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.
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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.
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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!
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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)
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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 🌐 @GScottShandReplying to @GScottShand @baseballcrank @NoahCRothmanI 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 likesShow this thread -
Replying to @baseballcrank
And you ignore plenty of details in your own thread. Including Madison's continued objection to the EC and support for an amendment. http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a2_1_2-3s10.html …pic.twitter.com/KGpCPnpljI
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Madison's subsequent opinions are interesting, but have no probative value on the question of what the EC was meant to do in the first place.
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Replying to @baseballcrank
I think they certainly do as the reflections of a man who was present for the discussions stating his view of why they landed where they did. But of course he was just one (albeit very important) of many founders with differing views. Which is the whole point.
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