The Senate's transformation into a funhouse-mirror version of the House is a quiet emergency for democracy, because its members are still allocated equally among states. And since there now are a greater number of sparsely-populated, mostly-white, right-leaning states than there are heavily-populated, racially-diverse, left-leaning states, the Senate acts to preserve power for people and groups who would otherwise have failed to earn it. A voter in Wyoming (population 579,000) enjoys roughly 70 times more influence in the Senate than a voter in California (population 39.5 million), which sounds like the most unfair statistic in American politics, until you remember that taxpaying U.S. citizens in Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico still have no influence in the Senate at all.

An undemocratic body yields undemocratic results. The 50 senators who voted to confirm the wildly-unpopular Brett Kavanaugh represent only 44 percent of the population; the 51 senators who passed a widely-reviled $1.5 trillion tax cut for the wealthy, about the same. In this year's midterms, across-the-board enthusiasm for Democrats is likely to flip the House but not the Senate, since so many Democrats face built-in partisan disadvantages—the accidental byproducts of border-drawing history. In presidential elections, the Senate guarantees at least three electors to seven states whose populations merit only one seat in the House: Alaska, Delaware, Montana, Vermont, Wyoming, and both Dakotas. This scheme basically guarantees a net of six electoral votes to the Republican candidate, every single time; it is one of many absurd anachronisms that lead to America, say, spending four years under a president who earned a full 3 million votes fewer than his closest competitor.

Abolishing the Senate would not solve the national scourge of gerrymandering, whether along partisan or racial lines. It would raise the stakes of that fight, actually, since drawing House districts would become the parties' primary means of influencing the system that would determine control of a newly-unicameral legislature. But noting the existence of one undemocratic institution that badly needs reform is not a good argument for preserving another one. Nor is this problem unique to the House; really, the tradition of selecting two legislators from each state is its own form of gerrymandering. It just depends on a better-known, more-established set of lines.

" A voter in Wyoming enjoys roughly 70 times more influence in the Senate as a voter in California, which sounds like the most unfair statistic in American politics, until you remember that taxpaying U.S. citizens in Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico still have no influence in the Senate at all. "

The best argument for preserving the Senate is that baking federalism in to the American system of government ensures the safety of the minority within a majority-rule system. Sometimes, having a body that acts slowly (if at all) is an important check on very bad ideas: If the House were to try and, say, pass a bill that would restrict the rights of the majority's political opponents—or its least-favorite ethnic or religious group—"democracy" would just be a polite term for collective despotism. It's worth noting that while Paul Ryan was able to jam the American Health Care Act through the Republican-controlled House, McConnell couldn't do the same in the Republican-controlled Senate, and we're all better off because of it.

For every time the Senate fulfills this noble responsibility, however, there seem to be four or five more instances in which it allows a faction that represents a clear minority of this country to accomplish something it has no business accomplishing. This is especially true in the appointments context, in which the House is given no role at all. In practice, the upper chamber now functions less often as a modest, ideologically-agnostic restraint on majority rule than it does as affirmative action for a particular party's agenda. As these demographic shifts continue and population disparities widen, on scales the Founders never could have imagined, the Senate's legitimacy will continue to evaporate.

There are other ways of protecting political minorities that do not require the perpetuation of such a powerful upper chamber: Perhaps the bar for passing a bill in a unicameral House should be higher than a simple majority. Reducing the number of House members, thereby diversifying the composition of each representative's electorate, might slow the chamber's descent into polarized chaos. To simplify the confirmation process, a smaller House commission could be tasked with providing advice and consent, with its membership rotating to ensure global participation. (Also, federal courts would still be around to uphold constitutional and statutory rights, and would be unlikely to find that, for example, the "Trump Family Banishment to Mars Act of 2032" passes legal muster.) When its failures are this pronounced, the fact that the Senate was a sensible-enough idea in 1787 does not justify pretending forever that no alternatives exist.

The grim reality for would-be reformers, and happy news for principled institutionalists and residents of Wyoming, is that the upper chamber's structure is enshrined in the Constitution, and was so important at the time that the framers made it not subject to the usual amendment process. "No state, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate," says Article V. Small states are not going to unanimously disenfranchise themselves, and to the extent that this upheaval would require passing legislation, it's hard to imagine senators of either party facilitating their own unemployment. The fact that it serves as its own watchdog is maybe the Senate's most important form of power: No matter how undemocratic it becomes, it will face no real consequences for choosing to look the other way.