There’s a political dynamic that virtually guarantees Congress will remain locked in a contentious stalemate over gun violence like the weekend’s mass shooting in Texas and the risk of climate change embodied in the ferocious Hurricane Dorian menacing the Southeast United States.
Both issues highlight the effective veto over legislation that the Senate provides to a group of inland states — many of them smaller, preponderantly white and heavily rural — with deep ties to the fossil fuel industry and a strong gun culture.
These states — primarily across the South, the Plains and the Mountain West — provide Republicans enough Senate seats to sustain a filibuster blocking action on guns or climate change, despite polls showing that a clear national majority now supports a federal response to both. CONT.
Ronald Brownstein, CNN