Very interesting article.
in the past, the parts of the country granted outsize power by the Constitution — less populated states, which tend to be more rural — voted in broadly similar ways as large states and urban areas.
This similarity meant that the small-state bonus in the Senate and Electoral College had only a limited effect on national results. Both Democrats and Republicans benefited, and suffered, from the Constitution’s undemocratic features.
In recent decades, Americans have increasingly sorted themselves along ideological lines. Liberals have flocked to large metropolitan areas, which are heavily concentrated in big states like California, while residents of smaller cities and more rural areas have become more conservative.
This combination — the Constitution’s structure and the country’s geographic sorting — has created a disconnect between public opinion and election outcomes.
Geographic sorting has helped cause a growing disconnect between public opinion and election results, and this disconnect has shaped the Supreme Court, as well
The court’s membership at any given time is dictated by the outcomes of presidential and Senate elections over the previous few decades. And if elections reflected popular opinion, Democratic appointees would dominate the court. Yet the court is now dominated by a conservative, six-member majority
There are multiple reasons (including Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s decision not to retire in 2014 when a Democratic president and Senate could have replaced her). But the increasingly undemocratic natures of both the Electoral College and Senate play crucial roles.
Mr. Trump was able to appoint three justices despite losing the popular vote. Similarly, if Senate seats were based on population, none of Mr. Trump’s nominees — Justices Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — would likely have been confirmed, said Michael J. Klarman, a law professor at Harvard.
Senate Republicans also would not have been able to block Mr. Obama from filling a court seat during his final year in office.
Even Justice Clarence Thomas’s 1991 confirmation relied on the Senate’s structure: The 52 senators who voted to confirm him represented a minority of Americans
The current court’s approach has magnified the disconnect between public opinion and government policy, because Republican-appointed justices have overruled Congress on some major issues
The list includes bills on voting rights and campaign finance that earlier Congresses passed along bipartisan lines. This term, the court issued rulings on abortion, climate policy and gun laws that seemed to be inconsistent with majority opinion, based on polls