The Senate Bipartisans' Tiny Constituency

With a group of six bipartisan senators set to kill a public option in health care reform, Matt Yglesias is making sense: “[T]he Senate that vast power is being wielded by people who, in a democratic system of government, would have almost no power. We’re talking, after all, about Max Baucus of Montana, Kent Conrad of North Dakota, Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, Susan Collins of Maine, Mike Enzi of Wyoming, and Chuck Grassley of Iowa. Collectively those six states contain about 2.74 percent of the population , less than New Jersey, or about one fifth the population of California. The six largest states, by contrast, contain about 40 percent of Americans.”