Virginia voter registration down on last day to register before election

Citation? While it's possible there's ~49% support of the party, that doesn't necessarily mean an equivalent amount of support for the economic policy.

I wouldn't assume that 100% of voters even know the economic policies of the people they're voting for, let alone approve of them. It seems like people mostly vote because they've been told the party they're voting against is evil[1], not because they actually support the policies.

[1] Of course those of us who think they're both evil are not left with much motivation to vote for either, which partly explains (along with voter suppression, gerrymandering making voting less effective, etc) why half the country doesn't bother to vote at all.

That's because the Senate is there to represent the states themselves in the federal government as individual political entities.

IMHO, if you want pure majority rule everywhere, you might as well just abolish the Senate entirely, as it would be redundant with the House.

Personally, I think some kind of geography-proportionate representation is necessary to prevent the non-urban areas from becoming neglected hinterlands. That said, I do dislike the way the Republicans have used this system to extract maximum partisan advantage, so some reform is necessary. Rather than making the Senate representation proportional by population, I think it should lose its monopoly on executive/judicial confirmations and the House should have equal say in those.

I'm a lifelong American. I know my perspective is limited, but here's my perception:

- Politicians at the national level often brag in the manner you describe. (I could believe it's become less common in the last 10-20 years, but I haven't paid careful attention.)

- Almost no private citizen (in my circles, at least) thinks in those terms, or at least they don't openly speak that way. The most prevalent form of nationalism that I see amongst Americans is the feeling that various groups are unfairly disadvantaged by our national leadership's tolerance of bad trade deals with China, or (less often) failure to protect American workers from having to compete with illegal immigrants for jobs.

- Also, my impression is that a large majority of Americans hold our Congress and (often) Executive branches in very low regard.

That's a rather tendentious take. I'm pretty sure everyone who gets appointed to the Supreme Court "believe[s] in the Constitution as their guiding light" but have rather different ideas about what that actually means.