• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

Whom does a US Senator represent?

Whom does a US Senator represent?

  • All the registered voters in their state

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    21

phoenix2020

Generic Internet Poster
DP Veteran
Joined
Nov 4, 2020
Messages
27,340
Reaction score
44,135
Fairly simple question, and I'm curious as to the distribution of responses.

Whom does a US Senator represent?
 
Depends on the $$, though I would hope it was instead both people in their state and - despite no direct technical requirement - everyone in the nation.

It's destructive for congress critters to only ever look out for who elected them. Ditto presidents. Although they are only directly beholden to those who elected them, I'd hope they'd have the decency to not **** the nation to benefit their state.

a la Murkowski and the ever-concerned Collins
 
Last edited:
Senators used to represent their state legislatures. The 17th ammendment was a huge mistake. Now senators represent their donors while pandering to registered voters in their reelection year, career vs citizen legislators. 6 years to build huge war chests with only 1/3 of senators accountable to the voter in any cycle.
 
Other.

The interests of the State. Senators represent the State. It has nothing to do with the citizens of that State. That is what the House is for.
 
Primarily, their political party.
 
Thanks all for the responses so far.

Reason for this thread: as you may know the USCIS administers a citizenship exam. Before 2008 this exam was not standardized and highly inconsistent and I have the anecdote of my in-laws telling me how one of their exams was 90 minutes long including a short essay while the other (a year later in a different state) was five multiple-choice questions!

Anyhow, that inconsistency came to an end in 2008 when at the tail end of the Bush administration, a standardized exam was released. The result of years of development, it was a 10 question test picked from a pool of 100 questions, that you had to write in the answer for and get 6 out of 10 correct.

One of those questions is the poll question, who does a US Senator represent. And the suggested answer was, “all the people in the state.”

That was the standard exam until 2020, when in the wanning days of the Trump 45 administration, the exam changed. This time it was 20 questions picked from a pool of 128, needing to get 12 right. In addition to new questions, many of the existing questions were reworked or had their suggested answer changed. Obviously there can be many threads and discussions on this broader set of changes, but I want to focus on one. The same question asked above remained, however, now the suggested answer was “all of the citizens of the state.”

That version of the exam only lasted a year and change before the Biden administration reverted back to the original 2008 version. Needless to say Trump 47 is thinking about going back to the 2020 one.

So, I was thinking about where I would stand on this specific question and wasn’t sure so I decided to start this poll to see where people land. It’s interesting to see the contrast between the votes so far versus where several administrations have landed. Only @Felis Leo is aligned with the original standing answer, several liberals are aligned with the Trump answer and several MAGA are aligned with something in the middle. Fascinating!

 
Trump would fail it. Big time.
 
Other.

The interests of the State. Senators represent the State. It has nothing to do with the citizens of that State. That is what the House is for.

...I would like to change my answer. Dittoes this.
 
There are 2 US Senators per US state and they represent all citizens of the state.
So each Senator of California with the largest state population of just under 40 million represents approximately 20 million people.
Conversely each Senator from Wyoming with the smallest state population of about 575,000 represents approximately 288,000 people.
So does that mean that a California Senator is worth 70 times more than one from Wyoming?
 
I remember when Rob Portman and Sherrod Brown refused to campaign for the other's political opponents in elections because they saw working together for the people of Ohio as their job.

Then again, confirming a Supreme Court nomination used to be a formality as long as the candidate was qualified, but Democrats opposed John Roberts and Samuel Alito to an even greater extent, despite both having excellent Ivy League legal educations and distinguished judial careers because of "their views".

Well you're staring at a 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court for the next 20 years because of that foolishness.
 
Last edited:
Cookies are required to use this site. You must accept them to continue using the site. Learn more…