Sandy Levinson responds to Paul Krugman’s column blaming “our corporate-cash-dominated [political] system” for the stall on health care. Levinson:

The one and only reason anyone takes such denizens as Max Baucus, Kent Conrad, Olympia Snowe, Charles Grassley, Jeff Bingaman, and Michael Enzi at all seriously is because, representing a grand total of 2.77 of the American population (including o% of our most urban populations or what used to be called the “industrial heartland” of America), they comprise 6% of the votes in the Senate. Like the small parties in Israel, they can extort unconscionable terms from prime ministers desperately seeking to build a majority in the Knesset, especially if we add to the other distortions in the Senate the truly pernicious consequences of the filibuster as a normal way of doing business. Were there no filibuster in the Senate, then who would really care what these senators are “demanding” in return for their votes?