The Electoral College, which progressives wish to abolish, on Monday gave president-elect Joe Biden a majority of its vote, according to an Associated Press story.
The abolition of the
Electoral College in favor of a popular selection of the president would throw
national elections into the hands of states with large population centers such
as New York and California, unsettling for future generations a problem the
Electoral College was designed to solve.
The founders of the
Republic knew that national elections decided by large population centers would
necessarily disenfranchise small states such as Connecticut and Rhode Island.
Presently, electoral votes allocated to states are based on the census. The number of electoral votes are apportioned to states according to the number of senators and representatives in their U.S. Congressional delegation -- two votes for its senators in the U.S. Senate plus a number of votes equal to the number of its Congressional districts.
In the modern
period, the abolition of the Electoral College in favor of popular vote
elections would concentrate all political power within eastern and western
seaboard states, a geographical power parenthesis largely controlled by rusting,
urban centered, progressive Democrats. That is why the popular vote option is
intensely popular among ideological disposed progressive Democrats and
supportive sectors of populist progressivism among an increasingly left-leaning
media.
Monday’s elevation
of Biden to president-elect by the Electoral College extends his presidential
affirmation beyond seaboard power centers of what used to be called the “vital
center” of American politics. Presidential election by popular vote is popular
principally among larger population centers now controlled by progressive Democrats, progressivism representing the triumph of ideology over
pragmatic politics.
The move to abolish
the Electoral College has and should be resisted by 1) smaller states, 2) both
Democrats and Republican politicians who favor a broad political franchise, and
3) small “r” pragmatic politicians who understand that narrow ideologies spell
the death of democracy. “One man, one vote” is a fine, democratic ambition, but the
ambition is effectively frustrated by adopting a system in which election to
office is determined by large population centers, effectively narrowing the
franchise to demographic and geographical areas of the country largely
controlled by outmoded 19th and early 20th century urban
political bosses. Tails in democratic structures should not wag dogs.
One supposes –
wrongly – that congressional representatives from smaller states would NOT
support the replacement of the Electoral College with a popular vote measure
according to which electors in the states would be bound to vote in favor of
presidents, like Hillary Clinton, who have received a majority of popular
votes. The popular vote mandate would simply disenfranchise smaller states. The present widely
distributed presidential vote would narrow to a few national population centers.
Constituents represented by the Connecticut’s all Democrat US Congressional
Delegation would become vote vassals dominated by New York and California.
In 2017, the Yale
Daily News reported, Connecticut U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal
appeared at his alma mater to support
the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact [H.B. 5434]: “Blumenthal noted
that Connecticut is one of only four states in the Northeast that has not
passed legislation committing the state to the National Popular Vote Interstate
Compact, an agreement between 10 states and the District of Columbia in which
member states pledge to award their electoral votes to the presidential
candidate who wins the national popular vote.”
A CTMirror
opinion piece written by a
member of the National Popular Vote Connecticut Working Group noted: “At
a National Popular Vote CT rally in New Haven, U.S. Sen. Richard
Blumenthal spoke passionately about the need to let the will of the majority
prevail when electing the president, just as it does in all other elections for
higher office. Sen. Chris Murphy has been on the record supporting the
compact since December.”
These are
passionate, inescapably committed affirmations that, as inescapably, argue
against a process which, since the institution of the Electoral College, has
equitably distributed political influence to states such as Connecticut.
Ironically, Blumenthal agreed with those in New Haven who considered the Electoral College “undemocratic” and urged support for its abolition in favor of a popular vote initiative that would make Connecticut a vassal in the northeast to large population centers such as New York. Support among Connecticut politicians in favor of a National Popular Vote Interstate Compact raises the troubling question: What interests are supported when progressive representatives choose to abandon a political enfranchising Electoral College in favor of a faux-democratic system that disenfranchises their own constituents?
Who, Blumenthal's constituents may wish to know, elected him to trade the interests
of his own constituents for a mess of political pottage deployed by Democrat politicians
in major urban strongholds across the country?
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