This is, I think, an important psychological point we need to get into our heads as the Senate pugs try to shut out "the minority party" from having ANY say at all in the governing of this country. I discovered this startling fact after reading about the pugs threat to use the "nucular" option to prevent "the minority" from filibustering Judicial nominees. I started wondering, how many people are represented by that "minority party"? How many people would essentially be told to "go fuck themselves" (ala Cheney) by this maneuver?
I know that Senators are supposed to represent their state's interest - the population of the respective states isn't supposed to matter - that's why each state gets two senators regardless of the population of the state. But judges are given power, not over states, but over people - ALL the people of a state, and they're given that power for life, so I think the raw population numbers matter most when it comes to "consent" to the appointment of judges.
So, I looked up the numbers. According to 2003 census figures (the latest I could find) and assuming that each senator represents the population of the whole state (which he or she is supposed to), Democratic Senators represent 293,698,914 people, or 50.59% of the population. If you add in Jim Jeffords, who caucuses with the Democrats, the number rises to 294,318,021, or 50.7% of the population. Republican Senators, not withstanding their majority status, only represent 286,174,765 people, or 49.30% of the population.
Of course, there are problems with this method - the citizens of each state are counted twice, once for each Senator. And, of course the citizens of states with at least one Republican Senator can arguably be said to have at least a voice in this extension of Cheney Doctrine. So, since the Senators from those "split-personality" states (13 of them) cancel each other out, let's just look at the total population of states (counted once) that are represented by only one party:
Twenty-one states are represented only by Republicans. Only sixteen states are represented only by Democrats. Those numbers look more... er, majoritarian - but the population figures tell a different story: The 21 Republican-represented states have a total population of 116,868,423. The 16 Democratic-represented states - the ones, remember, whose citizens are being invited to "go fuck themselves" - have a total population of 120,940,051 - that is, 4,071,628
more people than the Republican-represented states.
I did a blog entry with more detail on these numbers at
http://www.webfaerie.com/faerie_bytes/index.php?p=48A table with the raw numbers can be found at
http://www.webfaerie.com/content/constituents.htm. For those who want to make their own database to play with, a comma-delimited text file is at
http://www.webfaerie.com/content/Senators.txt. The table with the states broken out by representation is at
http://www.webfaerie.com/content/StatePartyRep_1.html, and the comma-delimited text file of that information is at
http://www.webfaerie.com/content/StatePartyRep.txt.But, if you're not into the number thing, just remember, the so-called "minority" party in the Senate actually represents MORE people than the so called "majority" party.
**edited for formatting boo-boo**