Four Question for Those Who Oppose the Electoral College; What the Electoral College Saves Us From

R. E. Bowse  "Have you heard?  The Electoral College is bad.  Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and others support its abolition.  On March 28, Delaware became the thirteenth state to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC) in which members agree to award their electoral votes to the candidate who wins the national popular vote.  The compact goes into effect only when the combined number of electoral votes of member states reaches 270, assuring their candidate victory. Legislation affixing New Mexico to the NPVIC sits on the desk of Governor Michelle Grisham (D). She's expected to sign it, giving the coalition 189 votes."
"The debate surrounding this issue is another example of proponents avoiding the salient points.  I pose the following four questions to those would undo the electoral college system, with the goal of promoting clarity and focusing on the nub of the matter."

1. If you support the direct democracy of a popular vote system, do you also reject republicanism as our form of government? . . .
2. If you reject the notion of disproportional representation, do you reject the institution of the U.S. Senate? . . .
3. Parity between the states was key to ratification.  Does parity not matter anymore? . . .
4. Is a popular vote system a cure for the disease? . . .

What the Electoral College Saves Us From;  "The winner of a national office should have nationwide support" . . .

. . . As with all such enthusiasms — expanding the Supreme Court, abolishing the filibuster and the Senate itself, lowering the voting age to 16, letting convicted felons and illegal aliens vote, adding D.C. and Puerto Rico as states, automatic voter registration, abolishing voter ID, etc. — the scarcely concealed argument is that changing the rules will help Democrats and progressives win more.

. . . "Picture a two-candidate election with 2016’s turnout. The Republican wins 54 percent of the vote in 48 states, losing only California, New York, and D.C. That’s a landslide victory, right? But then imagine that the Republican nominee who managed this feat was so unpopular in California, New York, and D.C. that he or she loses all three by a 75 percent–to–25 percent margin. That 451–87 landslide in the Electoral College, built on eight-point wins in 48 states, would also be a popular-vote defeat, with 50.7 percent of the vote for the Democrat to 49.3 percent for the Republican. Out of a total of about 137 million votes, that’s a popular-vote margin of victory of 1.95 million votes for a candidate who was decisively rejected in 48 of the 50 states." . . .

Democrats in 2020: Unelectable Nonentities

Conrad Black

Here are a few of Black's salient points:
. . . "The Gadarene stampede to (and over) the edge of the abyss of all who advocate open borders, 70 percent income taxes, the green terror, socialized medicine, legalized infanticide, reparations to native and African-Americans, packing the Supreme Court, and vacation of the Electoral College, has finally elicited, in a Churchillian expression, a tiny mouse of dissent." . . .
. . . "Nixon told me that neither of them said a word as [McGovern's] speech was delivered in the Mr. Peepers monotone of the nominee, and that when he ended, the president turned to his wife and uttered this reflection: “All our time in politics, we have fought the Democrats of Roosevelt, Truman, Stevenson, Jack, Lyndon, and Hubert; all substantial and formidable men. How did that great party fall into the hands of such jerks?” (The real last word is not suitable to repeat in a family magazine.) . . .
. . . "At least Beto O’Rourke, halfwit though he is, gave it a great try for the U.S. Senate from Texas. Such is the poverty of these Democratic candidates, Mayor Pete is starting to rack up some points as an antidote to the geriatric Sanders-Biden vote, which polls show, pulls about 55 per cent of Democrats." . . .
. . . "The country still seems to like to change parties in the White House every eight years, but the Democrats will have to do better than this farrago of nonsense and nonentities." . . .

