Thread by @baseballcrank

When your response to actual American history is "LOL Whatabout Trump."

You don't need much reading from the Founding period to be familiar with their concerns about Athenian-style direct democracy, eg, theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…

https://twitter.com/brianbeutler/status/1108021153694666753

Actual history of the Electoral College at the Phil Convention was complicated; there were multiple proposals & delegations like Virginia were split. Delegates from Massachusetts & Connecticut vocally opposed a national popular vote; Randolph (VA) wanted POTUS picked by Congress.

This sort of reductive narrative that the Electoral College was 100% about slavery and the North's unified desire for a popular vote was defeated by equally unified Southern slavers is a serious distortion of that history.

https://twitter.com/jbouie/status/1108027266460774400

In reality, of course, the compromises that created the Electoral College, the Senate, and the House were not independent of each other. Large vs small states, free vs slave states, elite vs popular democracy, all were different fault lines. Everybody made concessions.

Roger Sherman of Connecticut was one of the vocal opponents of direct national popular election of the president. This sort of pseudo-history just assumes this was because Connecticut was a Southern slave state. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

In the long run, of course, it was the Electoral College that enabled a not-overwhelming majority in the North to act collectively to elect Abe Lincoln. Lincoln got 54% of the vote in states he won, 26.3% in Douglas states, but 0.9% in Breckenridge states, 0.7% in Bell states.

True, Lincoln won a popular plurality, and 1860 is not really the best case for national acceptance of an election result. But the point is that the Electoral College works *against* a united regional bloc like the antebellum South that has fallen out of the national mainstream.

Well into the 20th century, states in the South voted in far greater lockstep than elsewhere. FDR in 1944 won 93.6% of the vote in Mississippi, for example. But that counted no more than Dewey winning 50-49 in Ohio & Wisconsin. That's good!

Our American system *as a whole* -not just by design by by experience- forces the patient building of broad, diverse political coalitions over time to effect significant change. If the system is flawed, it's when the process is overrun by novel short cuts (eg administrative fiat)

If you think that an American government elected by national popular majority would have abolished slavery before 1860, you probably have not read much American history from before 1860. The same is largely true of Jim Crow.

Let us also recall that a candidate who gets only an Electoral College plurality means a president selected by the House. Happened once (1824) & went badly. We've had a *lot* of popular vote pluralities. Only in 1876 did the loser (maybe) win a popular majority.

Had the Founders selected presidents by national popular vote, they'd almost certainly still have had the House choose when there's a plurality.

Under that system, W wins in 2000, Trump in 2016. And stopping W & Trump is 100% of the point of this argument.

The Founding Fathers were wise & practical men. They were not infallible & knew that. Progressives' real problem is Article V: Founders made it impossible for a faction, even a majority faction, to amend the Constitution to its own factional advantage.

So this is all pointless.

That column is notably careful to ignore Randolph's proposal, excise Sherman's critique of a national popular vote, & generally frame the South as the sole, unified critics of popular election solely for slavery reasons, He ignores quite a lot.

https://twitter.com/GScottShand/status/1108063140804210688

2016 electoral votes, states/DC w/

3 EV: R 15, D 9
4 EV: D 15, R 5
5 EV: R 10, D 5
6 EV: R 30, D 6
7 EV: D 14, R 7
8 EV: R 16, D 0
9 EV: R 18, D 9

Given the D advantage of 24-20 in the smallest (3 & 4 EV) class, the real D grievance is with the small-to-midsize states.