From Michael Kinsley:
The smooth and yet dramatic reversal in direction that followed the transfer of presidential power in 2016 is a tribute to American democracy. Especially when you consider that twice in the past five presidential elections — that is, almost half the time — the majority turned over power to the minority (in straight who-got-more-votes terms). How many other nations could pull that off?
But smoothness isn’t everything. The constitutional rules for electing a president are almost comically complex, potentially involving both houses of Congress in different capacities, the entire Cabinet, 50 state legislatures and a two-thirds vote of the people running food trucks along Pennsylvania Avenue. And in the end, we’ve got a government run at almost every level by people whose philosophy of government most citizens voted against. Talk about the silent majority! Every morning we wake up to discover that some corner of government has been taken over by zealots of the right. Trump has been peacefully handed the keys to the car by folks who think he can’t drive and shouldn’t be on the road.
So the election of 2016 — another Republican “victory” on a technicality — still sticks in many a blue craw.
This sounds a lot like, “Slavery is unfair, but let’s not fiddle with the Constitution.”
Quite a mix of insight, fatalism and misguided optimism.
we’ve got a government run at almost every level by people whose philosophy of government most citizens voted against.
And what kind of government would that make it? Not a democratic republic founded on the consent of the governed. Not one based on one man, one vote. But this isn’t a problem worth correcting?
We wanted change, and now we’ve got it.
No. “We” didn’t want Trump. A change of presidents is normal.
…that twice in the past five presidential elections — that is, almost half the time — the majority turned over power to the minority (in straight who-got-more-votes terms). How many other nations could pull that off?
Only every totalitarian government and monarchy in history. And this is desirable how?
Howzabout this? Instead of giving the president enormous power, then bemoaning civilization when he or she uses it, why not use legislation to reduce the president’s power in the first place?
Howzabout checks and balances?
Howzabout when Congress is run by pandering extremists, ALSO empowered by a minority of voters, who serve the president and protect him from accountability? No problem. Unimaginable, amirite?
The best argument against fiddling with the Constitution to get rid of the electoral college is that you’re not the only would-be fiddler in town. Once you open Pandora’s box, you never know what might come out.
Um, no. Unless you think giving Blacks and women the right to vote opened some terrible Pandora’s box. The best arguments FOR fiddling with the Constitution are a democracy with greater equality, “a more perfect union” and “consent of the governed”.
To cowardly retreat from this goal is un-American.
It’s all moot anyway. This is no longer a representative republic under the consent of the governed.
So let’s just be proud of ourselves and submit to the inevitable and rightful rule of the anti-democratic minority of economic elites and religious hypocrites.
How many other nations could pull that off?