Voters believe Hillary colluded

Don Surber  "After two years of the media scream Russian Collusion against President Donald John Trump, the public has its verdict in: Hillary did it.
" 'A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 47% of Likely U.S. Voters think Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign is more likely than President Trump’s to have illegally colluded with foreign operatives," Rasmussen reported.
"All that huffing and puffing -- billions of dollars in free media for Hillary and her henchmen on television -- and she still lost.
"The poll showed only 45% still believe in the media's libelous narrative.
You can fool some of the people all the time (45% it turns out) and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all ofthe time.
"Victor Rantala wrote, "The worm is turning in spite of a non-stop, years-long onslaught of lies from the never-Trump media about it all. The tipping point is now -- with the majority finally discerning the truth and slowly more and more rejecting the coordinated MSM disinformation campaign."
"Democracy dies in darkness.
"The media withers in the sunlight of the truth.
"The American political media's influence today is as dead as Hillary's presidential ambitions.
"Only 20 of the nation's 1,300 or so newspapers endorsed Donald Trump.
"He carried the most states any president did in 20 years. He had more Electoral College votes than any Republican in 28 years.
"The power of the press is as strong as a 2-year-old, which is also where its temperament is."

Constitutional amendment introduced to abolish the Electoral College

WCTV

Hat tip: Dallice Hand

"A campaign to get rid of the Electoral College is picking up steam. Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii, along with fellow Democratic Senators Dick Durbin, Dianne Feinstein and Kirsten Gillibrand, introduced a constitutional amendment Tuesday to abolish the Electoral College.

" 'In an election, the person who gets the most votes should win. It's that simple," Schatz said in a statement. "No one's vote should count for more based on where they live. The Electoral College is outdated and it's undemocratic. It's time to end it."

"Other top Democrats, including presidential candidates Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Sen. Cory Booker and Pete Buttigieg, have also said the Electoral College should be scrapped. The concept has gained in popularity after both Al Gore and Hillary Clinton lost their respective presidential elections despite winning the popular vote.

"Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, said it could happen again in the future.

" 'It's likely that if anything, the incidents of the popular vote being disregarded by the Electoral College will be increasing during the 21st century. Why? Because of the concentration of Democratic votes in a smaller number of states," Sabato told CBSN. "They may be big states like New York and California. But when you put all the electoral votes together, Democrats will have more trouble reaching 270 [electoral votes] than they will winning the popular vote.' " . . .

Pete Buttigieg's father was a Marxist professor who lauded the Communist Manifesto

The People's Cube

Washington Examiner  "The father of Democratic presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg was a Marxist professor who spoke fondly of the Communist Manifesto and dedicated a significant portion of his academic career to the work of Italian Communist Party founder Antonio Gramsci, an associate of Vladimir Lenin.

"Joseph Buttigieg, who died in January at the age of 71, immigrated to the U.S. in the 1970s from Malta and in 1980 joined the University of Notre Dame faculty, where he taught modern European literature and literary theory. He supported an updated version of Marxism that jettisoned some of Marx and Engel's more doctrinaire theories, though he was undoubtedly Marxist.

"He was an adviser to Rethinking Marxism, an academic journal that published articles “that seek to discuss, elaborate, and/or extend Marxian theory,” and a member of the editorial collective of Boundary 2, a journal of postmodern theory, literature, and culture. He spoke at many Rethinking Marxism conferences and other gatherings of prominent Marxists.

"In a 2000 paper for Rethinking Marxism critical of the approach of Human Rights Watch, Buttigieg, along with two other authors, refers to "the Marxist project to which we subscribe."

" 'In 1998, he wrote in an article for the Chronicle of Higher Education about an event in New York City celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Manifesto. He also participated in the event.

" 'If The Communist Manifesto was meant to liberate the proletariat, the Manifesto itself in recent years needed liberating from Marxism's narrow post-Cold War orthodoxies and exclusive cadres. It has been freed," he wrote." . . .

And then there were six: Gillibrand adds her name to growing list of 2020 Dems who oppose the Electoral College The list includes Pete Buttigieg , Cory Booker and Kamala Harris among others.

Election Integrity and the Electoral College; One underappreciated benefit of voting by states.

Volokh Conspiracy  "With the Electoral College still in the news, I thought I'd note one small argument for keeping it that I haven't seen much elsewhere. (Though I'm quite sure it isn't original to me.)

"As Ross Douthat suggests, the stakes in the electoral college debate may be smaller than we think. Today's institution may not have the deliberative advantages the Founders hoped for, but it also may not produce quite as many democratic costs as critics fear. (Cf. Lyman Stone's argument that the U.S. electoral system actually has less structural bias than those of peer countries.)

