Donald
J. Trump, America's fevered dream, a lonely grifter who expertly used
fear of the other to ascend to our nation's highest office . . . He
strode fully-formed, from New York tabloids and reality TV, with the
huckster's gift of gab and the uncanny ability to hone in on other's
weaknesses. But from that fateful day he rode down on his golden
escalator in Trump Tower, he's been our slow-motion national train
wreck from which we cannot for even a day avert our eyes.
Just
try, for I have, and every time I do, I still can't quite ignore him.
Just think of all the myriad of ways, he has sullied his office –
the constant lying, the shameful bullying of others, his blatant
disrespect of our courts and media, his cartoonish threats in the
U.N. to destroy another sovereign nation, and, most shameful of all,
the defending of Nazis and white supremacists. Interestingly, what
would have dominated the news for any other President, the paying off
of a porno star, doesn't even make the cut. Chew on that awhile.
By the
dizzying number of unforced errors, Trump has proven his worst
detractors correct. He is spectacularly unsuited to be President. So
it is with some sadness I have to admit that Trump is not our main
problem – even though saying that I know I might well lose my
glow-in-the-dark Trump Hater decoder ring that George Soros uses to
communicate with we minions of the Deep State.
A
number of factors made Trump's election possible a strong right-wing
news media impervious to facts and the manipulation of voters through
largely unregulated social media sites, to cite only a few. But
whenever I hear the usual political blah-blah-blah about Trump
speaking for the forgotten man, Democrats being condescending toward
the working class, or Hillary Clinton being such a flawed candidate,
I can't shake the notion that something very important is being
ignored.
Namely,
that Hillary Clinton, for all her many weaknesses, real and imagined,
managed to win by nearly 3 million votes. So the proximate cause of
Trump being in the White House is not Russian bots, the mendacious
Fox News, or, even, the unpropitious James Comey, but because of the
out-dated, convoluted way we pick our Presidents.
It is
richly ironic that the Electoral College, which was supposed to be
our bulwark against populist demagogues, made it possible for the
most demagogic President ever to win. In Federalist No. 68, Hamilton
contends that the Electors would be “most likely to have the
information and discernment” to choose wisely so as to avoid
selecting someone “not . . . endowed with the requisite
qualifications.” To belabor the obvious, in December 2016 when the
Electors met last that didn't happen. Instead, they voted for the
obviously unqualified Donald J. Trump.
So far
this century, we've had two candidates who lost the popular vote and
won the Electoral College, Trump and George W. Bush. And, if you're
of my political persuasion, that's more than enough to convince you
the Electoral College needs to go.
But if
you still need more reasons, here goes. Part of the Electoral
College's original purpose was to keep southern states relevant
despite their built-in disadvantage of a disproportionate number of
3/5's of human beings (slaves, in other words) in their populations.
So it
helped slave states, and now it benefits lightly populated, largely
rural states that are predominately white. Think, Wyoming. So as the
nation becomes ever more diverse and urban, we will continue to elect
Presidents by a method that strengthens the vote of the minority at
the expense of the majority. This is not one person/one vote. It's
not majority rule.
If
your city privileged a mostly white conservative neighborhood by
giving their votes more weight, regardless of our political
persuasion, we'd all be outraged, but that is exactly what happens
with the Electoral College. Wyomingites have 3.6 times the voting
power of Californians. The Electoral College is a radically
undemocratic anachronism that virtually guarantees we'll have more
Presidents who represent the minority of voters, not the majority. It
needs to be abolished. Period.
That
can either be done by a constitutional amendment or by the National
Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC), which is an agreement among
states that the popular vote winner will be elected President. Over
the years, upwards of 700 amendments have been introduced in Congress
to reform or abolish the Electoral College. It's time we finally got
the job done.
In
2012, Enrique Peña Nieto won by two-and-a-half million votes to
become President of Mexico. In 2017, Emmanuel Macron won by 10
million votes in France. In neither country, in fact, in no other
country does the second-place vote-getter win. Our presidential
elections should be no different. Just as Marjory Stoneman Douglas
High School in Parkland, Florida should be the last school to face a
mass shooting, Donald J. Trump should be the last second-place
voter-getter to become President.
