Can The Capitol Insurrection Get Rid of The Electoral College

Yep and their partisans on the undemocratic Supreme Court will support them. Marbury vs Madison was a bull****decision. They along with the Senate are just doing their designed job to protect the minority of the rich from the vast majority.

 

Sure, but you could allege the yahoos in California are cooking the election rolls and argue the entire state's results should be tossed out. Would get you to the same place.

I don't disagree that the racial politics is a factor. But there were indeed ideological considerations of how to balance power between direct democracy (voting by the person a la the House) and republican governance (indirect representation with the states as the primary building block of political power). I'm not willing to pretend like it was solely a racist institution.

 

I'm not sure I fully understand your point so pardon me if I'm off. My point is that the "racial politics" is more than a "factor". It is inseparable to understand the EC without understanding that it was fundamentally racist. The EC gave power to southern states by counting black people without allowing black people to vote. I agree that the intention by southern states was to find a way to balance power. The means they chose was to utilize a tool that was enabled by their own superiority complex and that mindset persists today (which led to the insurrection).

It is my belief that as a nation, it is critically important that we universally acknowledge that white supremacy is our original sin. Until we do, as a nation, we won't be able to move past this us vs them mindset.

*I feel like I have to say that many whites are not white supremacists. The problem is that many whites enable white supremacy by not firmly rejecting it.

*edit: fixed a typo.

 

So I agree on some points and disagree on others.

I agree the Electoral College as initially constructed was fundamentally racist because of the 3/5th clause. I do not agree that it's sole intention was to be racist because there were legitimate and sincere considerations of how to construct a federal government that mixed considerations of state's powers and direct democracy. (Pre-Civil War, the governing construct was to make the state the primary building block of political power, and the federal government was a federation of autonomous states. They wanted to make sure the President was president of the member states and not the president of the people -- and they did so with the Electoral College. The Senate was a deliberative body of all the member states. And only the House was a vehicle of direct democracy. We've largely flipped that since the Civil War, making the federal government the main locus of political power, and the states became autonomous but subordinate units of power. That is why, imo, we see such pressure on abolition of the EC, because it no longer makes sense to have a President who is a president of the states and not of the people given that the federal government is now so powerful.)

In the politics of the day, the South had a problem because they didn't want to say slaves were people, but they wanted to wield them for political power. So, we came up with the 3/5 compromise to empower the South in the Electoral College. But we didn't invent the Electoral College so that we could make this compromise. It existed and then Southern politicians found a way to optimize their position within that system.

I do agree with you that white supremacy is our original sin, and we have a lot of truth and reconciliation still to deal with. Recognizing the racism (and misogyny) of our old political institutions including the EC is important, and even paramount. But, I don't want to be reductionist about it and say racism is the only story.

Incidentally, the Electoral College is no longer racist by explicit design, but still results in racist outcomes because of how its rules interplay with the distribution of populations. With overpowered, sparsely populated states dominated by whites, the rules of the Electoral College and especially the Senate still today perpetuate the supremacy of whites. And the way minority populations are diluted in urban centers (and liberal whites for that matter because whites tend in urban centers tend to be more liberal) in much larger and more conservative state units in much of mid-America, leaves them without much voice in the presidential election because of the EC. Direct elections would fix much of that. So I'm fine with calling it racist, even fundamentally racist. I just didn't like the singularity of your claim that it is all racism and zero anything else.

 

The EC was an 11th hour compromise that was drafted specifically to give slave owning states additional power. Even more specifically, the EC guaranteed Virginia, the largest slave owning state, the most power. As a direct result, Virginia held the executive office for 32 out of the 1st 36 years. As a direct result of that, slavery as an institution had zero chance of being challenged for many decades.

So I agree with you that the EC was a system to balance the power between more/less populated states. But the racial element isn't just a policy dispute as you characterize it. It's literally inseparable to discuss how the EC came to be and it's impact on our history as a nation controlled by white supremacist who were motivated to maintain their way of life. Everything you said about the concerns of our founders and what their motivations were to form our government is true. But context matters. One of their primary objectives was to maintain the right to hold slaves and they leveraged the system to ensure they could continue to do so. Simple as that.

I'm not saying that racism is the ONLY story. I'm saying that, IMO, racism isn't generally accepted as even being part of the story. I've asked a number of my friends, highly educated people, if they were aware that the 3/5th compromise is baked into our constitution. Nearly everybody is surprised when I remind them. Ask your friends/family, if you don't believe me.

...and this is what most people genuinely believe. That we are no longer a racist country. The Jan 6 insurrection is a prime example that we have never, as a country, fully come to terms with our past.

Yea, I'm not saying that racism is our singular problem. I'm saying I don't think we are honest with ourselves with just how racist we were/are. We continue to beat around the bushes, allow a whitewashing of our history which enables racist elements of our past to persist. You don't get rid of bad actors by pretending they don't exist (anymore). The right is constantly working to rewrite history to make things appear less racist and paint themselves as patriots by hiding behind their own cleansed systemic racism ...and the rest of us accept it. I did. I'm now starting to see just how bad my high school history classes were. For example, the word "white supremacist" is never mentioned but that's exactly what it was.

All that said, our founding fathers built an amazing system of government and their principles were amazing, when applied in general terms. This country has iterated into an amazing place because of their ideals. The problem was, they literally didn't see black people as human so their ideals didn't account for that. So it's taken us a few hundred years to adjust that when we say "all men are created equal", it doesn't mean just some men.

 

I'm watching the Ahmaud Arbery sentencing and the prosecutor invoked a stunning quote.

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions."