I’m going to crib off of Steve M. of No More Mister Nice Blog a little bit in this post, but first I am going to quote him.
In 2000, if Gore had won the Electoral College while losing the popular vote, and if the GOP perceived that Democrats had a structural advantage that made a similar outcome likely in future presidential cycles, not only would Republicans have been agitating to get rid of the Electoral College, they would have browbeaten Democrats and the mainstream media into supporting the move. They’ve always been good at that, while Democrats and the media have always been fearful of being attacked by the GOP. If they were unable to prevent the electors from choosing Gore, they might have refused to certify the results of the electoral vote. Even if they didn’t go that far, they would have made abolishing the Electoral College the #1 topic of conversation in D.C. throughout the transition and the first few months of the Gore presidency, painting opponents of change as haters of democracy. They also would have treated Gore as an illegitimate president, hamstringing him from Day One, using the circumstances of his victory as an excuse. It wouldn’t be long before angry consumers of conservative media were bombarding Democrats in Congress with furious messages demanding the end of the Electoral College. Support for the status quo would be portrayed as left-wing extremism. The Electoral College would have been gone or neutralized by ’04.
As Steve demonstrates, this is no idle speculation on his part. To prove his point, he dug up an old article in the New York Daily News that covered the Bush team’s threats to cause mayhem if Bush won the popular vote but lost the Electoral College:
“The one thing we don’t do is roll over,” says a Bush aide. “We fight.”
How? The core of the emerging Bush strategy assumes a popular uprising, stoked by the Bushies themselves, of course. In league with the campaign – which is preparing talking points about the Electoral College’s essential unfairness – a massive talk-radio operation would be encouraged. “We’d have ads, too,” says a Bush aide, “and I think you can count on the media to fuel the thing big-time. Even papers that supported Gore might turn against him because the will of the people will have been thwarted.
“Local business leaders will be urged to lobby their customers, the clergy will be asked to speak up for the popular will and Team Bush will enlist as many Democrats as possible to scream as loud as they can. “You think ‘Democrats for Democracy’ would be a catchy term for them?” asks a Bush adviser.
Things turned out differently. Gore won the popular vote and he should have won the Electoral College, too. But the Bushies kept their promise not to roll over and they fought live trapped badgers until their man was in the Oval Office.
This is all relevant today because the Democrats are getting tired of winning the popular vote and not the presidency. It happened again in 2016. Someone recently pointed out that the Republicans have only won the presidential popular vote once since Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was born in 1989, but they still won three out of the seven contests held during her lifetime. Yet, as Elizabeth Warren and other Democrats push to abolish the Electoral College and some states move to award their Electoral College votes to the winner of the national popular vote, the Republicans are acting like this amounts to treason.
If it’s treason, they were ready to commit treason nineteen years ago if they thought it would benefit them.
OT, but this is an interesting twist on your Donna Brazile piece the other day.
what a different place the world might have been, if only Al Gore had had the balls to fight the election being stolen from him.
He conceded too early and set the stage for Bush having to never concede. Which he never did.
Then Gore did fight – but Lieberman betrayed the fight.
And then at the 11th hour, knowing the stakes, the recounters in Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties went home for Thanksgiving and could never make the recount deadline.
If Republicans has needed those recounts to be completed they would absolutely have made sure they were counted.
Republicans believe they are in an existential fight. Democrats keep thinking they aren’t.
And yet 6 years later a lot of the Democratic elite were there backing Droopy Dog.
You write:
Politics in the U.S. as it has been practiced since the Assassination Years has quite consistently been “treasonous.”
On both party’s sides.
It’s been “win at any cost” since the first bullet entered JFK’s body, and their definitions of “winning” are not even remotely involved with obeying the Constitution.
If “we” win…fill in the “we” blank as you must…then that’s good for the country, because “we” know best.
The U.S. is now under control of a far more powerful foreign entity than it was in the 1770s….the Globalist Corporate System. At least at that time one could fairly easily and clearly identify the enemy.
Now?
Trance-producing tech…which includes TV, radio, the internet media and cultural apparatuses like films and advertisements…conceals the truth in the name of “entertainment.” It’s not really entertainment, it’s the manufacture of consent.
“Treason?”
The Warren Committee puppet show was “treasonous.”
Bet on it.
Kissinger’s machinations to prolong the war in SE Asia were “treason.”
Both DemocRatic and RatPublican-approved alliances with essentially hostile governments…like Saudi Arabia and Israel, just for starters…are “treason.”
Turning a blind eye to the 9/11 plotters was “treason.” Using that attack as reason for a blood-for-oil was “treason.” Pumping up that war by false media reports about Iraqi weaponry was “treason.”
Selling U.S. jobs down the river for the sake of lower wages and thus greater profit…initially in the countries chosen and eventually right back into the U.S. workforce…was “treason.”
Barefaced lying about mass surveillance was “treason.”
Government “of the people, by the people and for the people?”
Not recently.
AG
Please remember that this is happening rather stealthily https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact
Evergreen reply: It’s Okay If You’re A Republican.
What do the Ken Starr investigation, the Tom Delay plans to challenge the electoral college win by Gore, the Republican debt ceiling hostage taking under Obama, and the theft of Merrick Garland’s Supreme Court seat have in common?
Hint: it’s not some theory about how a principled democratic republic should be governing.
It’s the taking and/or retaining power by any means available withiut respect to norms, fair play, or even common sense.
It’s a scorched earth, no holds barred approach to gangsterism masked as a political party. A cult of snakes assuming the form of humans organized for nothing more than the immediate maximization of personal advantage: to wield the power of their bigotry and greed without regard for consequences to others, or even themselves in the longer term.
That’s the theme tying supply side economics, hatred of immigrants, willingness to destroy the credit of the US, and support for Trump into a single bundle.
Being for Electoral College reform one week and against it the next week are simply changes in tactics in pursuit of their goals. The tactics are inconsequential – changing them is not any inconsistency or compromise of the principles they don’t have.