Al Gore won the presidency in 2000 by almost half a million votes. Hillary Clinton won in 2016 by almost three million. Joe Biden would have won the presidency in 2020 sans COVID-19 by, probably, about six million votes. Yet, in fact, Gore lost to Bush, Hillary lost to Trump, and sans COVID Joe very probably would have lost to Trump 2, all thanks to the worst fucking idea the “Framers”1 ever came up with, the fucking Electoral College, given to us by Article II, Section 1, Clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution, as revised and replaced by the provisions of the 12th amendment.
The fact that a Republican presidential candidate last won more votes than the Democrat has happened precisely once since 1988, and that a sitting Republican president just got his ass handed to him by over seven million votes, ought to fill Republicans, and “conservatives” in general, with shame, but it doesn’t, because, well, because they don’t have any any more, having jettisoned it all as unneeded baggage in their hysterical campaigns against first Bill Clinton and then Barack Obama. Most Republicans were genuinely bewildered when they found themselves charged with hypocrisy for embracing Trump: “You thought we hated Bill Clinton because we loved morality? No, we loved morality because we hated Bill Clinton! It’s not about love, or about morality! It’s about hate! And we love Donald Trump because he’s nothing but hate!”
Republicans, when they take the time to wipe the foam from their foam-flecked lips, will chuckle condescendingly when you bring up the Electoral College thing. See, it’s all part of the Framers’ infinite wisdom: far-sighted as they were, they wanted to protect us from the tyranny of the majority!
But, in fact, the 12th amendment is a simple case of horse-trading. Everyone knew that the presidential elections of both 1796 and 1800 had been disasters, and that the “system” had to be fixed, but to do so a constitutional amendment was required, which meant an agreement had to be forged that would win two-thirds majorities in both houses of Congress and three-fourths of the state legislatures.
It is “interesting” that Jefferson’s Democratic-Republican Party, the “out” party and thus the party of “small government”, and the Federalist Party, the “in” party and thus the party of “big government”, had traded places in 1800, and thus traded arguments as well. Jefferson had won a “crushing” victory in the popular vote, over 60%—41,330 to 25,952—but a relatively restrained Electoral College majority, 73 to 65.2 It must have seemed to the Federalists, and to the small states generally, that the Electoral College was their only chance. And Jefferson’s party, clearly, had to reconcile the small states to any change.
Despite the fact that the first four presidential elections had all been decided by the popular vote, the “Framers” still thought that most presidential elections would not have a clear winner and would be decided in the House of Representatives. In the Constitution’s original text, the House would choose from among the top five candidates. While drafting the 12th amendment, this was changed to three, despite a great deal of grumbling from the small states, who thought this lessened their chances of getting one of their own chosen as president. The fact that the vote in the House would proceed by state delegation was another guarantee to “protect” the small states.
In fact, of course, presidential elections throughout our history have almost always been decided via the popular vote. There have been a few hiccups along the way since 1800, but when they occurred it was, “arguably”, the dominant party that “slipped in”.3 Today that is no longer the case. It would have been an outrage if Donald Trump had won a second term, as he quite easily could have done but for the pandemic. A sitting president and a strong economy? What’s not to like?
Because, of course, a great many Americans do not care much about such things as “due process”, particularly when the violations happen to people who live in foreign countries, or if they look like they do. One is grateful—for one has to be grateful—that men like William Barr and Mitch McConnell are only 95% as corrupt as Donald Trump, but eight years of their 95% would have damaged the rule of law in these United States almost beyond repair. (I say “almost” because I am an optimist—an optimist very largely out of fear.)
The argument that Conservatives make today—that the Electoral College makes presidential elections more “representative”, as though presidents are supposed to represent acreage rather than people—is reprehensible and they know it, but they also know that if presidents are chosen by the popular vote alone they are almost guaranteed to lose every presidential election. Furthermore, in 2000 Republicans on the Supreme Court bent the law, severely, to get their guy in, and in 2020 Donald Trump worked mightily to break it. Is this a trend? I wouldn’t be surprised.
