Democracy does not flourish if rural people are given 30 times the voting power of urban people out of some misplaced nostalgia for a pro-slavery compromise.
Neither does it do so if we keep insisting that people who live in rural areas are "total buffoons" who shouldn't have any say, simply because they inconveniently voted for someone we don't like.
Or simply because of where they live. I agree that the sheer # of counties in low population states does give an advantage to rural voters and politics. But people do live there, and the reality at one end of the state may not the same as reality at the other end, so they need some kind of distinct representation.
This isn't just a state to state problem though. it's intrastate. I do live in Nebraska. Lincoln and Omaha are its two principle cities, and are basically liberal enclaves in an otherwise red state. We have just over half the population I believe but the state always goes red, because even the enclaves aren't uniform in their distribution. Because we have like 30 other counties in the state, some with less than 1000 people.
Or take California for example, an even more extreme one. I hear about California rural rednecks all the time as an actual demographic, even though when most people think California they only think of the cities.
Either way, rural or urban, one is going see the other as tyrannical. Either city dwellers are going to view rural policy as ignorant and out of touch with how "most people" live their lives, or rural dwellers are going to see urban policy and opinion as out of touch with how they live their lives, first and foremost, and how "everyone not living in a city" lives their lives.
Whatever my opinions and beliefs, if you take the phrase "it's only "x" number of people.....", it generally does not come across well regardless of the circumstances. If marginalizing the votes of "only a few hundred black people" is horrible and wrong, you can't take the stance that marginalizing the votes of "a few hundred elderly white folks in the panhandle" is somehow ok. Math is not my strong suit but whether you give each county its vote or conglomerate the counties in to one larger vote against the larger counties....I think the result still comes out the same. Unless we're going to start qualifying the weight of an individual vote based on where you live or whatever politics are prevailing (yikes!), the fact that some people live over here and live one way and other folks live other there a different way is going to remain. What is an equitable solution?
There's also probably a middle ground between the rural 20% of America having a Senate majority and them having no say whatsoever. In an ideal democracy, you could arguably expect the Apparently Rural Buffoons Party to have 20 Senate seats, not 53.
Again, take Nebraska as an example. Even within Lancaster County, which is as liberal as it gets in Nebraska, is 53% Republican and 36% Democrat (2016 data), with most Democrats living in Lincoln, the capital city. So it's not just "rural people" and I feel like with all we've seen in the Trump years, it's antiquated to keep putting it forward like that. Rural Republican voters are the base, but it's the urban, educated, white collar Republicans that have tipped the balance. But another way, I think you're less likely to find a Liberal Democrat out in the boonies than you are to find a staunch Conservative Republican living in the cities. At least around here. We're not a coastal city where the Liberalism swings toward the extremes, although we see a bit of it here in Lincoln being a college town and capital city and all that.
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Topic: AmeriPol thread (Read 4207239 times)