An Open Letter to Harry Reid

The Honorable Harry Reid

United States Senate

522 Hart Senate Office Building

Washington, D.C. 20510-2803

Dear Senator Reid,

Nice job negotiating with John McCain and getting an up-or-down 51%-to-win vote on those nominees. You made Mitch McConnell look like a clumsy political dinosaur. Not difficult, was it?

Now nuke the filibuster in its entirety. Till it glows. No loopholes. It’s not the law, it’s just something someone in the Senate thought up back in the 19^th century. You know the history. The Senate had a rule that any senator could talk as long as he wanted on an issue. Eventually people figured out that this was comically impractical and created a cloture rule, where 2/3 of the Senate could stop debate. Then it became 3/5 in 1975. It could become 51% in 2013. There’s nothing sacred about it. And face it, sucker punching McConnell would be justice mixed with joy itself.

Oh, right, the hallowed traditions of the Senate. Collegiality, dignity of the institution and all that. Shall I give you a window on the thinking of people who aren’t in the Senate, the other 300 million minus one-hundred of us? We don’t give a ding-dong-damn about the hallowed traditions of the Senate. What little collegiality you now enjoy does not concern us.

As for the dignity of the institution, well, if wearing clown suits and Groucho glasses would get some movement out of you, then make it so. Big toed shoes all round.

You are giving us all the impression that you guys can store your worldview in a Dixie cup. It’s all about your daily experience, your wealthy donors, and those unpleasant people from K Street who tell you how to vote. Maintaining the illusion that you are more than a bunch of carefully selected butlers for the billionaire class is more important than getting something accomplished for us. Hint: That’s why colonoscopies poll better than Congress. (Also root canals, lice, and Genghis Khan)

Here’s a joke that cracked us up back when I was about twelve. This guy dies and goes to hell. A demon tells him he wasn’t so bad, so he can choose his own punishment. The demon leads him past all these rooms with people being tormented. Some are boiling, some are burning, some are freezing. Then he looks into a room where people are standing around up to their knees in dog shit, drinking coffee. He thinks, “Well, I guess I’ll get used to the smell after a while.” He grabs a cup of joe and wades in. After about five minutes another demon comes to the door and yells, “Coffee break’s over! Back on your heads.”

Ok, Harry, so the Senate will be an unpleasant place to work if you end the filibuster. So sorry, but you chose your room. Coffee break’s over.

Very Sincerely Yours,

The Minor Heretic

Senatorial Clout

A bill requiring background checks for people buying firearms at gun shows and on the internet was defeated in the Senate last Wednesday. The vote was actually positive, 54-46, but it lacked the 60 votes necessary to overcome a filibuster. Whatever you think of this particular legislation (and 85-90% of Americans seem to approve of it) it shows the fundamental dysfunction in the Senate.

The filibuster has to go. It’s not in the Constitution, it’s not in federal law, it’s just a Senate rule from long ago days of collegiality in that body. In theory, senators representing 13% of our population could kill a bill or a nomination by filibustering.

Looking at the votes for and against this bill, and the percentage of the population represented by those senators, I calculate that 37% of the population was enough to beat 63%. In fact, if we generously assume that all the no votes are from senators representing overwhelmingly Republican states, those least likely to approve of gun control, we find that only about 12% of Republicans oppose universal background checks. That means that only about 4.4% or less of their constituents opposed the measure. Somehow, less than 5% of the population managed to out vote the rest of us.

Beyond the filibuster, there is a wide differential in the political clout of a California citizen compared to a Wyoming citizen. Both states have two senators, but California has over 38 million people, where Wyoming weighs in at 576,000. I was intrigued by this, so I created a spreadsheet and worked out a Senate clout ratio by state. California has a clout ratio of 1, with just over 19 million citizens per Senate seat. Texas, with 13 million per seat, has a clout ratio of 1.5. Your Texan citizen has one-and-a-half times as much political clout as a Californian. It gets much worse. Once you get past the big states such as New York, Florida, and Illinois, the ratio goes past 5. The citizens of Oklahoma get ten times as much influence for their votes as Californians. The smallest 20 states all have ratios over 12. The champion is Wyoming at 66, with my own Vermont second at 61. In a way it is gratifying to know that my vote is worth that of 61 Californians, or ten Tennesseans. But really, is that fair?

Even back when the framers of the Constitution were figuring this out it was considered a half-assed compromise. James Madison, in The Federalist #62, lamely excused it as the best that could be done, with no real political or philosophical principle behind it.

“But it is superfluous to try, by the standard of theory, a part of the Constitution which is allowed on all hands to be the result, not of theory, but "of a spirit of amity, and that mutual deference and concession which the peculiarity of our political situation rendered indispensable." A common government, with powers equal to its objects, is called for by the voice, and still more loudly by the political situation, of America. A government founded on principles more consonant to the wishes of the larger States, is not likely to be obtained from the smaller States. The only option, then, for the former, lies between the proposed government and a government still more objectionable. Under this alternative, the advice of prudence must be to embrace the lesser evil; and, instead of indulging a fruitless anticipation of the possible mischiefs which may ensue, to contemplate rather the advantageous consequences which may qualify the sacrifice.”

How unfair was it in the late 18^th century? Using numbers from the 1790 census, the maximum clout ratio was between Virginia and Delaware, at 11.7 in Delaware’s favor. Most of the original 13 colonies had clout ratios under 3.

Here’s an idea: After each census, take each state’s population as a percentage of the whole country and round it to the nearest whole number. That’s the number of senators it gets, with each state getting at least one. California would get twelve, Texas eight, New York and Florida six each, and four each for Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, New Jersey, and Virginia would get three each. Another ten would get two each, and the rest would get one. That would result in 108 senators, 110 if we gave Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico some kind of representation.

The clout ratios would plummet. Most would stay within 15% either side of 1. Once we get down the list to New Mexico and other states with two million or less inhabitants the ratio goes over 1.5. Instead of topping out at 66 with Wyoming, the Cowboy State has only a 5.44 advantage. We of the Green Mountains come in at 5. While those in Tennessee might whine that they lost their 6:1 advantage over Californians, they can take comfort that Vermonters no longer lord it over them by 10:1.

That’s constitutional amendment, and therefore a less than slim possibility. I propose the concept more as an illustration of gross unfairness rather than a practical pursuit. It illuminates the unfairness stacked on unfairness that is the filibuster. Right now, I’d settle for an end to that idiocy.