Susan Estrich: How can one small-state senator hold so much sway?
The blame game around the Senate's failure to pass global warming legislation thus far is in full swing. The obvious target is West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, with his one-man veto power over the Democratic Party.
But he's not the only one. There's Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader who can't corral his troops, and of course President Joe Biden, who is supposed to be the master of the Senate. And that's just on the Democratic side.
And while Manchin seems to have finally come around on supporting a broad plan in recent days, good luck on getting the Republican Party on board.
How it escapes responsibility for environmental disaster I don't know. Between the Supreme Court decapitating the Environmental Protection Agency on the last day of the term and the utter failure of bipartisan reform, the party will ultimately have a great deal of explaining to do.
What makes our system's paralysis on environmental reform particularly frustrating is that this is a majority issue. Environmentalists point out, rightly, that a majority of voters consistently support key Biden initiatives to improve energy efficiency, incentivize clean energy production and make electric vehicles more affordable.
According to research by Data for Progress, a pro-reform group, almost two-thirds of voters think we should be investing in cleaner and more reliable sources of energy rather than ramp up our production of fossil fuels and our importing of foreign energy.
As Europe sizzles, as parts of our own country face scorching heat and dangerous fires, we do nothing. But who is "we?"
The problem is the Constitution. How has one man - one Joe Manchin - hold the power he does to paralyze democracy coast to coast? Very simply, because our Founding Fathers, in yet another compromise of which there were many, gave small states equal representation in the newly created United States Senate. One senator from West Virginia has the same power as one senator from California; a voter in West Virginia thus has many times the power one in California does. One-person-one-vote, enshrined by the United States Supreme Court as the constitutional standard for representative government, does not apply to the United States Senate.
In creating an intentionally unrepresentative body, they erected one more check on the power of the new federal government. In the Senate, some say, they created a body where good ideas, supported by a progressive majority, go to die.
Abortion rights legislation has no chance in the Senate, even though it passed in the House and Roe v. Wade is supported by a majority of Americans. We'll see what happens with the House's support of gay and interracial marriage.
The question for a Joe Manchin should not just be what is best for West Virginia and its coal production; it should be what is best as well for our country and our planet. Those are not only interests we share but interests that the threat of global warming makes indivisible. They should be equally indivisible for other Republican senators who see their constituents narrowly only as state residents, and not - as they are - as citizens of this planet with greater responsibilities.