The Majority Vote?

Whether metaphorically or otherwise, I think most of us have a champagne bottle in one hand, and a gun in the other. We are waiting anxiously for the polls to close tomorrow and the midterm election results to come in for November 7th, 2006. But what are we all anticipating? That there will be one winner and one loser. Either the Republican Party will retain a majority in both houses, or lose that majority in one or more houses to the Democratic Party. If the party we personally support claims victory, we will uncork that champagne and feel a sense of great relief. If our party loses, then we will be charged in an ever-bitter crusade of ill-feeling.

What exactly is important in a majority? Well, in this day and age, a majority in Congress means that a party can push its agenda more freely through both houses. Or can it? Frankly our Senate and House of Representatives are becoming more like pre-Revolutionary France and less like the United States of America. The majority party essentially expects its members to vote as one giant mass, thus trumping the smaller party absolutely. The nobles and clergy in France tried to do this in order to eclipse any influence of the less powerful Third Estate. But if party members are expected to vote with their constituents on nearly every issue (except for a couple touchy ones like torture), then why do American citizens vote for individual representatives? Why are there over four hundred members of the House and one hundred in the Senate?

The minority party in Congress doesn't have to be the minority. It is made the minority. If the majority party votes as one giant coagulated blob, then the minority will need to do the same or else forfeit all of its influence in matters. Thus, we see things such as filibusters that drag out Senate proceedings to no end, until a bill is killed. A filibuster is a useful and important tool in the senate, but the way the trend is going in Congressional matters, the filibuster will come to be used more and more. Because neither party wants to concede to the other, then hardly any lasting or marginally important legislation will ever be passed.