That forces them to moderate their views to win majority status.

[The Magistrate]

6. I Like That, Sir

It has had a sort of trial run recently with the Affordable Care Act.

When legislation brings actual benefit to people, overturning it is unpopular, which places the enemy in an even deeper hole.

As the old bosses used to say 'Good policy is good politics'.

[Yavin4]

7. Almost every time that the Medicaid expansion is put on the ballot, it wins.

The same is true for raising the minimum wage. Doing big things gets votes and that is the ONLY way to get the Republicans to abandon their current strategy of playing to White supremacists and conspiracy theorists.