That is a designed in feature of our government. The senate is set up to give power to the smaller states and to keep them from being pushed around by larger ones. The senate’s power may have increased slightly but so has the executive and judicial. Large states have much more impact with those so by and large it balances out. If anything I would say the power has shifted to larger states over the years. We push comes to shove liberals are not upset that Montana has to much political power, they are upset that it has any.




They don't need the approval of either of those bodies. The constitution gives the senate the power to set up their own rules and no one is given oversight of those rules. If the senate were to decide they could remove the filibuster option or modify it to make it weaker. They only need 50 votes to that so all they really lack is the political will.




I don't know I think if dems had focused on issues were there was common ground they could accomplish a lot. The problem is they have been focused on pushing through an agenda that never had any chance of gaining republican support. They are having trouble even getting support from the more moderate portions of their own party. I don’t believe the republicans are fighting them simply to be partisan so much as the dems have picked partisan issues to fight about.

There is a laundry list of things like immigration and banking that they could have focused their energy on and gotten real bipartisan support. They failed.

Bush was able to get bipartisan support for his programs even when they didn’t pass. Obama should at least be able to be less polarizing then Bush.

The bottom line is independents control this country right now and they want compromise. A lot of Obama’s appeal was that he was going to heal these problems not aggravate them. Now the independents are set to send a message. I honestly hope Obama and company get the message and change because unlike Rush I would like to see Obama succeed, I just don’t have much faith that he will.