Even Senators agree: The Senate is a bad, bad place

Matt Yglesias quotes Arlen Specter on how the Senate is a nasty, mean place.  But then he goes on to discuss something more relevant:  the Senate's role throughout our history in promulgating immoral, undemocratic law and governmental values.

"The truth of the matter is that the Senate has always been problematic. Like the health care bill, the United States Constitution was the result of pragmatic political compromise. That entailed excepting some truly odious compromises—like the existence of chattel slavery. Less odious, but similar in spirit, was giving in to hardball politics from the likes of Delaware and accepting the principle that there should be a special house of the legislature designed to undermine democratic accountability. A few decades down the road, the Senate emerged as the stronghold of the antebellum “slave power.” Henry Adams wrote early in the 20th century that “The most troublesome task of a reform President is bringing the Senate back to decency.” Soon after, the Senate became the place where anti-lynching bills went to die, then later the place where civil rights legislation went to die."  (Emphasis added.)

 It's great how blunt Yglesias is (my first disclosure: we went to the same college, decades apart, and I really don't think that effects my opinion of him.)  However, like everyone else, he seems incapable of speaking, or possibly imagining, real change to fix this problem.  He briefly mentions removing the filibuster, and then discusses in detail how to create more accountability via changing chairmanship rules.   While I think the suggested change is fine, it seems insignificant to the broader problems of Senate corruption, as discussed in my Welcome post.

 Likewise Ezra Klein leads his post on  how cruel the Senate is with a picture of old, sick Senator Byrd being wheeled into the chamber last night to break the filibuster, and vaguely mentions that the rules need to change.  Yes, clearly the idea of all this Senate comity is nonsense.  So is the fact that a very old man is being kept propped up in order keep West Virginia voting democratically on all these cloture votes, frankly.   Rather than address the fundamental corruption that both these things are symptoms of, he, too, merely suggests that the Senate should change its rules.

What are they afraid of?  The Senate, from its inception violated the spirit of the constitution, and functions today in a damagingly undemocratic way.  Our Constitution is intended to be a living, breathing document.  We're supposed to make changes.  The Senate's existence is in many ways the last vestige of the compromises made to include the slave-owning states in the South.  Slavery has been outlawed.  There's no purpose to the Senate now.  It is like our appendix.  We don't need it any more.  For most people, the appendix doesn't cause any trouble, but if it becomes infected, it can kill you.  Surgery removes the infected organ, and then the patient is fine.  It's time to remove the Senate, and return our body politic to some semblance of health.