Tuesday, November 15, 2016

Election Reflections & Some History

Election Reflections

The vote is in. Hillary won. Oops, no she didn’t. Donald did. Electorally that is. Such is our system. This post is a reflection on how that system is working.


The Politics of Personality

 
The election was a battle of personas, not policies, and on that score Trump had more appeal across a wider geographic area giving him the electoral victory. Forget how the system works for a moment, and you can predict that a presidential election will be won by the person with the stronger popular appeal as a person (e.g., Bush vs. Gore, Obama vs. Romney). It’s captured in the question of "Who would you rather have a beer with?" Clinton was rational and restrained. Trump was erratic and bombastic. Trump got more than twice as much free press coverage as Clinton by being Trump. His energy captured the feelings of his followers. Despite being a billionaire, people felt he understood them better than Clinton.


Feelings - Winners and Losers

 
There is a mix of satisfaction and angst in the country. 

Satisfaction is from the Trump supporters who think they got what they voted for. They seem happy to have sent the message that politics as usual is no longer popular. They also sent the message that white, lower and middle class urban and rural America still exists. Its power has not been replaced yet by a multi-cultural, bi coastal, and urban power base. Tired of a media that has overlooked them in favor of minority groups from blacks, to Hispanics, to the LGBTQ community, they appeared from behind the corn rows, coal mines, and car assembly lines and went to the polls.

Angst comes from everyone else who is afraid of what they think they got. Hillary Clinton wasn’t Bill Clinton. She lacked the charisma and the political savvy to ingratiate herself to enough of the voters outside of the urban and coastal Democratic strongholds. She could not pull the same level of support from the nonwhite community as a woman that Barack Obama did as a black man. Even the gender card did not seem to play in her favor as strongly as the black card did for Obama. Getting people to vote for her because she wasn’t Donald Trump was not enough either, although many people undoubtedly voted for her because of whom she was and what she stood for. And finally, her tendency toward secrecy and skirting the rules that gave rise to her email server problems confirmed that she was at least suspect, if not downright untrustworthy. The tiger just couldn’t change the stripes on her pant’s suit.

This was an election that a majority of people were unhappy with from the start. They did not like either candidate. Now that one has won, he can’t expect to be welcomed to the office with open arms, particularly after the nasty, character attacking campaign that was waged by both sides. When you sling mud in the campaign, you end up with some of it sticking around afterward. The fact the electoral and popular vote did not align only makes matters worse. This was going to be a bitter win/lose election where the losers on either side would not shrug it off easily. If Clinton had won, the streets would probably have Trump supporters marching down them.

Never mind the temporary "make nice" rhetoric from the Democrats and fellow Republicans, there is enough animosity around Donald Trump for partisan politics to obstruct his agenda in the same fashion Obama suffered. Remember that Obama had a Democratic Congress for his first two years and then was stonewalled for the next six by a Republican one. The same thing is likely to happen with Trump if the Democrats prevail in the midterm elections. Bill and Hillary Clinton aren’t going to fade into the political woodwork and that spells trouble for Trump.


The Electoral College

 
So long as the national popular vote tally and the Electoral College results produce the same winner, few people care about this aspect of our system of government. When they don’t line up, it gives fuel to an argument about its contemporary relevance. That’s what we have now.

To appreciate the Electoral College requires a journey back in time to the drafting of the Constitution. It was drafted in the summer of 1787 at the Constitution Convention in Philadelphia and was ratified in May of 1790. Included in it was the provision for the Electoral College (later amended with the 12th Amendment in 1800). Why not just make the election a popular vote and leave it at that? Obviously the framers had something on their minds.

As we consider that, keep in mind there were differing opinions about the power of the states vs. the federal government, about slavery, about taxation, and about a standing army vs. state militias. There were no political parties yet, but the different philosophies of government from which they would arise were firmly in place. The views of Jefferson and Hamilton would come to be the positions around which the two-party system would emerge.

The writing of the Constitution was an experiment in creating a new form of government. It entailed a huge risk, a leap of faith that people could wisely govern themselves. People deserved freedom, but could they handle the responsibility? In addition, the states were jockeying for influence in a federal government. Prior to this time, they were independent colonies or separate states bound by the looser Articles of Confederation. The Constitution was a replacement for the Articles which had proved inadequate for sustaining a unified government.

A big problem was how much representation each state would have in the federal government. The northern states were more trade and commerce focused, the southern ones were agricultural. Slavery was legal in seven states from New York southward (excluding Pennsylvania). The South had the greater number of actual slaves. But, slaves weren’t citizens so the South was at a disadvantage when counting population for representation. Getting all the states into a union required compromises based on political necessity at the expense of moral rectitude. The greater good was the union, the evil it took to achieve it was leaving slavery in place and counting slaves as 3/5 of a person for representation in Congress.

