This is a space for those who like and have supported Hillary Clinton, as we consider the way forward. Those who degrade her and her supporters will be met with recipes and pictures of pets.
With that out of the way…
Good morning, everyone. So who among you thinks George W Bush was a better president than Al Gore would have been?
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No one?
Not surprising. I think even many Republicans wish Al Gore had won the presidency.
Yet I remember during the aftermath of the 2000 Election debacle, many in the Democratic Party were quick to blame Al Gore for lacking charisma, for not working hard enough for his voters, for being a liar who claimed to have invented the Internet, for being too “establishment,” and more.
He faced these recriminations despite the fact that he won the most votes. In any other democracy, he would have been the President-elect. Instead he faced the wilderness.
The outcome of 2000 should have made it painfully clear that the Electoral College either needed significant reform, or needed to be discarded altogether. Yet here we are, with no one having learned the lessons of 16 years ago, and a popular vote winner who will again, not be allowed to be President-elect.
When this happened in 2000, it was dismissed as a rare aberration, not having happened since 1888. With this second time, occurring less than 20 years later, it’s becoming clear that the popular vote/Electoral College split is a feature, not a bug. A feature that allows Republicans to hold power, even when the public wants it for someone else.
It’s a feature they’ve gotten quite good at exploiting, along with a House of Representatives that doesn’t represent, as large states don’t have the numbers of representatives they deserve, and districts are gerrymandered to exploit maximum Republican advantage.
As long as the Electoral College exists, we can never have true progressive reform. Hillary Clinton sought to appeal to the growing diversity in a number of states, even states where she was told she had no chance, like Texas. Now she’s told that she should have given up appealing to those voters, that she should have spent that time wooing white conservative-leaning voters that Democrats have been losing steadily for decades.
The reason isn’t because she had more of a chance with the latter voters, but because we’re yoked to a system where some voters matter more than others based on where they live. The fact that she received overwhelming support in certain parts of the country doesn’t matter because those people don’t live in the “right” places.
The reality is that more and more, liberal voters are going to be congregating in specific urban areas, leaving large swaths of land in the hands of conservative-leaning voters. Based on our current system, those states have an advantage. Wyoming has 586,000 people, and 3 electors. California has 38.8 million people, and 55. If you consider 1 Representative + 2 Senators for Wyoming, then by that measure, California should have 68 EVs — 66 Representatives + 2 Senators. Instead, we’re capped at 55.
As long as Republicans can cultivate an advantage with a string of small states, as long as Democrats are forced to compete on turf that is becoming ever less favorable, to appeal to conservative-leaning voters not naturally receptive to their message, progressivism can never reach its full potential.
However, that isn’t the only reason the Electoral College is a terrible monstrosity. It also allows states where one candidate is strongly preferred to be ignored. Whether you live in California or Alabama, you don’t matter. While I’ve heard many complaints that the Clinton campaign didn’t spend enough time in Wisconsin, I’ve heard zero concerns that neither party did a single campaign event in California, except for fundraisers. That’s because we support Democrats overwhelmingly. We’re “safe.” We don’t matter.
Photo taken by Jim Heaphy (from Wikimedia Commons)
As a Californian, that message gets damn tiring. We’re the most populous state with the biggest economy and one of the most diverse populations, and we don’t matter. We’re told to sit down and shut up. We’re told that the country can’t possibly be run by “coastal elites,” or all hell will break loose. We’re told that this country was built on squelching the power of big states.
You know what else this country was built on? White men with property voting. The three-fifths compromise. A system where Senators were chosen by the state legislatures.
We got rid of those other relics, because that’s all they were — relics. Glaring flaws in an imperfect system cobbled together to create a union of formerly independent states. Over time, we saw them for what they were. Now men and women of all colors can vote, regardless of income. Now slavery as an institution is gone. No three-fifths compromise. No having only state legislators choose your Senator. Yet the Electoral College remains.
