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baseballcrank's profile
Dan McLaughlin
Dan McLaughlin
Dan McLaughlin
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@baseballcrank

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Dan McLaughlinVerified account

@baseballcrank

Senior Writer @NRO. Reaganite, Catholic, Mets fan, ex-lawyer. Opinions 100% my own, but you can share them. Not the Cardinals broadcaster.

New York
nationalreview.com/author/dan-mcl…
Joined May 2009

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    1. Dan McLaughlin‏Verified account @baseballcrank 19 Mar 2019

      Dan McLaughlin Retweeted Brian Beutler

      When your response to actual American history is "LOL Whatabout Trump." You don't need much reading from the Founding period to be familiar with their concerns about Athenian-style direct democracy, eg, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/10/james-madison-mob-rule/568351/ …https://twitter.com/brianbeutler/status/1108021153694666753 …

      Dan McLaughlin added,

      Brian BeutlerVerified account @brianbeutler
      TIL that the founders created the electoral college for race-neutral reasons pertaining to their desire to block a vulgar populist like Hillary Clinton from defeating a cerebral republican like Donald Trump. https://twitter.com/EsotericCD/status/1108013393921929216 …
      23 replies 58 retweets 231 likes
      Show this thread
    2. Dan McLaughlin‏Verified account @baseballcrank 19 Mar 2019

      Actual history of the Electoral College at the Phil Convention was complicated; there were multiple proposals & delegations like Virginia were split. Delegates from Massachusetts & Connecticut vocally opposed a national popular vote; Randolph (VA) wanted POTUS picked by Congress.

      5 replies 13 retweets 42 likes
      Show this thread
    3. Dan McLaughlin‏Verified account @baseballcrank 19 Mar 2019

      Dan McLaughlin Retweeted b-boy bouiebaisse

      This sort of reductive narrative that the Electoral College was 100% about slavery and the North's unified desire for a popular vote was defeated by equally unified Southern slavers is a serious distortion of that history.https://twitter.com/jbouie/status/1108027266460774400 …

      Dan McLaughlin added,

      b-boy bouiebaisseVerified account @jbouie
      Here is Madison discussing why he thought popular election of the president made sense. His only reservation was the fact that the southern states held so many slaves that they would not be able to bring their populations to bear on the choice of president! That's it! pic.twitter.com/xzCb1UvZsT
      Show this thread
      5 replies 16 retweets 60 likes
      Show this thread
    4. Dan McLaughlin‏Verified account @baseballcrank 19 Mar 2019

      In reality, of course, the compromises that created the Electoral College, the Senate, and the House were not independent of each other. Large vs small states, free vs slave states, elite vs popular democracy, all were different fault lines. Everybody made concessions.

      4 replies 10 retweets 46 likes
      Show this thread
    5. Dan McLaughlin‏Verified account @baseballcrank 19 Mar 2019

      Roger Sherman of Connecticut was one of the vocal opponents of direct national popular election of the president. This sort of pseudo-history just assumes this was because Connecticut was a Southern slave state. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

      6 replies 10 retweets 57 likes
      Show this thread
      Dan McLaughlin‏Verified account @baseballcrank 19 Mar 2019

      In the long run, of course, it was the Electoral College that enabled a not-overwhelming majority in the North to act collectively to elect Abe Lincoln. Lincoln got 54% of the vote in states he won, 26.3% in Douglas states, but 0.9% in Breckenridge states, 0.7% in Bell states.

      8:46 AM - 19 Mar 2019
      • 6 Retweets
      • 34 Likes
      • DeplorableDreamer 🇺🇸 Tomas McIntee D.E. Walter Appling ARBE Geoffrey Ogden American Mom Y◎K◎ // BattleSwarm
      3 replies 6 retweets 34 likes
        1. New conversation
        2. Dan McLaughlin‏Verified account @baseballcrank 19 Mar 2019

          True, Lincoln won a popular plurality, and 1860 is not really the best case for national acceptance of an election result. But the point is that the Electoral College works *against* a united regional bloc like the antebellum South that has fallen out of the national mainstream.

          2 replies 7 retweets 47 likes
          Show this thread
        3. Dan McLaughlin‏Verified account @baseballcrank 19 Mar 2019

          Well into the 20th century, states in the South voted in far greater lockstep than elsewhere. FDR in 1944 won 93.6% of the vote in Mississippi, for example. But that counted no more than Dewey winning 50-49 in Ohio & Wisconsin. That's good!

