And so it begins. Nine months still to go before the next US presidential election and already the Republican party favourite and former President Donald Trump is sending eyes rolling skywards with his seemingly outlandish statements.
And yet they will delight many of his supporters.
Suggesting at a rally in South Carolina that he would “encourage” aggressors (for example Russia) “to do whatever the hell they want” with Nato countries that fail to pay their dues has prompted an immediate slap down from the White House. A spokesman called the comment “appalling and unhinged”, saying it was “encouraging invasions of our closest allies by murderous regimes”.
Nato Secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg has also responded forcefully, saying: “Any suggestion that allies will not defend each other undermines all of our security, including that of the US, and puts American and European soldiers at increased risk.”
She ran a shit campaign. Everyone likes to forget that part
Everyone also likes to forget that she won the poplar vote. She lost the electoral college, an anti-democratic institution that Democrats seem to think is really important to keep, despite the fact that keeping it often makes them impotent.
It frankly doesn’t matter whether they want to keep it or not. It would take a constitutional convention to change and in the current climate that’s going to go make things worse, not better.
There is one interesting workaround I’ve heard about from time to time, the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. It’s a state-level agreement where all the participating member states commit to allocating their electoral college votes to whomever won the popular vote nationally. No need for a constitutional convention since the allocation of electoral college votes is in the hands of state governments, they can decide to do this under the existing constitution.
But you need states to agree to that, which runs into the same issue as an amendment does.
You don’t need as many states to agree to it. Just enough to swing the election.
However the states likely to agree are the ones that reliably vote Democrat, and the GOP has only won one popular vote in the last 30 years. So again, it won’t make a difference.
The comment I was responding to at the root of this said:
And my response was to point out that no, it wouldn’t. It doesn’t. It’s still difficult, sure, but it doesn’t require a constitutional convention to change.
Also, if you actually look it up, there are enough states that have already enacted the compact or are “pending” to get it done. So it’s closer to being done than you are implying.
It will. To change the constitution you need 2/3 of the states. For this plan to work, you need only 50.1% of the electoral votes to agree. Doesn’t matter if they primarily swing democrat, it just has to be a majority.
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“Pokemon GO to the polls.” causes me physical pain to think about.
…and then years later, this flew under almost everyone’s radar:
From CNN, via Internet Archive, October 11, 2022: