🚨 BIG NEWS: Senator Chris Van Hollen announced he will challenge Chuck Schumer to be majority leader in the next Congress, triggering a dramatic power struggle as Democrats prepare to take control of Capitol Hill after their midterms win. “The voters called for big change, and this is a time that we have to deliver for people across the country,” Van Hollen, of Maryland, told the Washington Post. Here’s what Van Hollen told Zeteo last month – and the case we made for him to run this week.
Good morning! Mehdi here. TGIF!
In today’s ‘First Draft,’ I make the case for why Democrats should get rid of the Electoral College and how the midterms’ ‘blue tsunami’ has finally made that a possibility. Plus, some centrist Dems want to join with Republicans to push more surveillance and less privacy in this lame-duck session of Congress.
Are you kidding me?
Hey, but at least Chris Van Hollen is challenging the useless Chuck Schumer for the Senate Majority Leader’s post. Did you read Prem’s very timely ‘First Draft’ lede this week making the case for Van Hollen?
So much to discuss, including the ongoing Israeli killings in Gaza. Let’s get into it.
Time to Kill the Anti-Democratic Electoral College
We should never forget that the two most divisive and destructive American presidents in living memory, George W. Bush and Donald J. Trump, were elected to their first terms after losing the popular vote; after winning fewer votes than their Democratic opponents. Al Gore beat Bush in 2000 by half a million votes. Hillary Clinton trumped Trump in 2016 by a whopping 3 million votes. Yet, thanks to this country’s archaic and anti-democratic Electoral College, Bush and Trump joined three other American presidents in winning the White House despite losing the popular vote.
The Electoral College, which grants the presidency to the candidate who receives a simple majority of at least 270 of 538 total electoral votes, comes from Article II, Section 1, Clauses 2 and 3. It was a consequence of delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia fearing a direct democracy and the rise of populist demagogues (oh, the irony!).
Americans, however, aren’t fans of the Electoral College – and not just because of the Bush and Trump victories. Opinion polls dating back to the 1940s show clear majorities in favor of switching to a national popular vote. Yet the Electoral College persists because the constitutional amendment needed to abolish it is a near-impossibility.
So what can be done? Well, intriguingly, tantalizingly, here’s how the Democratic Party’s blue tsunami in last week’s midterms could perhaps finish off the Electoral College for good.