"Ross's claim is that a state-by-state vote in the electoral college encourages broad electoral coalitions, as opposed to regional parties chasing 51% majorities. With the country so polarized, he writes, both parties are chasing 51% anyway—so maybe all the electoral college does is to delegitimize the occasional winner.

"My suspicion, though, is that it's precisely in these circumstances—with high degrees of polarization and partisan distrust—that the electoral college does the most for election integrity.

"In a nationwide popular vote, every false vote that's cast anywhere in the country adds to the vote total in exactly the same way. For the same reason, every true vote that's suppressed anywhere in the country will subtract equally from an opponent's numbers. (Thus the concerns about nationwide recounts: as Keith noted, "we might need to be prepared to deal with the new incentive to shade the vote count in every county in the Union.")

"A world of highly polarized states makes the problem even worse. In a deep-red or deep-blue state, where one party occupies the vast majority of state offices, there'd be means, motive, and opportunity for serious fraud. The whole nation would be at stake, and fewer people would be in positions of power to discover or punish any shenanigans. And if you think your political opponents might be rigging a national election somewhere halfway across the country, well, you're just a sucker if you don't beat them to it.

"By contrast, in a districted system like the electoral college, widespread election fraud in Alabama or Massachusetts would be entirely pointless. " . . .

After Mueller’s Exoneration of Trump, Full Disclosure

Andrew C. McCarthy
The FISA applications, the testimony in secret hearings, the scope memorandum — all of it.

. . . "As we’ve noted before, unlike Mueller, who needs a crime to indict, Congress does not need a crime to impeach. The media-Democrat alliance does not need a crime to inflate Mueller’s not-quite-so stories into treason. To keep this carnival rolling on for another year and a half, they just need fodder for the narrative — which is so predictably morphing from the collusion narrative to the impeachment narrative to the campaign narrative.

"Since before Robert Mueller was appointed, I have been contending that there was no legal basis for the appointment of a special counsel because there was no evidence that the president had committed a crime. For nearly a year and a half, I’ve maintained that Mueller had nothing close to an actionable “collusion” case, that he had no prosecutable obstruction case, and that this exercise was an impeachment investigation geared more toward rendering Trump unelectable in 2020 than toward actually removing him from office." . . .

So, having considered that, Can Trump Win Again in 2020?   . . . "In 2016, Trump had no record to run on. That blank slate fueled claims that such a political novice could not possibly succeed. It also added an element of mystery and excitement, with the possibility that an outsider could come into town to clean up the mess.

"Trump now has a record, not just promises. Of course, his base supporters and furious opponents have widely different views of the Trump economy and foreign policy.

"Yet many independents will see successes since 2017, even if some are turned off by Trump’s tweets. Still, if things at home and abroad stay about the same or improve, without a war or recession, Trump will likely win enough swing states to repeat his 2016 Electoral College victory." . . .

A Brief Survey of 2020's Psychotic Democratic Roster

Freedomsback

Chinese-Americans are already seeing the specter of Mao in this crop of candidates.  So, as Mr. Bardmesser advises, do anything and everything you can to convince those less politically aware that if any one of the declared Democrats wins in 2020, America as we know it will be relegated to the ash heap of tragic history along with our precious Constitution.

Patricia McCarthy  "There was a superb column at The Federalist on Wednesday by George S. Bardmesser: "Every Time Democrats Talk, I Want to Vote for Trump Twice."  It is as hilarious as it is frightening.  It is also a courageous confession, especially for a lawyer who lives in D.C.  Let's hope he has personal security."
. . . 

"Then there is the thoroughly insubstantial Kirsten Gillibrand, who has never held a position longer than politically convenient.  Now she is so pro-illegal immigration that she even wants to reward illegal aliens' law-breaking with Social Security.  This woman's character is as ephemeral as a puff of smoke.  She also sounds like a little girl who never developed an adult voice, rather like Ocasio-Cortez.

"But even Gillibrand is not as silly as Andrew Yang.  One of his core issues is circumcision!  He is against it!  He is also for giving money away in the form of a "universal basic income."