It is essential to note that the issue of slavery and representation was not focused on the creation of the Electoral College. It was focused on the creation of the Senate and the House of Representatives. To assert that slavery was the reason for the Electoral College is to overlook the fact that the College is based on the Congress, not the other way around. Once the basis for allocating seats in Congress was settled, it provided a starting point for how to configure the Electoral College. Balancing the states’ power in picking a president was more easily dealt with by using a previously agreed upon balance of representation.

Why do that? The small states were afraid of being overpowered by the large states. Who were those small states? The ones in the South? No. In the fourth U.S. Congress, the five smallest states based on the number of representatives in the House were: Delaware (1), Vermont (2), Rhode Island (2), New Hampshire (4) and New Jersey (5). By these states having the same number of senators as the larger states, their relative power was protected. The process was a way to balance power based on population (the House) with power based on statehood (the Senate). While counting slaves was a way to increase the relative power of the Southern states in the House which made them ‘less small’ population-wise, there were five Northern states that needed the same protection.

We see a similar dynamic today when the Democrats typically win seats on the heavily populated coasts and urban centers, while the Republicans win the wide geographic area of the nation’s center. How do you balance geography and population? How do you balance the equality of states with each other as independent states, yet take into account the inequality of populations? The answer is the Senate and the House of Representatives - the U.S. Congress. It is from that structure the Electoral College derives. If the Congress is a fair and workable arrangement, then so is the College. If the College is not, then neither is the Congress.

But there’s more to the story. Here we return to the question of whether the new leaders could trust the judgment of the people. Not all of them were convinced. Some feared that the people could be led astray by a demagogue or even by a foreign power such as England or France. By inserting the Electoral College between the popular vote and the final appointing of a president, the system gained a check and balance against a democracy run amok. The framers went so far as to spell out that government officials could not become electors as a way to prevent tainting the College. Over the years, their intent for an independent but faithful elector has slowly been morphed into one where electors are political party functionaries. That fact virtually guarantees that an elector will not change his/her vote from the results in his/her state.

In all the elections that have been held, there are only 157 "faithless electors" who did not follow their state votes. Seventy-one of them changed votes when a candidate died between the election and the voting of the electors - they wouldn’t vote for a dead man! Since 1900, only ten electors have not adhered to the state results and in no case did it alter the electoral college outcome. There was a big dust-up for the election of Rutherford B. Hayes vs. Tilden in 1876 when both parties in four states claimed victory. That left 20 electoral votes in limbo - just enough to tip the balance from Tilden to Hayes. The parties brokered a deal that put Hayes in office. The problem was not with the Electoral College, it was with the election results themselves in four states.

Today, in a presidential election in Tennessee, you do not actually vote for the candidate even though his/her name is on the ballot. You actually vote for the electors the candidate has picked to represent him/her in the Electoral College. Those electors are hand-picked party members whose loyalty to the candidate should be unquestionable. They are not a group of independent-minded citizens as was probably the intent of the framers of the Constitution. As a result, it is highly unlikely the Electoral College vote would ever deviate from the state results (national results are different).

 Furthermore, the system has become a "winner-take-all" electoral vote in all states but two. This has the effect of exaggerating the electoral vote margin of victory compared to the popular vote in each state and the nation. It also created this year’s conundrum of the electoral winner and the popular winner being different. Once a candidate wins a state, even by the thinnest of margins, running up a large popular vote in the state is meaningless as far an electoral victory is concerned. A candidate’s strategy must be to capture states, not just votes. If each state allocated its electoral votes based on its popular vote (as do Maine and Nebraska), the electoral and popular votes would align more closely.

So is the Electoral College outdated and should it be dropped in favor of a national popular vote winner? That is the same argument the framers of the Constitution faced more than 200 years ago. The reasons for and against remain pretty much the same and the right answer just as elusive. Each choice has its own inherent problems. It is wise to keep in mind that changing a system to solve one apparent problem can give rise to new problems that could not appear in the old system. This is especially true when removing a check in a check-and-balance system.

Hillary Clinton has won the popular vote with a margin of about 670,000 votes out of 121,410,000 as of mid November - that’s a margin of one half of one percent (0.55%). If the will of the people (as evidenced by the popular vote) determined the outcome, we would have Hillary Clinton as president-elect (ditto for Al Gore in 2000). Democrats seem to be on the losing side of the Electoral College system. There is no arguing that. But, an election is like a battle. One side can field more troops, but if they are deployed in the wrong locations, a smaller force can overcome them. What Clinton achieved in numbers, she lost to strategy.

For those people lamenting the unfairness of the Electoral College, it might be well to ask these questions.

1. If the outcome of this election were reversed, and Trump had the popular vote and Clinton the Electoral win, what would their respective supporters be saying? Would Democrats still want the popular vote to prevail? Would Trump supporters be shouting "Rigged?"

2. Should Congress be reconfigured because it uses the same structure?

3. Should the Democratic party eliminate "super delegates?" These delegates (15% of the total at the DNC) skewed the nomination in favor of Clinton at the expense of Bernie Sanders.

