Let's Abolish The Electoral College Already!

Psst....wanna know a dirty little secret about the Electoral College?

As I had noted in a previous post back in 2016, one of the reasons that the Founders, especially Alexander Hamilton, had designed the Electoral College, was as a supposed fail-safe to prevent a dangerous and unqualified demagogue (especially one with questionable foreign entanglements) from becoming President of the United States. (The 2016 election most ironically proved otherwise, of course.) Hamilton basically laid out the Federalist case for the Electoral College thusly, albeit combined with the sort of sneering elitism that even the most rabid current (or former) Trump supporters would ironically claim to dislike today.

But there was also a much darker reason behind the creation of the Electoral College as well.  To put it bluntly, it was explicitly designed to protect--wait for it--SLAVERY.  In fact, that was literally the only way to get the Anti-Federalists in the southern slave states to sign on to the US Constitution at all.  That is why less-populous states get a disproportionately large amount of electoral votes (since slave states often had as many slaves as free citizens and each slave only counted as 3/5 of a person in the census and was not allowed to vote).  And to this day, the Electoral College still remains a bastion of white (sorry, "rural") privilege for the same reason.  Not all that surprising, really.

Thus, the Electoral College is specious, obsolete, outmoded, and currently serves NO useful purpose anymore whatsoever, if it ever really did.  In fact, the winner-take-all aspect, over and above the small state bias, was the primary reason Trump won the 2016 election despite getting nearly 3 million fewer votes than Hillary, so it actually does more harm than good to this country.  Allocating electoral votes proportionally in each state instead of winner-take-all would go a long way to fixing it, and indeed Hillary would have won the electoral vote by changing just this aspect of the system.  It would also make it harder to effectively cheat as well.  But it would NOT solve all problems, and would in fact create a new problem--third-party candidates throwing the election into the House of Representatives when no one gets a 270 majority--unless candidates with a de minimis amount of the popular vote (say, below 5%) are then denied any electoral votes and/or only the top two or three candidates actually counting. 

Therefore, all things considered, the very best and simplest solution of all is to abolish the Electoral College altogether, and elect the president by straight national popular vote going forward.  And yesterday is not soon enough, since it clearly gives Republicans an unfair advantage in 2028 and beyond as well.

Of course, abolishing it entirely would require a constitutional amendment, and would thus be quite a long shot indeed, but there is a way to make it irrelevant by 2028.  The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC) is the way to do it, making it so that that only the winner of the national popular vote would win 270 electoral votes and become President, while still technically keeping the Electoral College in place.  And now with the 2026 Blue Tsunami, at long last, it looks like we FINALLY will have enough states to sign on to meet or even exceed the 270 threshold and thus make it a reality by 2028!  Sign and share!

WE WON! BLUE TSUNAMI 2026

WE WON!  The Blue Tsunami is now a reality!  The Democrats will now control both the House and Senate, and the also won many state and local offices as well.  And a sizeable number of women,  people of color, and LGBT+ folks won overall as well.

So cue the music, Maestro:

HALLELUJAH! HALLELUJAH! HALLELUJAH! HALLELUJAH! HALLELUJAH!

(Mic drop)

The Mother Of All Blue Waves Or Bust!

It's November now.  The way things are going, I just hope we have the Mother of All Blue Waves this time.  MAGA is a cancer on the body politic that needs to be eradicated, root and branch.  That is why, much to the chagrin of some purists, I will continue to "Vote Blue No Matter Who" until such cancer is fully eradicated.  Then, and only then, can we even THINK about taking on what remains of the neoliberal duopoly, which we also need to do, of course. And I have faith that it will be a rout this November.  Because the alternative (Republicans winning again) would be MUCH worse.

Look, we clearly prefer genuine (and especially economic) progressives and leftists over squishy neoliberal centrists and identity politics. But now is NOT the time for any ideological purity tests! If we make the perfect the enemy of the good, we ultimately end up with neither, as we have learned the hard way.

This is our LAST CHANCE to save what is left of our beloved Republic, if it isn't already too late.  Look, we KNOW the GOP will cheat by attempting to rig the midterms, but if enough people vote Blue that would become much more difficult to rig.  Those who don't vote, vote third-party, vote write-in, or vote Republican will thus be asking for a TON of karma when all is said and done.

(Mic drop)

Remember In November: ICYMI, The Mother Of All Blue Waves Or Bust!

The way things are going, I just hope we have the Mother of All Blue Waves this November.  MAGA is a cancer on the body politic that needs to be eradicated, root and branch.  That is why, much to the chagrin of some purists, I will continue to "Vote Blue No Matter Who" until such cancer is fully eradicated.  Then, and only then, can we even THINK about taking on what remains of the neoliberal duopoly, which we also need to do, of course. And I have faith that it will be a rout this November.  Because the alternative (Republicans winning again) would be much worse.

Look, we clearly prefer genuine (and especially economic) progressives and leftists over squishy neoliberal centrists and identity politics. But now is NOT the time for any ideological purity tests! If we make the perfect the enemy of the good, we ultimately end up with neither, as we have learned the hard way.

This is our LAST CHANCE to save what is left of our beloved Republic, if it isn't already too late.  Look, we KNOW the GOP will cheat by attempting to rig the midterms, but if enough people vote Blue that would become much more difficult to rig.  Those who don't vote, vote third-party, vote write-in, or vote Republican will thus be asking for a TON of karma when all is said and done.

(Mic drop)