In Darkest America & The Way Out: The Electoral College

In recent days I have been reading a lot of arguments for, and against, the Electoral College system that we use to elect the President (& Vice-President) of the United States.

Here is my "view from the stands":

The #GodDamnedFascist (#MakeDonaldDrumpfAgain) who LOST THE POPULAR VOTE had railed against the Electoral College in 2012 when he believed (wrongly, as usual) that President Obama would win the Electoral College votes but lose the popular vote "by a lot" - which he deleted when he discovered that President Obama won the popular vote, ahem, "by a lot". About 5 million more votes than were cast for Mitt Romney, actually. OOOPS!

Of course now that he has clearly LOST THE POPULAR VOTE by almost 2 million votes but won the requisite electoral votes to win the presidency he thinks the Electoral College is "genius". Well, actually yes it is, but not for the reason that the #GodDamnedFascist seems to think. He said in a recent tweet:

"The Electoral College is actually genius in that it brings all states, including the smaller ones, into play. Campaigning is much different!"

The reality is not that the Electoral College allows smaller states the same representation as larger states. That would be the U.S. Senate, also called “the world’s greatest deliberative body”, where all states have equal representation and Senators sit for 6 year terms – the so-called "cooling saucer of Democracy". No, the real genius of the Electoral College is that it was specifically designed to keep a populist sociopath like Drumpf from ever achieving the most powerful elected office, literally, in the free world.

In Federalist 68, Alexander Hamilton clearly defines the explicit purpose and intent of the Electoral College system to elect the "Chief Magistrate" of the United States of America.

"It was desirable that the sense of the people should operate in the choice of the person to whom so important a trust was to be confided. This end will be answered by committing the right of making it, not to any preestablished body, but to men chosen by the people for the special purpose, and at the particular conjuncture."

Here Hamilton says, "...a sense of the people" should be a factor in the choice of President but not that the general populous should have the deciding voice. In fact in the following passage, Hamilton stipulates precisely the opposite view - the "immediate election" be made by a relatively small body of 'electors'.

"It was equally desirable, that the immediate election should be made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice. A small number of persons, selected by their fellow-citizens from the general mass, will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations."

The "complicated investigations", as Hamilton explains, would be into the direct fitness, temperment, knowledge, experience, judgement and aptitude for anyone "...who was to have so important an agency in the administration of the government as the President of the United States"

"It was also peculiarly desirable to afford as little opportunity as possible to tumult and disorder. This evil was not least to be dreaded in the election of a magistrate, who was to have so important an agency in the administration of the government as the President of the United States. But the precautions which have been so happily concerted in the system under consideration, promise an effectual security against this mischief."

As if to anticipate the potential rise of a Drumpf-like figure in American politics, Hamilton writes:

"Nothing was more to be desired than that every practicable obstacle should be opposed to cabal, intrigue, and corruption. These most deadly adversaries of republican government might naturally have been expected to make their approaches from more than one quarter [sic], but chiefly from the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils. How could they better gratify this, than by raising a creature of their own to the chief magistracy of the Union?"

Making the Presidential election a 'moral certainty' that a corrupt, fascist, sociopath like “Herr UberCheeto”, as my son calls that GOD DAMNED FASCIST, never gets within a thousand yards of the Presidency was the true genius of the Electoral College:

"The process of election affords a moral certainty, that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications. Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity, may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first honors in a single State; but it will require other talents, and a different kind of merit, to establish him in the esteem and confidence of the whole Union, or of so considerable a portion of it as would be necessary to make him a successful candidate for the distinguished office of President of the United States."

When the Electoral College meets on December 19th to cast their votes that will actually decide who will be the 45th President of the United States they have a clear obligation to act as the buffer that the founding fathers had in mind for the Electoral College.

They have a clear cut path to vote for the winner of the popular vote and respect the actual will of the majority of Americans and give the Presidency to Hillary Clinton - she did win by almost 2 million votes - maybe more by the time the west coast votes are all counted - She may not be the most 'transparent' of political figures in some sense, but then she and her husband have been the target of the Republicans and their neoconservative smear machine lead by then Speaker of the House Newton Leroy 'Newt' Gingrich (which grew into what is now sometimes known as the "alt-right") for some 25 years so there could be a little bit of simple human self-preservation in that mentality. But that not withstanding, if she turns out to be a disaster (possible, but not likely) we could boot her out in 2020. 

The point I am driving at here is that this is exactly and expressly what the founders designed the Electoral College system for. If they are not going to perform the function for which they were constructed and act as that buffer between the populist sentiment of the masses and the best interest of the Republic, then they should be disbanded and the Constitution amended to elect the President by simple popular vote.

As Drumpf tweeted on Nov. 7, 2012:

"More votes equals [sic] a loss...revolution!" - 

Although that tweet was deleted shortly thereafter, there are several that remain on his Twitter feed.

"This election is a total sham and a travesty. We are not a democracy!" (11/6/2012)

"The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy." (11/6/2012)

If the Electoral College merely rubber stamps this election they are useless fools and the system must be abolished!

