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Anthony Damiani's avatar

"Eliminating the Electoral College altogether and electing presidents with a straight popular vote, as Democrats want, is not desirable even if it were feasible"

This is insulting in the extreme. It's moderate fetishism. "Sure, we COULD adopt one-man, one-vote.... but that would disadvantage perspectives that have fewer votes!"

It brings to mind the old saw that to those used to privilege, equality feels like oppression. Such a scenario would only 'disadvantage' Republicans to the precise extent that there are fewer of them.

The real danger here is that this alone is insufficient-- it would not fix the systemic biases in the House or in the Senate, and it will not address the self-selecting hyper-political nature of the Supreme Court. Actually allowing the people to elect their leaders by majority vote is presented as a hopelessly radical position, when it is the only solution that will address our ongoing legitimacy crisis.

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Alan Vanneman's avatar

Very nice piece, although, as Anthony Damiani points out, your objection to electing the president by a simple popular vote is specious. Also, the notion that the "old" Republican Party was ideologically "pure" is false. Although the "old" GOP talked incessantly of its determination to balance the budget, when in office they always ran up huge deficits while crafting elaborate plans for balancing the budget that, amazingly enough, were never enacted into law. Ever since 1994, the driving force of the Republican Party has been the populist nihilism of Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh. Even prior to that time, an essential part of Ronald Reagan's appeal was his hatred of "welfare"--that is to say, programs that helped black people. Reagan's deep hatred of the American civil rights movement, a sentiment very much shared by William F. Buckley, William Rehnquist, and Antonine Scalia, is something that "conservatives" always manage to forget.

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