Wednesday, June 23, 2021

A SIMPLE PROPOSAL

I posted this on Twitter a while back, but I never mentioned the idea here.


I know, I know -- far too many Democrats say the filbuster is essential to democracy, too. But the filibuster is sustained in Washington by Republicans. And even if they get rid of it the next time they control the Senate, I suspect they'll abolish it with an expiration date, so the abolition will no longer be on the books when and if Democrats regain Senate control.

I don't know if the stunt I've proposed would get the point across that something described as essential to governance in a representative democracy is absent in every state, and somehow governance happens anyway, but it might be worth a try. I'd also note that Republicans get the vapors when you propose to abolish the Electoral College, and yet every state governor is elected by straight popular vote. (Even Mississippi, where a Jim Crow-era law said that the governor and other statewide officeholders must win a majority of the state's legislative districts as well as a majority of the popular vote in order to be elected, with the state House of Representatives picking the winner if no candidate won both, got rid of that syatem recently.) Pure democracy is good enough for the states, and somehow those evil liberal cities don't prevent the election of Republicans in, say, Texas or Ohio. So why isn't the popular vote good enough for the presidency?

I don't expect these arguments to change a lot of minds, much less change our system. But I wish someone would at least put the ideas out there.

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