"Like the rest of the Left, all of these people's plans require taxing people beyond sanity — the kind of taxation that would destroy the country. 

"Pete Buttigeig is the current mayor of South Bend, Indiana.  He is openly gay with a stellar résumé, including the fact that he is a veteran.  His particular issue is "intergenerational justice," whatever that is.  He is clearly a smart guy but, like all the others, makes catastrophic climate change part and parcel of his agenda.

"Curiously, in a recent survey of Millennials that sought to determine the top twenty things that worry them, climate change did not make the list.  And to anyone paying attention, global cooling is very likely a graver danger.

"Why are Ocasio-Cortez's approval ratings falling?  Aside from the fact that she knows nothing about anything, her Green New Deal is a pathetic joke.

"Oh, yes, and they all suddenly want to abolish the Electoral College!  Had HRC won, they would be singing its praises." . . .

The daffy left and their Democrat candidates: the perfect storm

What if Democrats don't nominate a crazy person in 2020?  "Reeling from defeat in the midterm elections, Republicans have started to entertain the following hope: The liberal base will force Democrats to nominate somebody totally crazy as their presidential candidate in 2020, ensuring the re-election of President Trump.

"The dream that a victorious party will be consumed by radicals, overreach, and become unelectable, has long been a refuge for parties following a major loss. . . . 

""Looking toward 2020, there is good reason to believe that Trump, despite his low approval rating, will be able to shake off defeat and get re-elected.

. . . "The liberal base of the Democratic Party is angry and out for blood. But, there are currently two dozen potential presidential candidates and no clear frontrunner. Some of the candidates frequently touted have stumbled in early forays into the national spotlight — whether it was New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker’s “Spartacus moment” or Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s DNA test gambit that backfired badly. " . . .

Students say Ocasio-Cortez is face of Democrat party, not Pelosi   . . . "Wanting to know what college students had to say, Campus Reform's Cabot Phillips headed to Georgetown University to ask a simple question: “Between Nancy Pelosi and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who do you view as the face of the Democrat party?”  
"The results were overwhelmingly in Ocasio-Cortez’s favor." . . .

Omar, Bernie, and Ocasio-Cortez decried for their fusty, outdated ideas on Venezuela — from the left  . . . And then he takes square aim at Reps. Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose heads are filled with lefty university mush and true ignorance of anything else, as well as the biggest old dinosaur himself: socialist honeymooner Bernie Sanders."  . . .


Most major 2020 Dem candidates will boycott American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference  . . . "But the boycott by Democratic presidential candidates shows an extremely worrying fact; the radical anti-Semites on the left fringe of the Democratic party are gaining power and influence. There is already talk of pushing a "Boycott, Divest, Sanction" plank in the 2020 party platform and how much do you want to bet that Rep. Omar and her fellow travelers will be featured speakers at the event?" . . .


During a January stop in New Mexico which did not make it into his blog, O'Rourke, 46, ate the local dirt, which the report said is believed to have "regenerative powers."

Townhall

The ‘Burn It Down!’ Democrats   

"The Senate. The Electoral College. The First Amendment. The Second Amendment. The Supreme Court. Is there a part of our constitutional order that the Democrats have not pledged to destroy?
"There are some Democrats out there in the sticks — a lot of them, in fact — who simply don’t understand the constitutional order. They believe that the United States is a democracy, John Adams et al. be damned, and, in fact, they often are confused by the frankly anti-democratic features of the American order, because they have been taught (theirs is a pseudo-education consisting of buzzwords rather than an actual education) that “democratic” means “good” and “undemocratic” means “bad.”

"But the Democrats in Washington are a different story. Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris went to law school. They understand the American constitutional order just fine.

"And they hate it." . . .

Constitutional Fairyland

Conrad Black

"Another week, a new harvest of insane Democratic pre-electoral hobby horses. Various of the numberless swarm of presidential aspirants in that party have glibly chimed in with their views of how to modify American government to assure a permanent “progressive” majority. Gathering steam now are absurd ideas to side-step the Electoral College, pack the Supreme Court, lower the voting age to 16, and divide the political rubble heap of California into three or four states to create more Democratic senators.

