Yeah there are 5 states with less people than Columbus, Ohio, the city, not the metro area. There are 24 states with less people than the Detroit metro area, which is entirely located in Michigan. These aren't places people associate with huge numbers of people, it's not like the NYC metro area that's more populated than 47 states including New York and contains geographically large portions of Connecticut and New Jersey.

And yeah part of the issue is that some of the tiny states are among the originals. Vermont (49 in population, with less people than the city of Washington DC), while not in the original 13 fought in the American revolution and was the 14th state. Delaware and Rhode Island are between the Dakotas and Montana in population. And while some states could comfortably be broken up into more reasonable chunks, like California, Texas, and Ohio, others like Illinois and New York have a massive population solely because they have one massive city.

"Not exactly, in the Senate every state gets 2 votes. The presidential vote and house are weighted to population."

I phrased that poorly but that's roughly what I meant; it was easier to say than look at the states with the low population counts. It doesn't matter how many candidates are in the house if a fifth can shut down any progress. It seems like often, the unpopular vote is the what we get. And no way to do anything about politicians that say one thing and do another.

"If these reps were concerned about their home state maybe this would work, but it’s all national party politics now."

This is why all of this sucks. What we're shown and what the world sees is political theatre. They go behind closed doors and amicably negotiate. A politician that called this out, I haven't seen another video or anything from him in two years.

People love to shit on the US like we can actually do anything but only base it on what they see on regulated media.