WAY OT Senate and Congress, Teach a northerly Neighbour Options

[aveale]

Family,

Can anyone shed some light on the US political system?

I am reading Bill Clinton's book and I am having a hard time getting my head around the electorial process of both the Senate and Congress.

What powers do they have?
What are their functions?
How many members of each?
How are the states/populations represented in each?

Thanx in advance!

T

[lapuwali]

Or we could have a 50/50 split between democrat and republican in congress, and have an independent for president. But in either of those cases I doubt anything would get done, considering the partisan politics involved.

Which is essentially how it's supposed to work, oddly enough. The men who drew up the original constitution (primarily Thomas Jefferson for this bit) had little trust in government to do the right thing, having just escaped a very corrupt government ruled by an arbitrary autocrat. So, the system was deliberately designed to promote logjams and reduce the amount that could get done unless a LOT of people all agreed on the same thing.

The country started with two political parties, and other than some brief periods of a relatively weak third party, that's how it's been since. There are some fringe parties, as well, but they've never really caught on with enough people to matter, esp. at the Federal level. When the fringe parties manage to get anyone in office, it's nearly always in local offices, like city government. There is one Senator (from Alaska?) who's not a member of either of the two major parties. There are a handful of members of the House who are similarly not aligned with either major party.

And, as MikeZ pointed out, most of the Federal stuff is mirrored in each state. Each state has a "Senate" and a "House", though they may use different names (in California, the "House" is called the "Assembly"). Each state will also have different rules for its local government. Many states, for example, don't have a full-time state government. Some have a government that only meets for a short time each year. The laws are heirarchical, with Federal law trumping state trumping county trumping city, and there are defined limits to the authority of each level, which get argued over on a regular basis. Thus: "state's rights".