Those who favor keeping it try to imbue it with some sort of moral weight. They claim if the Electoral College were scrapped, politicians would ignore “Middle America” and focus exclusively on the large cities. Because apparently, it’s better for politicians to spend disproportionate amounts of time in Iowa or Ohio than in California or New York. Never mind the fact that under the current system, many rural states with low populations in the middle of the country, like Montana or North and South Dakota, are utterly ignored.
Though I didn’t like the Democratic primary dragging into June, one nice surprise was that it allowed national candidates to campaign in California for the first time in memory. They went to San Francisco and Sacramento, Fresno and Los Angeles, and dozens of cities in between that have no meaning to anyone outside of California. They talked about the importance of water issues. Water issues! I can’t remember the last presidential candidate that cared about our fragile water supply before this.
It felt nice to be wanted. And it made me think: Why do we deserve to be ignored? We’re a diverse state of urban and rural, Republicans and Democrats, all colors and education and income levels with very specific, important needs. But because by and large we support one candidate over another, under the Electoral College, our needs, our concerns do not matter.
And that points to a fallacy in the thinking that the parties would only campaign in the big cities in large states to obtain votes. Because they couldn’t possibly and hope to have enough. In California, voters are everywhere, not confined to one city or area. If the Electoral College were scrapped, some campaigning would be in the big cities, but there would also likely be a strategy to capture votes in less-populated areas across the country.
In any event, a strategy that prized some areas over others would be no worse than the system we have now. Except that every vote would be equal. A rural vote in Alabama would be the equal of an urban vote in Ohio, or California, or rural Oregon. The Democratic candidate would have the luxury of appealing to those who fit the diverse, growing demographic, rather than be boxed into competing for conservative-leaning voters on increasingly tenuous turf.
So for these reasons, the Electoral College should meet its end. Oh, and here’s the biggest reason of all: By going against the popular will, it will allow a MADMAN to assume power!
If one of the moral arguments in favor of the Electoral College was that by placing constraints on the selection process, it forced voters to choose a more sober-minded person for president, Donald Trump’s election surely put it to rest, if not to death.
The main argument against scrapping the Electoral College is that Republicans who control the less-populated states wouldn’t stand for it. Of course they wouldn’t. The Republican Party doesn’t respect democracy. It respects power. Its power. The current Republican Party will never yield its power willingly.
And yet I’m reminded of other points in history when the impossible became possible. One relevant comparison to our situation is the British experience with “rotten boroughs.” While rotten boroughs with few to no constituents received representation, newer, growing cities had no representation. This system lasted until 1832 (and pocket boroughs until 1867) in part because wealthy patrons benefitted and some held great power in both the House of Lords and Commons because of it. Yet finally the Reform Act of 1832 was signed, starting the process of doing away with a highly unrepresentative institution. Although many circumstances were different than ours, it shows that steady advocacy and determination can reform an entrenched system.
We have a tendency to think that anything created by the Founders is perfect and should not be changed. We need to get away from that mentality. The Electoral College isn’t sacred — it’s an albatross. It needs to go. The question is how.
So each week, it’s my intention to look at weighty issues having to do with how to become the progressive Democratic Party we know we can be, and to prevent an extremely dangerous Republican Party from concentrating power through voter suppression in the handful of states that are truly up for grabs. I do it in the spirit of Hillary Clinton, who from a young age, believed in making the impossible possible.
While this is an open thread, I would like to hear suggestions for how realistic reform of the Electoral College can be achieved. One way was raised by Chris Bowers — the Electoral College compact, which I’ve been following for the past decade. I think it’s one of the better solutions, but I worry that it would be too easy for legislatures who passed the compact to void it if it doesn’t suit their needs.
There are other ways a dismantlement can be done realistically. The one response I don’t want to hear is: “Republicans don’t want it so it’s too tough to be done.” The status quo is not an option.
Make the impossible possible. Thank you, Hillary.
This is your open thread.
