If you ever wanted to live in 1780s America, congratulations, you're there

Jonathan Last peers into the abyss.

In half a century of Cold War fiction, no one ever imagined that Russia could win such a complete and total victory over the United States: That the American people would freely elect a candidate who openly sided with a Russian dictator and that this view was an active part of his electoral proposition.

And yet: Something like 200,000 voters in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania will determine whether or not Putin achieves such a colossal, unthinkable victory over the West.... It will not be FSB spies, or Russian nukes, or the Spetsnaz who conquer NATO. It will be a few stadiums full of strategically located voters in America.

In Cold War fiction, Russia could win by many means: By conventional arms, by maskirovka, by intelligence coups, by technological advancement. Some writers considered how the Soviets could corrupt the American political system with the help of spies and fellow travelers. I do not believe that anyone ever proposed a scenario in which an American presidential candidate would say that he preferred Russia’s dictator to America’s allies and then won a free and fair election.

In Last's paragraphs 1 and 2 there's an incongruity unique to the American system. He writes the American people would elect a pro-dictator candidate, which is somewhat true, but then more accurately writes that only 200,000 voters in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania would elect the whoreson villain.

The latter is certainly unique in a "democratic" republic. The Electoral College is also a reprehensible vestige of a once-necessary compromise that has far outlived its necessity.    

Last might want to add to his total the roughly 22,000 voters from the mere 43,000 who put Joe Biden over the top in Georgia and Arizona  (already counted is Wisconsin). We than have 222,000 voters in five states among a 50-state nation of 336 million Americans who could decide the next presidential election, which is offensive to democratic accountability. The offense was even more egregious in 2020: Biden "won" the election by seven million votes, yet he just barely squeaked by in three states. 

Some campaign strategists and finance people might consider America's anachronistic Electoral College a gift. There's no need to worry about Alabama and Vermont, or Wyoming and Illinois. Like most other states, they're goners, red or blue. Hence campaign resources can be poured into only a handful of localities.

Democratic strategists would prefer a true national election, I'm sure, since Democratic nominees consistently win the popular vote. But perhaps the EC's radical narrowing of worries is some consolation. Nevertheless it remains an antidemocratic outrage.

Once Republicans begin losing the EC, they'll likely discover that the wretched thing should be constitutionally amended out of existence. It's so unfair! they'll scream. Where that would leave them — routinely losing the popular vote as well — is the pregnant drawback that might also cause them to meditate a bit longer on a constitutional change.

If they still have the base they have now, though, making the one, solitary, singularly rational change — dumping politically suicidal Trumpism — would be unthinkable. That obscenity at least keeps them in their red congressional seats.

Unquoted above is Last's observation that should the villain win, "voters won’t even be able to say that they were duped." Trump is being quite open about his pro-Russian convictions and Putinesque designs on the U.S. And should Putin win in Ukraine, writes Last, "it will be because he understood not just Trump’s character but America’s character, better than any of us."

That's a stretch. Let's say he will have better understood American voters' lack of character in a few states. 

All because we remain in 1787 America, Southern America. Then, electors chose the president and the South's enslaved population counted as three-fifths human, thereby increasing its number of congressional seats and thus presidential electors. Now, we still choose electors, and we're all enslaved by the Electoral College. 

Comments

[VoiceOfReason]

I think they'd rather dump the XIXth Amendment than the EC. It would dovetail nicely with their ongoing war on women.