Is the Senate a Field of Broken Progressive Dreams?
Note: this item by Ed Kilgore was originally published on March 30, 2009 Jonathan Chait has penned a very interesting and important article in the New Republic today about the institutional barriers to Democratic unity, and to achievement of any coherent progressive agenda, posed by the Congress, and especially the U.S. Senate. He covers a lot of ground in this piece, from the floor rules that make 60 votes necessary to pass important legislation, to the “small-state” bias of the Senate’s constitutional structure, which exaggerates conservative power, to the chaotic culture of 100-sun-kings that makes senators resist discipline, to the committee system that gives certain sun kings an outsized ability to shape legislation. If anything, I think Chait understates the importance of this last factor. Seniority-based committee and subcommittee chairmanships are, after all, the primary magnet for special-interest campaign contributions, and also a powerful reinforcer for legislative parochial
