Hillary Clinton made history this election cycle by becoming the fifth candidate to lose an election, losing in the Electoral College but winning the popular vote. That’s a uncommon occurrence: five times in our 240-year history. And yet, liberals are now throwing epic tantrums because The Huffington Post and New York Times said Clinton would be elected. She won the popular vote. She should be president, right? No. That’s not how it works. So in addition to progressives arsonists, rioters, and dealing with the biggest triggering event of their lives, we’re going to have to deal with idiotic articles about how the Electoral College should be abolished. In Slate, Mark Joseph Stern wrote that it should be abolished because has its roots in racism and sexism.
The Electoral College eventually passed reform—but even with some refinement, the same basic dilemma persisted. The Civil War amendments repealed the three-fifths clause, insisting that “the representatives shall be apportioned . . . from the whole number of persons in each State” while prohibiting racial discrimination in voting. But the 14th Amendment explicitly reserved the vote to the “male inhabitants” of a state, denying women that newly expanded right. As Akhil and Vikram Amar have noted, this sexist exclusion maintained the quintessential problem of the Electoral College: giving densely populated states disproportionate influence in choosing the president—while allowing those states to deny suffrage and representation to extensive swaths of their populations.
Of course, this sexist situation was eventually remedied by the 19th Amendment. But for decades, the Electoral College allowed states to continue to repress women’s suffrage without consequence.
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Most of us are taught that the Electoral College was designed to undermine democracy by forcing voters to elect independent electors who then chose the president. That’s true, but that’s only part of the story. The system was also designed to accommodate and preserve slavery, the ultimate tool of white supremacy — and later served to delay universal female suffrage. Today, the first justification is irrelevant, because electors are generally no longer independent. But the second remains all too relevant, because in its current form, the Electoral College continues to undermine the votes of minority voters.
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It may seem odd that California’s 55 electoral votes would go to President Mike Pence, for example, if he wins the 2024 election. When Republicans win, residents of blue states take pride in the fact that their electoral votes go to their candidate. But that pride is really quite laughable and is far outweighed by the benefits of a system that follows the popular vote. States are a collection of people, not electors, and the president they elect represents all of them. Abolishing the Electoral College would be a good way to recognize this basic fact of current constitutional democracy.
It would be easier for liberals to be straightforward with the rest of us, especially with themselves: You’re just pissed off that Donald J. Trump — excuse me — President-elect Donald J. Trump won the election. So you dig into our darkest corners to justify getting rid of something that you think prevented Clinton from winning. Remember, Stern acknowledged that we have an amendment process to change the Constitution if enough Americans demand it, which gave women the right to vote. And abolished slavery after a bloody civil war. Legislatures, lawyers, and elected lawmakers have changed over time, removing or overturning racist laws, and they’ve been the better for it. And yet the Electoral College is undermining minority voters? Where? They happen to live in the areas where elections are decided: cities. Philadelphia and Pittsburgh decided Pennsylvania’s state elections, a cornerstone of the Democrats’ blue wall in presidential elections. Clinton couldn’t get people excited. The same was true in Wayne County, Michigan, where Clinton won about 80,000 fewer votes in Detroit than Obama did in 2012. That would certainly have erased Trump’s 13,000-plus-vote lead to win the state. Which brings us back to why this whole debate is stupid. Democrats, you lost to Donald J. Trump. You lost! He was easily one of the most flawed and vulnerable candidates the Republicans have ever nominated in the current era, maybe ever, and you couldn’t beat him because Clinton was so much worse. He attracted white working-class voters that Romney couldn’t reach, he convinced millions of Obama supporters to switch, he was seen as an outsider, while Clinton’s 20-plus years of public service in Washington, coupled with her six-figure speaking salary, failed to portray herself as a working-class hero. She was absolutely awful — and not the most qualified to run for president. It’s one of the most outrageous remarks ever made in this campaign.
Ultimately, the Democrats lost because they underestimated the white working-class voters, didn’t know they were a mainstay of Obama’s coalition, didn’t energize the base, and ran a campaign that didn’t care about the majority of the electorate. Trump’s gains with white working-class voters wiped out the Democrats’ gains with college-educated whites and Latino voters. Hey, that’s what happens when you win over a enormous part of a voting bloc that makes up 70 percent of the electorate. People, Team Clinton thought it was worth going to Norte Dame for St. Patrick’s Day because white Catholics weren’t worth it. Trump won with the Catholics. He won with the working class. Maybe if the Democrats hadn’t nominated a lousy candidate under investigation by the FBI who actually cared about everyone, not just the ultra-liberal segments of the country, she might have won. She didn’t. Not because of the Electoral College. In fact, where she won the popular vote is California, which is reliably liberal and whose 55 electoral votes went to her anyway. California is not representative of this country in any way, shape, or form. It’s a sewer for progressives.
The face of American liberalism just got a pitchfork in the face, and they have to deal with it. It could be a long, brutal road to recovery, because the Democratic Party apparatus from federal to state and local has atrophied. Obama may have won twice, but his legacy ended with the destruction of the Democratic Party.
The left is actually using history to justify the end of the Electoral College because they want to call the country racist and sexist, which is their hobby, and to confirm that they think elections should be decided by voters living on the progressive West Coast and the liberal Northeast. And that’s it. It’s another thinly veiled attack on the majority of the country who don’t have college degrees and don’t speak the language. To hell with the flu states. They don’t live where things matter. We’re liberal, we’re better, so we should decide who’s president. That’s the mindset. Does anyone here think that 12-16 states, all blue states, should decide the election? Why do voters in the I-95 corridor matter more than voters in Ohio? Yes, New York is a reliably Democratic state, but the Electoral College forces candidates to campaign in states they wouldn’t have to if it were just a popular vote. An election in which only the most liberal states, which are also some of the most populous, decide who will be president can only lead to division. In time, the other America that exists outside the urban bases of liberal snobbery will split, which is normal. Unfortunately, we don’t dwell on these issues much. The Electoral College isn’t going anywhere. It needs a constitutional amendment, and Republicans control 69/99 of the state legislatures. It’s dead. So liberals should stop whining and accept Donald J. Trump as their president. Sorry kids, you lost. Time to grow up. Democrats, if you really want to listen to Michael Dukakis on the Electoral College, go for it. Dukakis, a total loser who got his ass kicked by Bush 41 in 1988, said that Democrats should focus on abolishing the Electoral College. If the left wants to get in that tank, go ahead. We’ll laugh at your clown show for the rest of us to see.