          2 replies 10 retweets 36 likes
          Show this thread
        4. Dan McLaughlin‏Verified account @baseballcrank 19 Mar 2019

          Our American system *as a whole* -not just by design by by experience- forces the patient building of broad, diverse political coalitions over time to effect significant change. If the system is flawed, it's when the process is overrun by novel short cuts (eg administrative fiat)

          3 replies 15 retweets 46 likes
          Show this thread
        5. Dan McLaughlin‏Verified account @baseballcrank 19 Mar 2019

          If you think that an American government elected by national popular majority would have abolished slavery before 1860, you probably have not read much American history from before 1860. The same is largely true of Jim Crow.

          1 reply 13 retweets 51 likes
          Show this thread
        6. Dan McLaughlin‏Verified account @baseballcrank 19 Mar 2019

          Let us also recall that a candidate who gets only an Electoral College plurality means a president selected by the House. Happened once (1824) & went badly. We've had a *lot* of popular vote pluralities. Only in 1876 did the loser (maybe) win a popular majority.

          1 reply 6 retweets 28 likes
          Show this thread
        7. Dan McLaughlin‏Verified account @baseballcrank 19 Mar 2019

          Had the Founders selected presidents by national popular vote, they'd almost certainly still have had the House choose when there's a plurality. Under that system, W wins in 2000, Trump in 2016. And stopping W & Trump is 100% of the point of this argument.

          8 replies 24 retweets 71 likes
          Show this thread
        8. Dan McLaughlin‏Verified account @baseballcrank 19 Mar 2019

          The Founding Fathers were wise & practical men. They were not infallible & knew that. Progressives' real problem is Article V: Founders made it impossible for a faction, even a majority faction, to amend the Constitution to its own factional advantage. So this is all pointless.

          12 replies 27 retweets 98 likes
          Show this thread
        9. Dan McLaughlin‏Verified account @baseballcrank 19 Mar 2019

          Dan McLaughlin Retweeted G. Scott Shand  🌐

          That column is notably careful to ignore Randolph's proposal, excise Sherman's critique of a national popular vote, & generally frame the South as the sole, unified critics of popular election solely for slavery reasons, He ignores quite a lot.https://twitter.com/GScottShand/status/1108063140804210688 …

          Dan McLaughlin added,

          G. Scott Shand  🌐 @GScottShand
          Replying to @GScottShand @baseballcrank @NoahCRothman
          I know you have issues with Jamelle, and disagree with him on this issue, but that's no reason to misrepresent his argument. He wrote an article about the complicated discussion re: the EC amongst the founders, and notes exactly what you did about Sherman. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/28/opinion/the-electoral-college.html …
          2 replies 4 retweets 21 likes
          Show this thread
        10. Dan McLaughlin‏Verified account @baseballcrank 19 Mar 2019

          2016 electoral votes, states/DC w/ 3 EV: R 15, D 9 4 EV: D 15, R 5 5 EV: R 10, D 5 6 EV: R 30, D 6 7 EV: D 14, R 7 8 EV: R 16, D 0 9 EV: R 18, D 9 Given the D advantage of 24-20 in the smallest (3 & 4 EV) class, the real D grievance is with the small-to-midsize states.

          2 replies 3 retweets 19 likes
          Show this thread
        11. Dan McLaughlin‏Verified account @baseballcrank 22 Mar 2019

          Another thing people miss in the "Electoral College means a lot of places get ignored" argument: the primary process gives many of these same voters a big voice. Northeastern Republicans played a pivotal role in nominating Trump, rural black Southerners in nominating Obama.

          3 replies 5 retweets 14 likes
          Show this thread
        12. Dan McLaughlin‏Verified account @baseballcrank 22 Mar 2019

          South Carolina may not matter in November, but it matters a whole lot to who is on the ballot in November.

