While I am an outsider, I always thought that would be against the spirit of the checks and balances in your constitution (not that I think it’s a great idea, but times change, and so should supreme laws).
It doesn’t mean states are powerless, the electors are still politicians that want to keep their jobs and influence in the party and some sense of normalcy. And, ultimately, there isn’t any one thing that can keep the democratic process working, rules can always be bent if there isn’t enough resistance.
Hopefully, in a few years we’ll have most countries scared enough to go back to caring about their citizens and the crisis shall pass, for now.
The Electors would not be bound by law to vote in the intended manner. Who would trust that they would all cast their votes against the wishes of their state electorate in that case?
I mean, the case in question was literally about defecting Democratic Electors.
I’m not arguing against the decision. Just trying to understand what it means.
antlers
4723
The slate of electors would be chosen for their loyalty to the particular candidate who is supposed to get their votes, same as now. If we trust the electors in FPTP, we’d have the same reason to trust them in Interstate Compact.
Sure, but the idea of the Compact rests on a guarantee — a state law! — that all parties to the compact will comply with it. Absent that guarantee, why would any state trust the Electors of another state to uphold it?
Again, this case was literally about Dem Electors — Dem party operatives — being faithless.
Of course Electors from one state can be faithless now, but that doesn’t have any direct effect on the choices another state makes. Under the compact, every state has to trust the Electors of every other state to comply. They won’t do it.
Disastrous for whom? A national presidential candidate, sure.
But a Senator, like Ernst? They need only worry about their state. Would it really be politically disastrous for a Senator from an urban state like, say, Rhode Island, to publicly talk about the out-of-touch rural snobs who constantly look down on and bad-mouth the urban areas of the country where the vast majority of the population works and who generate the vast majority of the country’s GDP? All while the out-of-touch rural few receive massive net subsidies from the urban areas? Would it really reduce that politician’s popularity to proclaim that his urban constituents are the real Americans, while implying those far-off other folk somehow aren’t quite as real?
Seems like that would work perfectly fine to me. After all, rural politicians have done great with their constituencies using the same tactics for over a century. (And, unlike the myth of cities leeching off the countryside, the bit about the giant net subsidies to rural areas happens to be true.)
magnet
4726
Yet they do.
For instance, New York, New Jersey, and Illinois are in the NPVIC, and none of them punish faithless electors.
NJ and IL were the second and third states that joined. So every state that joined since then has understood that the NPVIC permitted faithless electors, potentially a lot of them. Nevertheless, thirteen more states joined without demanding that NJ and IL change their ways.
Alstein
4727
I think it might do the opposite. State legislatures can determine how electors are selected- they just give them to who wins the national popular vote. If they go faithless from that, well that’s on the candidate.
I think we missed connections here. Here’s what I was trying to say:
I wish my liberal allies, like Adam B, would refrain from taking the bait from Republicans like Ernst.
As a liberal living in a red country, I see up close the damage that we do when we make ugly comments about rurals and Midwesterners (and religious people, etc).
So many of these people feel blah about Republicans, but vote solidly against Democrats because Dems so often attack them viciously. Very often those attacks have a very solid basis. Adam is totally right about unequal representation. But we get baited into an overreaction, far beyond the the particular issue, so that we are declaring entire groups our enemies.
And lots of voters, picking between blah Republicans and a Dem group that has sworn enmity, end up reliable Republican voters.
I agree, though, this will not hurt Ernst at all. Quite the opposite!
I would - perhaps - be tempted to take as my cue for a response to those people you describe, a popular t-shirt seen during Trump rallies in the 2016 election season. To wit: “Fuck your feelings.”
The right-wing snowflakes do not have my sympathy at this point in time.
I whimsically refer to this standoff as Aliens vs. harsh language.
magnet
4730
It is foolish to believe that Midwesterners are the enemies of Democrats.
Nearly every Midwestern city votes for Democrats.
Nearly every rural county on the West Coast votes for Republicans.
The reason Oregon votes blue and Iowa votes red is not because there is something special about living in Oregon or living in Iowa. It’s simply because in Oregon there are more people living in cities than in rural areas, whereas in Iowa the reverse is true.
Resenting Iowans in general is like resenting math.
KevinC
4731
To be fair, I spent many years in school resenting math.
I assure you, I am not urging restraint out of concern for right wingers’ feelings. All I care about is winning. Not just the White House, but also enough Senate seats to be able to stick it to the right wingers. (Not to mention, where possible, winning statehouse elections in the leadup to redistricting.)
However people may be feeling about rurals and the religious and so on, though, those people are not 100% in the Republican column. Obama’s first election, he lost rural counties by about 15 points, second election by more than 20. Clinton lost them by quite a bit more than 30. (This improved a little in '18, but still way worse than 20.)
In states like NY, this doesn’t matter. The metropolitan counties so overwhelm the rural numbers that we win the states anyway. But in a whole slew of other states, the metropolitan counties can outweigh a 15-20 point deficit in rural areas, but definitely not 30 points.
