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Notes -
You're conflating federal policy with House of Representatives party politics.
In American federal political terms, both California and Alabama are equally irrelevant, not important, because neither are particularly competitive in presidential campaigns. Presidents don't disproportionately consider the views of states that will go for them regardless, but rather for the states they need to woo to win.
Similarly, the Senate is infamously a body which gives disproportionate favor to smaller states. Flat voting weight regardless of population lets small states like Alabama extort larger states if the larger states want agreement- or at least a non-fillibuster- of their interests. The Senate is where most of the extortion-pork in budgets comes from, because it's the Senators who must be appeased.
In the House, disproportionate weight doesn't come from the voting strength (which is proportional), but rather the number of committe seats. Large states- particularly large mono-party states- can leverage their strength as a voting block to vote their members into key positions that mutually reinforce. What makes California so central in the House is the point that the California Democrats have so many of the votes not just in the Congress, but within the party.
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