Whatever Ends Up Happening Tomorrow, The Electoral College Has Been Forever “Politicized”
Tonight a small group of people gathered outside the Pennsylvania State Capitol for what was termed “a vigil.” These people are staging a 24-hour demonstration, to last until midday tomorrow, at which time the Electoral College will have (presumably) rendered a verdict and cast their official votes for president. Gatherings like this are supposed to have occurred at state capitals nationwide, but I can only speak for Harrisburg, PA — it was a tiny but passionate group, comprised of people from Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and New York. (It makes sense that people from Democratic-voting states would have made the trip to a GOP state capital, because if their aim is to deny Trump 270 electoral votes, that can only be accomplished by persuading a sufficient number of GOP electors to defect.)
Although I find the recent frenzy around Electoral College subversion plots highly overwrought and ill-considered, I nevertheless wanted to go and give the demonstrators a fair hearing. One woman brandished a sign which declared Trump a “puppet,” and she told me that he was under nefarious foreign influence — Russian, of course — which meant that Electors ought to be entitled to block his victory. Her talking points all seem to have come from the mysterious “Hamilton Electors” group, which cites newfound folk hero Alexander Hamilton’s writings as justification for why an unprecedented coup is warranted, notwithstanding the guaranteed plunge into chaos that would ensue.
Everyone I conversed with seems to be well-intentioned, and few were staunch Hillary supporters. But that’s not really the point — most people in general are well-intentioned. (The road to hell is paved with…) I don’t think these folks fully apprehend the gravity of what it is they’re advocating. First off, it seems 100% indisputable that millions upon millions of Americans would’ve felt just as vehemently negative about Hillary had she won the election. They would’ve denounced her has disastrously unfit for office, and sincerely believed that she posed a profound danger. They would’ve maintained that the level of danger is so extreme that it would warrant extraordinary measures, such as an aggressive campaign to pressure Electors into bucking the expressed will of their states’ voters, even though no such thing has ever come close to happening in the entire history of the country, since 1788.
In other words, the notion of a candidate being uniquely unqualified is a thoroughly subjective determination. Those who want to extra-legally oust Trump speak as if his “unfitness” is just self-evident; they are seemingly oblivious to the fact that scores of millions of their fellow citizens take the diametrically opposite view. That’s why we resolve questions of “fitness” via the actual election — voters had plenty of information about the relative merits and demerits of both candidates, and chose accordingly. It’s amazing that some of the same people who’ve spent the past month whining about how horribly unjust the Electoral College is nevertheless want to use it to retroactively impose new conditions on how the winner of the election is selected — that would really be the height of “un-democracy.” If a body of unelected party functionaries can just decided on a whim to pick somebody else, what’s the point of having an election in the first place? State legislatures could simply select presidents without even bothering to consult the citizenry, as is technically their right to do.
Reforming or even doing away with the Electoral College is a legitimate pursuit, but it needs to be considered extremely carefully and systematically. This “consideration” can’t be accomplished in the heated aftermath of an acrimonious election, with the outcome hanging in the balance. Inevitably, that context is going to make reform efforts look like petty partisan gamesmanship, and will probably undermine the long-term goal of implementing a new system. If this coup attempt were to succeed, it would look (rightly) like a bunch of sore losers resorting to radical tactics to impose their will — not because they have any sincere, principled aversion to the Electoral College, but because it produced an outcome which they happen not to like this time around.
On top of that, if the coup-plotters got their way, it would guarantee a Constitutional Crisis unlike anything we’ve ever seen before. Let’s say, theoretically, that they do successfully deprive Trump of 270 electoral votes, and the House of Representatives gets to decide the winner for the first time since 1824. That’d be great fodder for the media and political reporters, but it’d wrack the country in incredible turmoil. And for what? To elect…Mitt Romney? Paul Ryan? John Kasich? …Really? Would that be worth all the fuss?
For one thing, there’s a reasonable case to be made that Trump is actually better on the merits than the aforementioned three alternate Republicans — on trade policy, foreign intervention, entitlement programs, and more. But leaving that aside; is it worth chucking centuries of precedent into the toilet so we end up with President Paul Ryan instead of President Trump? How exactly would that profit the Republic? Left-wing types who favor the Coup can’t seem to answer this question; they just know they find Trump inconceivably awful, and everything else is secondary.
Mostly what I think this is about is delegitmizing Trump to whatever degree possible. That’s why you see the push to blame Trump’s victory on Russian hacking and James Comey — to ingrain the “narrative” that he didn’t win legitimately, and only got in because exogenous factors conspired to create a historically anomalous “perfect storm.” (There’s probably some truth to this.) If Trump becomes the first incoming president to face a serious challenge in the Electoral College, so their thinking goes, he’ll be further weakened and “delegitimized.” But…to what end, exactly? Not clear.
Conversely, I tend to think that these “delegitimization” efforts actually serve to weaken his opposition, because they demonstrate that anti-Trump forces will cling to any moonshot gambit, no matter how harebrained, purely out of throbbing animus. It makes their opposition look irrational and mindless. Rather than targeting their efforts at specific initiatives to counteract Trump’s worst impulses, they cling to “Russian puppet” theories and crackpot subversion schemes. So in addition to not working on a practical level, this stuff won’t work in the sense that it ultimately strengthens Trump.
Then there are the more long-term consequences which few seem to have contemplated. Whatever the outcome tomorrow, we’ve now entered a new era where the Electoral College has been “politicized.” No longer is it seen as a mere formality, existing only to ratify the election results. Going forward, Electors must be prepared to endure sustained, and sometimes vicious lobbying blitzes, have their information be posted on the internet, and in general have their life disrupted for a six week period. Future campaigns will probably much more closely “vet” Electors, because the lesson of 2016 shows that they are expected to exercise individual discretion that could supersede their state’s election results. This is brand new territory. “Faithless electors” have showed up every now and then throughout history, but never in the form of a broad-based “movement” intended to thwart a specific candidate.
That means US presidential elections have taken on an additional phase, the “norms” around which have yet to be determined. It’s easy to imagine this having some fairly nasty consequences. For that we’ll have the coup-plotters of 2016 to thank — they’ve set a “precedent” which cannot now be undone.
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