Not since the mid-1990s have Republican senators represented a majority of American voters. The Republican advantage in the Senate is, of course, even more extreme. He won the median House seat, Illinois’s Fourteenth Congressional District, by 2.5 points. Joe Biden won the national vote by 4.6 points in 2020. Michael Klarman: The Democrats’ last chance to save democracyĪnalysis of district-level voting patterns suggests that Republicans enjoy an inbuilt 2.1 percentage-point advantage in contests for the House majority.

In 2020, the Democratic 51.5 percent converted into 222 seats, a narrow margin. But in 2010, the Republican 51.7 percent converted into 242 seats, a decisive majority. In 2010, the Republicans won 51.7 percent of all votes cast in 2020, the Democrats won 51.5 percent-almost exactly the same proportion. Here’s a way to dramatize how extreme the bias is. Despite the overall unpopularity of the post-Trump Republican Party, it is favored to retake the House of Representatives in 2022, because elections to the House systematically overrepresent Republican votes. If a raise in the federal minimum wage does not happen now, it will not happen soon. Plans have also collapsed to impose tax penalties on large companies that do not pay their employees at least $15. Yet it will not happen as part of the COVID-19 relief bill. Almost 60 percent of the public backs it. The majority leadership in both the House and the Senate supported it. The party that won the 2020 election campaigned on such a raise. Look what happened this past week with the proposal to raise the national minimum wage to $15 an hour. But any project of reform needs to take something into account: Congress is no bargain either as a representative institution. The War Powers Act of 1973, the Anti-Impoundment Act of 1974, the creation of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees in the mid-1970s: These and other measures aimed to restrain the presidency and restore power to Congress.įollowing the presidency of Donald Trump, some in Congress are ready for a new round of rebalancing. delivered that complaint in 1973, just ahead of a wave of reforms that sought to cut the presidency down to size. “ The constitutional Presidency … has become the imperial Presidency.”

Jentleson kill switch