Thursday, December 01, 2016

Hillary Clinton is on track....

to have won the last election popular vote by about 2.5 million votes as a high a "mandate" as was claimed by George Bush Jr in 2004. And yet Trump, thanks to the splendidly inane Newtonian Mechanics of the Electoral College is the one selecting Cabinet Secretaries.
Okay granted, the Founding Fathers created the Electoral College as a bulwark against "popular passions" which was in part defined in the Federal Papers as the somewhat more spurious notion that large states would somehow "bully" small ones at the polls.
BTW just as a digression was there a better example of malign "popular passions" in this election than the belligerent wave that swept Trump to glory in the Electoral College?
Clearly the Goddamned Thing does not work as designed.
All Constitutions (if well written) are inherently biased in favor of legitimacy, legality and the Perpetuation of said Constitution. Legitimacy here is the question because you cannot have two contradictory "legitimate" outcomes of one "winner take all" election.
And yet we do.
The response (from the Trump Campaign's Screech Monkeys) is that the Electorial College's election is the Only One That Matters....and yes on paper that is the case.
But let me ask all seven of my readers this, why then do we have popular presidential elections at all?
The tactical setback from 2016 is that we've got Trump as President and our odds of survival either as a democracy or even physical person is at best a tick over fifty fifty.
But the constitutional issue here is even more disquieting the popular vote is suddenly rendered meaningless...which to my mind is the first step to getting rid of it in all but name only....
Think about that please.

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