Defund the Senate

by | Oct 14, 2021 | Politics | 3 comments

Americans once again find their national well being captive to the depredations of the United States Senate. Alas, this is hardly the first time. Throughout its history the Senate has functioned as a barrier against needed social reform, and a bastion of reaction in a government that already maintains severe restrictions on the ability of the American people to better their society. Progressive Americans need to escape from the mentality that they must accept a system serving all of us, and especially our most vulnerable citizens, poorly for the third century in a row.

The history of the United States Senate is hardly a glorious one. It was created during the framing of the Constitution as an insurance policy for the slave states in case the North ever outweighed the South in population. This was in fact quite prescient of the slavers, for a majority of Americans lived at the time in Southern states. But slavers saw a future in which the North, with its industry and enterprise, could outvote the South in a truly representative body, so they created the Senate to guard their privileges.

The Senate has functioned as intended since the slave aristocracy insisted in implanting it in our founding compact. For generations, the Southern-dominated Senate blocked popular civil rights laws. The first federal anti-lynching legislation passed the U.S. House during Teddy Roosevelt’s administration, but the Senate blocked it, and future iterations of the same bill, for decades after T.R. had left the White House. The U.S. House passed its first civil rights bill of the twentieth century in the 1920s; Dixie’s barons in the Senate consigned the legislation to oblivion.

In the information age, the Senate has continued its dubious traditions. A master of parliamentary minutiae, Republican Leader Mitch McConnell has utilized copious applications of the filibuster to block a progressive agenda. The last comprehensive climate legislation to pass the House met its death in the upper chamber. McConnell, with his diabolical intrepidity, used his authority as Leader to steal a U.S. Supreme Court seat from the first Black president. And today, despite the For the People Act having passed the House, Senate conservatives have kept democracy reform bottled up. Our democracy is not safe from the Senate.

At PoliticsNC, we always like to draw North Carolina connections. In the case of the Senate, there are many, and they should not make us proud. Our state’s Senator Josiah Bailey led the Southern Bloc’s filibuster against anti-lynching legislation in the 1930’s. A few decades later, with de jure segregation gone but bigotry still rampant back home, Senator Jesse Helms filibustered the Martin Luther King, jr. Holiday. Senator Sam Ervin left a complicated and in many ways troubling legacy, but his achievements were also considerable. Besides Ervin and Terry Sanford, our senators have largely been unremarkable.

What is to be done? It’s not hopeless. Across the pond, Great Britain experienced similar frustrations with the undemocratic House of Lords, so they stripped the chamber of any power over lawmaking. American progressives should defang the United States Senate by removing its power to influence legislation or appointments. Our democracy is endangered, more so than at any time since the Civil War. We can’t afford to let the Senate drag us down the road to a tyrannical state.

3 Comments

  1. j bengel

    While you’re about it, how about we do away with the Electoral College as well. Both serve only to subvert the will of the majority, as evidenced by the fact that two elections in this century alone have ushered a Republican into the White House who failed to win a majority of the popular vote. Bills with overwhelming popular support go to the Senate to die on the altar of McConnell’s filibuster. Hopefully he joins them sooner than late. Though by then it may already be too late.

    The House of Lords was devised to give the British gentry their own power over the rule of the empire as a counterweight to popular majority. Without that provision, the UK might yet be a monarchy subject to the Divine Right of Kings.

    The serfs of feudal England also have their analog in present day America (and elsewhere). And for so long as the sheep flock to the shepherd, it will remain so. The slavering loyalty of the MAGAtt Cult positively reeks of it, despite all their claims to the contrary. It has always been so. That is not unique to America, nor to this period of history.

    But don’t worry. It will all be over soon. The stasis of the current system will ultimately lead to all of us being replaced by whatever species is destined to follow homo sapiens. I hope they’re smarter than we are.

  2. Bobby Padgett

    If it had not been for Nixon and Watergate, Sam Ervin would have been on the dustpile of history as yet another Southern bigot in the Senate as he drafted the Southern Manifesto, opposed the Voting Rights Act, Immigration and Naturalisation Act. He gets a pass from liberals because of Watergate and his strict constructionist viewpoint that opposed expanded police powers. The only reason he got the committee chairmanship was that he was not running for re-election.

  3. Andrew

    Really enjoying your articles over the past few months! You have a keen understanding of the nuances in NC politics and history that is lacking among much punditry these days.

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