  

How'd We Get Here?

I'm Giving This Another Try!

I have been without a computer for over a year and finances have been extremely tight, thus I was not able to renew the domain name registration for "In Darkest America and The Way Out" - Some domain registration company snagged it and was offering it for several thousands of dollars as a "premium" domain name.  I paid $9.99 per year for the initial registration. Had I known, I'd have sold it myself. Oh well, life goes on.

Now that I have my laptop back, I can again think about directing my interest in news, politics, public affairs and popular culture toward something other than talking back to the T.V. during the evening newscasts - okay, yelling at the T.V. might be closer to the description my family would offer, but why quibble?

What the Hell Happened?!?!?

What happened to the Republican party? Donald Trump is, at the time of this writing, the front-runner for the G.O.P. nomination for President Of The United States.  That was, only four years ago, the punchline to a bad joke. Nobody took Trump for a serious candidate, let alone a serious threat to actually win anything beyond, maybe, the Ames Straw Poll.

How did Donald Trump become the 'sum of all fears' to the Republican Party establishment? What makes Trump so attractive to large numbers of Republican and conservative leaning voters?

In order to answer that question, we have to look at the recent history of American politics. By recent, I mean from the Kennedy administration through the present. Spoiler alert, the Vietnam war had a lot more to do with why Trump is leading in the race for the G.O.P. nomination than you might think. Here is my reason for believing that the roots of the Donald J. Trump candidacy can be found in the political turmoil of the 1960's.

It is interesting to note how those, like myself, whose initial introduction to American politics was the assassination of John F. Kennedy, view the role that "The Government" plays in American society, versus those whose introduction to American politics was during, or after, "Watergate".  Not everybody remembers that the addition of "gate" to the end of a scandal originated with Watergate and Richard Nixon resigning the Presidency in August 1974 - I have a feeling that we may hear about "Nanny-gate", "Travel-gate", "Whitewater-gate" and other oldies-but-goodies from the 1990's.  At least for the duration of the 2016 campaign, if not the duration of a potential Hillary Clinton administration.  

I am old enough to, vaguely, remember when allegiance to the United States of America was more important than allegiance to any political party or more important even than religious belief.  John F. Kennedy had to give a speech in which he assured the American people that his religious affiliation (Roman Catholic) would not affect his policy decisions as president. 

When did we go from everybody being willing to compromise a little, or even a lot sometimes, so we can do what is right for the country and everyone wins - maybe not by as big a margin as we'd like, maybe having to give a little credit to "the other side", occasionally not getting everything we wanted, or perhaps even a little bit less than what we thought we should have. Yet, even with all that said, without "letting the perfect be the enemy of the good" - to today's obstructionist mentality that seems to be based upon the zero sum premise, if "the other side" wins, "my side" loses?

Compromise has become a sign of weakness and lack of resolve (if not purity) and stopping the agenda of the other side is more important than working together cooperatively to solve problems that both sides acknowledge and that both sides say they want to solve.  There are judicial nominations being held up for no reason other than the party affiliation of the President making the nomination. This is true for numerous appointments to various agencies and departments that would have, only a few years ago, sailed through with little or no objection.  There are numerous examples where Republicans have publicly expressed support for legislation, programs, ideas and even judicial nominees only to completely reverse their position the minute President Obama states his support for those self same ideas, programs, nominations and legislation. It's been bad before, but nothing like the obstruction for the sake of obstruction that we see in politics all across America, not just in Washington, D.C.

There has always been opposition between Democrats and Republicans, that is simply the nature of politics. Generally, the Democratic party tends to believe that government can and should play an active role in society. On the other hand, the Republican party tends to believe, as President Reagan put it, "...government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem."  One of the things I have often heard Republican candidates say is that the Federal government should have as little impact on the lives of everyday Americans as possible. The belief that "government which governs least governs best" is rooted in the very fabric of the Republican ideal. So these two conflicting ideas of how government should look to the citizenry as well as how, why and when government should take direct, influential action which would impact the daily lives of the population.

Those differences have, until recently, been seen as secondary to the overall needs of the nation based on the circumstances at the time.  As much as the Republicans opposed many of F.D.R.'s New Deal programs, they also understood that the need for action was immediate and desperate. The T.V.A., the F.D.I.C. and Social Security are just a few of the programs that most Americans are very happy to have and would not want to see disappear.  In fact, even the most staunch, anti Obama Republican is damn glad that the F.D.I.C. was there to protect their back account balances (up to $250,000 anyway, but I don't know anyone who had more than that in a single bank, or lost even one penny thanks to the F.D.I.C.) - although they'd never admit to being grateful to President Obama for anything.

And there we come to it. What has fueled this obstructionist environment in Washington, D.C.? How did we get here and how do we get out? That is the point of this blog, to try to come to some understanding of how we arrived 'In Darkest America and The Way Out'.

In the coming weeks and months I will explore those questions and try to explain what I believe to be a workable plan for "The Way Out".