House Repairs

In the 2012 elections for the House of Representatives, Republics won 54% of the races despite receiving fewer votes nationwide than the Democrats. In 2016, the Republicans eked out a narrow victory in the nationwide popular vote, 51% to 49%, but ended up controlling 55% of the seats.

In short, our representative democracy is failing at being representative. Continue reading “House Repairs”

The Senate: The Vestigial House?

We often hear the United States Senate referred to as “the world’s greatest deliberative body.” That expression was coined by the fifteenth President of the United States, the otherwise unremarkable James Buchanan. You could say that the United States Civil War was just Abraham Lincoln cleaning up the mess Buchanan left behind. Since Buchanan was himself once a Senator, calling a body of which he was a member “the world’s greatest” anything smacks of shameless self-promotion.

Continue reading “The Senate: The Vestigial House?”