"All of this is nonsense, emanating from the same political fairyland as the 12-year elimination of carbon use and bovine flatulence. La Pasionaria Occasion assures us her Green New Deal will not lead to millions of unemployed as the leaders of organized leaders claim, but too a “reinvigorated workforce.” That is a (presumably) unintended recourse to Orwellian newspeak: involuntary unemployment is rarely reinvigorating.

Would-Be Rulers East and West

"The bunk about the Electoral College is an attempt to subvert the basis of the American federal system. Little states such as Delaware and Rhode Island had the same number of senators as large states like Virginia (which then included West Virginia) and Pennsylvania, for the reason that their interests as states were just as significant as those of the large ones—and probably in need of even greater protection. (Philadelphia in 1787 was the second largest English-speaking city in the world, with 34,000 people, though a long way behind London, 20 times as populous.)" . . .

Democrats: untrustworthy stewards of this nation for over 160 years

In the 1860's just as in the 2000's, Democrats have been the party to cut and run in the face of adversity. During the Civil War, Democrats ran on the platform of "forget the countless thousands who died, let slavery continue to exist". TD

The Democrat Party is the real symbol of the Confederacy  . . . "Polities where the Democrats enjoy one-party rule today include basket cases like Detroit, where African Americans endure some of the worst living conditions in the country, and creative-class playgrounds like San Francisco, whose black population was purged in the period of urban renewal. " . . . 

Now today, regarding the Electoral College, Democrats would be happy to discard the wisdom of the nation's Founders if it hinders their quest for power. Their cause is greatly aided by ignorance in the media and in our educational system that produces their candidates we see this election cycle and the voters who support them. Bear in mind this all started when Hillary mentioned the Electoral College as just one of many reasons she claimed for losing. TD

Restoring States' Rights to Presidential Elections  . . . "Restoring the rights and powers of the sovereign states is the linchpin of everything we need to begin to solve our problems.  The power of state legislatures remains in the language of the Constitution, and those rights ought to be given life again.  If that happens, we can begin the peaceful revolution our nation needs.  It is doable and ought to be done.  Nothing keeps Republican state legislatures from beginning the process but the guts and grit of their own members — and there is no reason for delay at all."

Oh, yes, and they all suddenly want to abolish the Electoral College! Had HRC won, they would be singing its praises.

Warren Wants to Eliminate the Electoral College, Which Would Cause Havoc in Our System
"You hate third party candidates now? Try competing without the Electoral College."

"I wouldn’t call our Founding Fathers perfect, but man did they leave us one of the greatest documents penned in the English language. Their brilliance provided America not only with the Bill of Rights, but with the Electoral College.

"Grumbles about the Electoral College have existed for a long time, but after President Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton, its elimination shot to the top of the Democrats list of issues in their campaigns.

"Sen. Elizabeth Warren proclaimed her wish to abolish the Electoral College at a recent town hall, but I don’t think she’s given it much thought to the mess this would create."

. . . 

People forget that Hillary only received 48% of the popular vote, not 50% and above. In other words, she did not receive the majority of the popular vote. In 2000, Al Gore received 48.38% of the popular vote.

"Without the Electoral College, we could end up with a president who only had 25% of the vote. Wallison "points out that the government could add a run-off amendment, which means the top two or three candidates would hold another election:

Of course, we could graft a run-off system onto our Constitution; the two top candidates in, say, a 10-person race, would then run against one another for the presidency. But that could easily mean that the American people would have a choice between a candidate of the pro-choice party and a candidate of the pro-gun party. If you thought the choice was bad this year, it could be far worse.

"A mess. An absolute mess. These Democrats have to think long and hard before they shout from mountain tops stupid ideas just to appease the feels of some people."

Wake up Democrats, our party is un-American  . . . " 'Democrats and many in media now accuse Mr. Trump of totalitarian methods and objectives,” wrote Ted Van Dyk recently in the Wall Street Journal. “There is much to fault in the Trump presidency, but the totalitarian tendencies appear to flow from our own party.' ” . . .