It is difficult to imagine denouncing the Electoral College as a misrepresentation without doing the same thing for the Democratic party’s nominating process. The super delegates gave the Democrats a safety valve to pick an establishment candidate. The Republicans lacked such a feature - and look what happened. It’s not enough to look at just the election, we must also look at the process that produces the candidates that run in the election. That process seems sadly flawed in both parties judging by the rampant distaste for both candidates.

To wrap up the Electoral College debate, let’s note that the election process is clearly spelled out. Everyone knows the rules whether they like them or not. So to win, you play by the rules. Changing the rules is another story, and to do that requires one of three things:

A. Amend the Constitution.

B. Have each state allocate its electoral votes on the basis of that the state’s popular vote.

C. Have all states sign a compact that requires their electors to vote for the winner of the national popular vote. Some states have already done this with the provision it only goes into effect when all states sign it.

Would changing the Electoral College really matter? When the margin of popular vote victory is very small, it means that both candidates have nearly equal claim to govern. What mathematically may look like a clear cut win, is realistically not much of a win at all. This is one reason the nation remains so politically divided and resentful. When you lose by a large margin, you know you are licked. When you lose by a small one, you feel like you are ticked. Sports victories by one point and political victories by one point are not the same at all.

If you want to change the Electoral College, write to your representative in your state legislature.


The Candidate Conundrum

 
As a last observation on the election, we should look at how we got the two candidates we did, why we did not have better ones to choose from, and how one so unpopular got elected. (That’s not just a personal view, polling indicated widespread unfavorability ratings for both Trump and Clinton.) 

The blame rests in several places. The primary one is "we, the people." The second one is "the media." The third one is the two major parties.

It takes someone with an exceptionally large and durable ego to withstand running for president. Why is that? It is caused by the opposition digging up as much dirt as possible to discourage voters from choosing the other candidate; by the people being willing to listen to and react to that dirt; by the media being accomplices in dishing the dirt out to the public and even digging some of it up themselves. That is not to say that we should not know about the relevant negatives of candidates. However, that seems to be all we know anymore.

Discussions of policy and philosophy of governing were largely absent from this election. Most of what occurred was a discussion of how unfit the other candidate was. While that’s not new to presidential politics, it reached a contemporary low in this election. "I Like Ike" and "Jail the Bitch" are poles apart. Wedged in between the negative narrative were unrealistic promises for programs that would inflate the national debt way beyond its current level - true for both candidates. As the voting public, we were short changed.

The press has an obligation to inform the electorate, not merely pass on the propaganda of each campaign. Sadly, the press has fallen prey to something called "false equivalency" where any point of view is treated with nearly equal credibility, no matter how irrational it may be. While the press may feel it is up to the opposition to provide the counter point, the press itself must play the role of a "prudent man" in its reporting. Instead, it panders to a population whose taste for the hype of reality TV is spoiling its appetite for real information.

How did we get to this place? We can blame the dumbing down of America on an antiquated and overburdened educational system that graduates ignorant voters. The greatest protection for a democracy is a well educated and well informed electorate. We are failing on both counts. When ignorant, ill-informed people vote, the results reflect it. Neither party has a monopoly on this. There are red-neck Republicans and dumb Democrats. The answer is not to restrict who votes, but to create voters who can better assess the candidates, their platforms, and their promises. It is a press that fact checks and sorts what it prints, not based on partisan views, but on what is factually and logically correct. A strong editorial page and op ed columns go hand-in-hand with good journalism in the news section. BS needs called out, not shoveled out. If we are to make America great again, this is the place to start. The responsibility to make a judicious choice is connected to the right to make that choice - to vote.


Demise of the Two-Party System

 
Finally, we are coming to the point in American politics where the two-party system is beginning to fall apart. Europe is already there. Our country is splitting along numerous lines whether they are based on class, race, generation, income, education, or geography. The tents of the parties can no longer cover them all. The right is too far right, the left too far left and the middle left uncovered as the right and left pull the fabric of their parties’ tents away from the center. There is ample room for a more central-thinking, compromise-governing party to arise. Instead of other parties like the Libertarian and Green parties appearing farther on the fringe of right and left, the time is ripe for a party in the middle that is fiscally responsible and socially tolerant. All it lacks is a charismatic leader to emerge. Until that happens, and even afterward, the two main parties will continue to splinter internally and fail to govern effectively even when they hold a majority of Congress. This is because the "majority" itself is no longer homogenous. Just ask John Boehner. 

With the parties falling apart, negative campaigning the force-de-jour, a hesitant press, and an educationally eroded electorate, we can only expect government to get worse with each future election. Potentially good candidates will not apply because of the personal cost to themselves and their families of being scrutinized and criticized for every character flaw, mistake, or rethought position during their lifetimes. All of this is now magnified through the unprecedented help of unrestrained, fact-free, social media. The parties will present us with poor alternatives, the press will feed us titillating but irrelevant information, and everyone will reinforce his/her preconceptions by listening to the media outlet that offers reassurance they are right.

If this sounds pessimistic, it is.

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