Election 2016 is officially over. The Electoral College weighed in this week and ratified Donald Trump’s November 8th victory, cementing the billionaire celebrity’s first term in office and sending America’s liberals to the next, deeper stage of grief.
They still haven’t reached acceptance, of course, hovering somewhere in emotional purgatory between bargaining and depression. Observe the New York Times which is STILL railing against the country’s centuries old Electoral College system.
All I’m asking my liberals to do?
Take a deep breath with the celebration of Christmas upon us and consider the following two points which, in my humble opinion, aren’t coming up enough in conversation.
First and foremost….
Sorry, but this isn’t The Hunger Games nor should it be!
Right?
The Framers weren’t dummies. With the final votes now tallied, recounted (in a few places) and certified, Donald Trump lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by approximately 2.8 million votes. But guess what? He would’ve won the popular vote by over one million votes if you removed California (the state added 4.2 million net votes to her column) from the mix AND, if you remove New York, too (CA + NY = 5.8 net Clinton swing), Trump wins the national popular vote in the other 48 states by 3 million votes
That’s the math, and while Trump’s point about maybe winning more votes had he campaigning in blue states is valid, we don’t need to cross the bridge. Here’s the history: the United States was specifically designed so that the majority would NOT be ruled by a handful of major population centers. Contemporary liberals seem enamored with the concept of “minority rights” except where it applies – via constitutional law – to red and purple states! And yet they seem oblivious to the obvious, glaring inconsistency sitting the corner.
This is a huge, diverse country. NYC and LA are wonderful places but they don’t get to call all of the shots. More shots? Sure. That’s why the Electoral College and House of Representatives adjust representation for population. But The Federalist Papers explain all you need to know about how the Framers felt about “the mob” and its propensity to inadvertently engender tyrannies. I suspect our liberal friends would no more want to be ruled by Texas or the Florida Panhandle.
The alternative to our EC system? We adopt a popular vote “national” election and end up like the dystopian fictional country of Panem in The Hunger Games series where the oppressed citizens of outlying districts labor to serve prosperous “the Capital.” Presidential campaigns, currently restricted by strategic expedience to 8-14 battleground states, will suddenly take place strictly in a handful of major metropolitan areas. Everyone else is simply a spectator as New York, Chicago, Houston and Los Angeles choose among billionaires who can afford the type of high-priced, glitzy campaign efforts it’d take to mobilize citizens in low-turnout, super expensive media markets.
No thank you.
That point regarding “the Capital” brings us to my second important point about the Electoral College.
Still don’t like it? Maybe you should reconsider conservatives’ limited government arguments….
Even if their views of the Electoral College differ, a clear majority of Americans can agree that they’re wary of how Donald Trump will perform in office. Emotions range from cautious optimism to outright paranoia and despair.
Liberals should seize this emotionally difficult moment to reconsider their worldviews at least where the federal government’s role in our respective lives in concerned.
Our government was designed as one of limited powers. Construct interstate roads, set immigration policies, etc. and so on.
When government supplants states’ rights and sticks its nose in EVERYTHING? From mandating local food handling regulations to social issue-related laws? And then the presidency grows in extra-constitutional importance to the point when a president – Barack Obama comes to mind – starts usurping powers (e.g. immigration) from other branches?
The Republic transforms into a constitutional monarchy with a popularly elected king. The man in the White House can do almost whatever he wants for 4-8 years which, if you’re of his political party, is an awesome thing for a time. If you’re not? Bar the door… the protections baked into the Constitution were eroded when YOUR guy was on the throne!
Put another way, there’s an incredibly good reason why the federal government wasn’t suppose to have plenary power in the same vein as the British Parliament from which our forefathers shed blood to win a permanent divorce. It’s waaaaay too much power to entrust to one person, for a few to several years, let alone one selected by the masses who are drawn to celebrities like moths to a flames.
The federal government – and the presidency, by extension – is NOT supposed to be this important!
Every election wouldn’t feel like a flirtation with the apocalypse, real or imagined, if the federal government remotely resembled what the Framers sagely envisioned.
These aren’t the only two reasons why the Electoral College is as relevant today as it ever was, Save Jerseyans. They’re simply the most relevant to our suffering friends on the Left who are just starting to understand how the rest of us felt in 2008 and 2012.
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