U.S. Senate - Reflects "The Real America"

Have you ever wondered why the U.S. Senate is more conservative than the House of Representatives? I hadn't thought about it much either until our family went to see "The Real American's, a one man play about the blue/red divide in the United States. The play examined in humorous fashion how divided our country is and the stereotypes that make up conservative and liberal viewpoints. One comment of a more serious nature caught my attention though: how California with a population of 37 million has two U.S. Senators and 15 states with a total population of 37 million have a representation of 30 U.S. Senators. And of course the majority of those states are conservative. So the deck is stacked in the U.S. Senate toward a conservative view of our legislation, which is why President Obama can easily get his legislation agenda passed by the House but get it bogged down in the Senate. What we end up with is health care legislation that isn't much liked by anyone. Progressives don't like it because it still depends on private health insurers to provide the bulk of coverage, while conservatives don't like it because they view health care reform as taking us down the road to "socialism". Had health care reform been taken up in a U.S. Senate where states like New York and California had representation in proportion to their population, we would have had a true "public option" in the health care reform bill. We would have also had a banking and Wall Street reform bill with more teeth in it. We probably would not have gone into Iraq in the first place with a Senate vote against it. Our founding fathers set up bicameral legislation system to protect the interests of agrarian states and they succeeded. The problem is that doesn't truly reflect who we are as a society today. We are a country mostly made up of urbanites and suburbanites but that fact is not reflected in the U.S. Senate. Another problem is the talent pool of eligible candidates for Senator in a small state are limited, thus we end up with people like Sharon Angle who couldn't get elected dog catcher in California. I don't have a solution except to amend the U.S. Constitution to just have the House of Representatives and do away with the Senate. That will never happen of course. The small states would never agree to that. Another solution would be for California to split into multiple states, along with New York, Texas, and other bigger states. That won't happen either. So what we are stuck with is a major legislative body that lags behind the times, and reflects an America that doesn't exist anymore.