          2 replies 2 retweets 15 likes
          Show this thread
        13. Dan McLaughlin‏Verified account @baseballcrank 22 Mar 2019

          Dan McLaughlin Retweeted Dan McLaughlin

          In 2008, Hillary lost the primary on delegate-count grounds after winning California, New York, Florida, Texas, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and New Jersey.https://twitter.com/baseballcrank/status/1108709436619702272 …

          Dan McLaughlin added,

          Dan McLaughlinVerified account @baseballcrank
          Obama-the only Democrat to win a general election popular vote majority since 1976-only got the nomination after losing the national popular vote in the primaries. Yet, I don't hear the critics of the Electoral College bemoaning the damage done by him "stealing" the nomination. https://twitter.com/kerpen/status/1108457590588088320 …
          5 replies 6 retweets 18 likes
          Show this thread
        14. Dan McLaughlin‏Verified account @baseballcrank 22 Mar 2019

          Back of the envelope math, off Census Bureau 2018 population estimates: doubling the size of the House would, without any other changes, raise the 4 largest states from 28.4% to 30.6% of the Electoral College, while reducing the 15 smallest states & DC from 10.6% to 8.8%,

          3 replies 3 retweets 5 likes
          Show this thread
        15. Dan McLaughlin‏Verified account @baseballcrank 4 Apr 2019

          There's a number of historical problems with the "Electoral College was created to protect slavery" narrative. Left-wing historian Sean Wilentz looks at one of those, specifically, how the Constitutional Convention actually voted.https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/04/opinion/the-electoral-college-slavery-myth.html …

          4 replies 12 retweets 21 likes
          Show this thread
        16. Dan McLaughlin‏Verified account @baseballcrank 4 Apr 2019

          Worth noting as well: Madison, who raised the slavery issue at the Convention after authoring the original Virginia Plan (under which Congress elected POTUS) was later willing to compromise on popular election bc he was optimistic about growth of the southern electorate.pic.twitter.com/zIwxKq6tuN

          1 reply 1 retweet 8 likes
          Show this thread
        17. Dan McLaughlin‏Verified account @baseballcrank 4 Apr 2019

          A fair amount of the slavery-at-the-Constitutional-Convention stuff also relies on an ahistorical projection of the post-1830 dynamics backward onto the men of the 1780s. Neither slavery's opponents nor its defenders were as zealous at the time, nor as assured of the future.

          2 replies 3 retweets 18 likes
          Show this thread
        18. Dan McLaughlin‏Verified account @baseballcrank 4 Apr 2019

          The Founding generation took concrete steps against slavery & was optimistic about its long-term abolition, but there were still northern slave states in 1787 (NY, NJ), & northern opinion was still a long ways from trying to ban slavery in the South.

          1 reply 1 retweet 11 likes
          Show this thread
        19. Dan McLaughlin‏Verified account @baseballcrank 4 Apr 2019

          The dismal fate of Ben Franklin's anti-slavery petition to Congress in 1790 shows how far from mainstream it was, at the time, to use federal power to ban slavery in states where it existed, rather than rely on state bans & federal territorial bans. http://www.ushistory.org/documents/antislavery.htm …

          1 reply 3 retweets 12 likes
          Show this thread
        20. Dan McLaughlin‏Verified account @baseballcrank 4 Apr 2019

          That history may seem irrelevant to what happened at Philadelphia in 1787, but it's not. The context of where elite opinion stood on slavery in 1787 informs the realistic scope of what the delegates' hopes & fears were.

          2 replies 3 retweets 8 likes
          Show this thread
        21. Dan McLaughlin‏Verified account @baseballcrank 5 Apr 2019

          Me @NRO: What the Electoral College Saves Us From https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/04/what-the-electoral-college-saves-us-from/ …pic.twitter.com/OkR9Z5IIMl

          11 replies 14 retweets 28 likes
          Show this thread
        22. Dan McLaughlin‏Verified account @baseballcrank 5 Apr 2019

          Another example I didn't have room for: 1888. The ex-Confederate states (not very ex, in 1888) voted 61-37 for Cleveland. Rest of the country went 50-46 for Harrison. Cleveland won only 1 state (CT) that wasn't a slave state in 1860. Cleveland won pop. vote by 0.83% & lost.

          3 replies 3 retweets 20 likes
          Show this thread
        23. Dan McLaughlin‏Verified account @baseballcrank 5 Apr 2019

          Should Cleveland have won that election? He lost the six largest states. His regional appeal was so narrow, as an incumbent POTUS, he couldn't even win the state where he'd been Governor 4 years before & that had made him POTUS.

          3 replies 1 retweet 12 likes
          Show this thread
        24. Dan McLaughlin‏Verified account @baseballcrank 5 Apr 2019

          Cleveland carried the national popular vote, 48.6% to 47.8%, solely b/c he won Texas by 41 pts. He won 82% in SC, 70+% in MS, LA, GA. Did that make him a more legitimate representative of a majority of the voters than Benjamin Harrison, who won only 1 state (VT) with > 58%?

          3 replies 1 retweet 16 likes
          Show this thread
        25. End of conversation

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