[sanderjd]

That's because the US government is not organized as a democracy, but rather as a republic. The Senate is not intended to be democratic, it is intended to be a deliberative body of representatives who come to consensus on legislative questions. It's quite a large deliberative body, so its method of consensus is superficially akin to democracy in that many questions are answered through voting, but it isn't, and was never intended, to be democratic in the pure sense. Along the same lines, it is only recently that we began democratically electing Senators.

None of this is by accident, and was done this way for similar reasons as companies have for running themselves un-democratically.

[mcny]

> That's because the US government is not organized as a democracy, but rather as a republic. The Senate is not intended to be democratic, it is intended to be a deliberative body of representatives who come to consensus on legislative questions. It's quite a large deliberative body, so its method of consensus is superficially akin to democracy in that many questions are answered through voting, but it isn't, and was never intended, to be democratic in the pure sense. Along the same lines, it is only recently that we began democratically electing Senators.

How often is there a consensus in the Senate? It seems like almost everything happens along party lines. Who are senators supposed to represent?

I've heard this "a republic, not a democracy" so many times. Don't get me wrong. I am very grateful for a nation of laws. However, it doesn't seem that being a republic, not a democracy is what is protecting the rights of the minority or the rule of the law.

It just feels like the purpose was to prevent wild swings but I'm afraid what is supposed to protect us from abrupt, wild swings will make it near impossible to correct a slow swing.

[slededit]

Party line votes were historically more rare (under 50%). That has changed dramatically over the last few years and is a belleweather of the deep divisions in the country.

There were always divisive issues but there are also a lot of boring and mundane work. 90% party line votes are evidence the parties feel it's not politically safe to be seen agreeing with others on any issue regardless of how mundane. That isn't something you'll fix short of changing the electorate or getting rid of elections.

[dragonwriter]

In the period between the New Deal and now they were usually rarer because the New Deal Coalition broke the old party alignment and it took a long time before the parties each had a coherent ideological position again; that was a naturally unstable position.

It had little to do with boring, mundane work, it has to do with the fact that liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats—when neither of those meant centrist, they meant more to the left or right than the center of the other partt—used to exist, significantly, in both the electorate and elected office.

This was always an unstable condition, and the trigger for accelerating it's inevitable Denise was Johnson's civil rights position. But it still took a few decades after that for the realignment to complete.

[slededit]

Except that the current increase in partisan voting began in the 2000s. The 50s were closer in the mid 70% but for the period since partisan voting was under 50%

[scarejunba]

It's a democracy and a republic. The UK is a democracy but not a republic.

[sanderjd]

The administration of the US government has no elements of direct democracy (that I can think of). It is a republic with democratically elected representatives.

[dragonwriter]

“A republic with democratically elected representatives” (like “a monarchy in which practical authority is durably assigned to a body of democratically elected representatives”) is an example of a representative democracy, which is not only a kind of democracy, it's by far the most common kind of democracy.

[sanderjd]

Bah, this part of the thread is stuck in the weeds debating definitions; my real point is in my initial comment.

[M2Ys4U]

Representative democracies are democracies as well. Everybody voting on everything isn't the only way to organise a democracy.

[sanderjd]

We've entered pretty pedantic territory now IMO, but I think it's much more useful to consider the US government itself a republic because that's how its day to day operation is conducted. Thinking of it as a democracy leads to questions like the thread starter, for instance about un-democratic committee and leadership structures, which are actually non sequiturs because it's not a democratic system.