There is a lot of discussion right now about how Senators from small states hold too much power compared to the percent of population they represent. There's a lot of truth to this. Alex MacGillis of The Washington Post wrote in an analysis column in their Sunday Outlook section, and David Sirota and Nathan Newman have done good pieces on the topic as well. The simple facts are that the key gang of six negotiating health care in the Senate Finance Committee represent less than 3% of the nation's population; that the 10 largest states are home to over half the country's population but represent only 20% of the Senate; the 21 smallest states together have less total population than California does.
It's good that people are raising these issues, and pointing out this unfairness. The plain fact of the matter, though, is that absent a constitutional convention suddenly being held, there is no changing this particular injustice. It would take 2/3 of the Senate, after all, to pass a constitutional amendment to restructure the Senate, and virtually all of the Senators from small states would vote against it. So we are stuck for now.
What we ought to be focused on instead are strategies that might work.
One of the great pleasures of my book tour is getting to spend some quality time with great organizers and activists outside of DC that I haven't known well. One of those people is Deb Kozikowski, who I have been hanging out with while in the Amherst/NoHo area.
Deb is a longtime Democratic Party organizer who has been on the DNC representing Massachusetts for many years, and who in 2007, with her longtime friend and fellow rural activist Matt Barron, cofounded an organization called RuralVotes. RuralVotes is one of those really important niche organizations that works on issues that matter to rural and small-town people, but does it from a progressive perspective. One of their most important strategies is to focus on doing small-town radio ads, which are incredibly cheap but reach a lot of voters in rural areas because people spend a lot of time on the road in small-town America. These ads also get a lot of buzz in small-town newspapers.
Right now, they are doing an advertising campaign in the special election for Kirsten Gilibrand's old seat, NY-20. The Albany Project did a nice piece on it here. As I have written before, Democrats don't have to win a majority of voters in rural America to win most elections, but they sure do have to win a higher percentage than Al Gore and John Kerry did. RuralVotes is making a strong contribution to making that happen.
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