The future, as I see it, is not bright. The transformation of the Republican Party into the Angry Old White Man Party, which has been going on for decades, has caused it to effectively disappear along the coasts, leading to the corruption of the Democrats. Among both parties, it is often the primary that is the election, leading over and over again to the triumph of the most “passionate” rather than the most competent. One Democratic big city mayor after another has come to grief for failing to deal with both COVID-19 and the nation-wide protests following the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, which have served as an excuse and cover for arson and sabotage among white anarchists on the West Coast and looting among black and Hispanic criminals across the country. As I’ve said before, William de Blasio has been both the most liberal, and the most incompetent, mayor of New York City in living memory.
The next round of mayoral elections, starting with the New York City primary this June, will be very interesting. Is “woke” broke, or still potent? The stunningly disappointing results for Democrats in the congressional elections in 2020 shows just how limited the appeal of the Democratic brand can be—our magic “natural majority” never quite manifesting itself as regularly as we would like, despite an excellent showing in the presidential election by a weak candidate. I’ve never been impressed by Joe Biden—though he, and his “people”—did do an excellent job for the Inauguration. Thanks, Joe, I needed that! I really did! And I appreciate it! Let’s hope we stay lucky! That doesn’t happen often, but it might!
The Republican Party, of course, is beyond redemption. At the state level, in many states the Republicans are actively making themselves worse, doubling down on enhanced schemes of voter disqualification, because they know they cannot win fair elections. It’s a pretty wan hope that the Republicans will utterly tear themselves to pieces, though they certainly ought to do so. So, you know, let’s definitely hope we stay lucky!
Afterwords—What Is To Be Done?
Pre-COVID, I had a pretty standard rap, summed up in an article titled What Could Be Done and Why the Liberals Won’t Let It Happen, largely about making it easier for people to move to big cities, to abandon “smart growth”, which is simply a way to “smartly” enhance land values to favor existing owners at the expense of new-comers, along with rent control, etc., etc., etc., all the “screw the new guy” provisions that residents of attractive areas come up with to both exploit that attractiveness economically and keep it for themselves. (More thoughts—often fairly random—here.)
Well, who knows what the future is for urban living now? Certainly not me. For decades, big city liberals unthinkingly took it for granted that they’d have an ever-growing tax base to support their great plans for reshaping society. What’s going to happen if all the rich folks, along with the merely well-heeled ones, decide to zoom out to greener pastures? What’s going to happen if upwardly mobile parents—the ones who want their kids to go to competitive-entry colleges—decide they’ve had it with a self-serving public school system that’s all about the teachers and not about the kids, particularly if “woke” bureaucrats abolish competitive exams for admission to elite public schools, as is often advocated by people who should know better??4
Over at Politico, Tanya Snyder takes an excellent look at our urban dilemma, focusing in particular on the impact of a long-term “return to the suburbs” on mass transit funding. If the COVID can be pretty thoroughly vanquished by the summer, if the next round of big city mayors are more focused on stability than flaunting their virtue—well, those are pretty big ifs, aren’t they?
I’ve read that the Democratic wins in Arizona were fueled by emigrants escaping California, while our wins in Georgia came from an increasingly educated electorate. Perhaps so many San Franciscans will move to Austin and its suburbs that the Democratic dream of flipping Texas, the dream that, so far, has invariably flopped, will come true. Well, ill winds and all that, but we never seem to get good news for very long.
1. More neutral than, and thus preferable to, the “Founders”.
2. Jefferson won Virginia, the “monster”, with 21 electoral votes, while Adams won Massachusetts, second largest with 16. Jefferson also won New York (12), while the two split the other two biggies, Pennsylvania (15) and Maryland (10). Jefferson won all of the South and both of the new western states, Kentucky and Tennessee. The Federalist vote was clearly a “coastal” vote, virtually guaranteed to be dwarfed by future westward expansion.
3. Depending on how you count the votes in the 1960 presidential election in Alabama, John F. Kennedy may, or may not, have won more votes nationally than Richard Nixon, though he did have an unquestioned majority in the Electoral College (303 to 219). But the Democrats had majorities in both houses of Congress.
4. The determination of the privileged to retain their privileged position in society by pretending to deny “privilege” while in fact retaining it—whether known as “limousine liberalism” of “the wit of the Guermantes”—takes a never-ending series of new forms. I decry it and other failings of modern liberalism in an extended moan here.