The goal has to be to get back the kind of rural people who voted for Obama but since have voted Republican. These are not lost causes. But as a resident of a red county who knows lots of those people up close and personal, I can tell you: it is not liberal program proposals, nor high admiration of Donald Trump that sways them away from us. It is when liberals express generalized hatred that seems directed at them, their families, and their lives.
You or Adam may be thinking of pigs at a Dump rally screaming racist slurs and impersonating subhumans… but when your return target seems to include broad brush areas of the country, you are doing the Republican political operatives’ work for them.
And yet, rural America constantly uses a broad brush on urban America. Which is how this conversation got started.
Is it realistic to expect urban America will treat their rural brethren better than they themselves are treated? Especially when there are more urban Americans than rural to begin with?
(I’m not condoning this sort of behavior on either side, mind you. I’m just saying this sort of regionalism is deeply ingrained, and that it’s not one-sided.)
Matt_W
4735
This perception that they have is created and fed by right-wing media outlets. I have no particular disdain for people who live in more rural areas or religious people. Those mid-westerners might be surprised to find out that most Democrats (though not as many as Republicans) are indeed religious and mostly share their cultural values. Fox News and etc troll for intemperate statements by Democrats and then savvily use social media and their propaganda infrastructure to broadcast it directly into the brains of their viewers. I’m not sure what we can do about that. Policing the language of all 44 million or so Democrats is not really possible.
Those folks want to feel aggrieved. They have some need for persecution and look for any excuse to vote for the pussy grabber. “They called me names” is childish. Again, I have no special contempt for rural voters, but I automatically assume that anyone who voted for Trump knowing who Trump is (and he takes great delight in demonstrating exactly who he is every day) is a fucking moron.
RichVR
4736
While I have hatred for Republicans, it is not generalized. It is very specific. But I never vocalize it to them. Usually.
Well, if you actually think this is true, then you need to make a choice. Are you more interested in giving people the verbal abuse they deserve, or more interested in winning elections and taking control of government?
However, if you want the truth, your statement that
is sbout as accurate as people who make sweeping statements about blacks. Just because some people within a group act a certain way does not make broad generalizations true.
Please tell me that our goal isn’t to turn rural America as red as our opponents have turned predominantly black precincts blue. I want to live long enough to see the Dems back in control of government.
Sharpe
4738
There’s no way that liberals can prevent the right in the US from feeling aggrieved, even if liberals exercised Dalai-Lama-Plus levels of enlightenment, civility and restraint, because a core part of the right wing media machine is devoted to intense and repeated manufacture/facilitation/intensification of perceived grievance by the right. Even extremely mild statements get taken out of context. Comments with no pejorative intent get milked for outrage. If there is no “outrageous” statement, one will be manufactured.
I agree that liberals should not go out of our way to gratuitously or without reason attack rural Americans or red state populations generally. But there is no way to avoid the right wing rage by “toning it down” – b/c if no strong statements are made, mild statements will be twisted; if no mild statements are made; other statements will be taken out of context and misconstrued, or made up out of whole cloth. The right wing media machine is a lie machine and a grievance machine and there is no way to reason with that, or “civilize” that, or “make peace” with that via decorum. In fact, by focusing on alleged “liberal insults to America”, that buys into the whole frame. And then of course, you have the reality that the right wing in the US is vicious and rude to liberals all the time: calling us traitors, wimps, terrorists, terrorist-sympathizers, immoral, lazy, etc. etc.
I agree that we should not go out of our way to needlessly insult or antagonize red America. But that’s b/c we are better than that; not because it’s going to gain us any traction at all.
Matt, did you read the post I was responding to?
With a straight face you are telling me that only a person who wants to feel aggrieved would take this badly? C’mon.
You wanna call Dump names, fine.
You wanna call our current representational system a farce, fine.
You wanna call out individuals like Ernst for defending it, fine.
But all the rural Midwest? Only if your goal is to lose elections.
Matt_W
4740
I get what you’re saying. But liberals are constantly admonished to pay special attention to the tender feelings of white rural voters because we need them. And in fact, show me a statement by a national level Democratic politician that attacks rural mid-westerners. We dance around them all the time, walking on eggshells, bending over backwards about biofuels and farm subsidies. We go to their state fairs and pretend that blue jeans and cowboy hats are what represent real America. Our politicians and media outlets are actually very reluctant to ever use the “r” word and try really hard not to roll our eyes when they scoff at arugula and food that isn’t bland, grilled, and meat. We have prayer breakfasts and swear on bibles and wear flag pins and say the pledge of allegiance. We do anything we can to touch them in a special way and make them feel cozy without throwing our most loyal constituencies all the way under the bus. I kind of think they’re a lost cause. Maybe instead we should spend all that energy figuring out how to turn out young people.
