For the Electoral College

One good way to lose the Presidential race is to piss off the Jewish vote in Florida.  That alone should be enough for any Jew with a sense of history to care about the Electoral College.  But we're not all Jewish, so here are some less parochial thoughts.

Losers too often blame the rules.  In recent history, liberal voters have outnumbered conservative voters.  In some instances, the Democrat candidate for President has received more popular votes than the Republican but lost the election.  Liberals like Barbara Boxer are now claiming that this is a bad thing per se.  But the Electoral College is meant to produce just that result from time to time.  Why else have it?  Consequently, when the losing candidate receives more votes than the winner, the Electoral College is serving its purpose, not thwarting some "democratic" ideal.

Is a popular vote margin of 1 vote in 200 really worth all this fuss?  Even that margin is suspect.  The idea that someone "won" a contest that was not held is rhetorical hooey.  There is no popular vote.  No candidate campaigns for it, so no one can "win" it.  No one knows how the popular vote would have turned out if the candidates had actually campaigned for it.  Does anyone doubt that Mr. Trump could have picked up more votes in New York or California if those votes would have counted?  Until one maps out a strategy (and calculates the budget) to win a race for the popular vote, one cannot begin to form an opinion about whether the country would be better off holding such a race.

The Electoral College exists precisely because the founders believed that numbers aren't everything.  How many bills get through the House but fail in the Senate?  Should we abolish the Senate, too?  The Electoral College simply does for the executive branch what the Senate does for the legislative: it makes it less small-d democratic, which is to say more small-r republican.  That's why it's there.  (For Democrats who think raw democracy is such a great idea, I have two words: George McGovern,)

Anyway, Hillary's problem was not the Electoral College.  Hillary would have won her election if she had carried various permutations of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, all of which would have been within her grasp if she had appealed to the economic interests of farmers and working-class breadwinners.  She failed to do that, but she still got more votes nationwide.  If the popular vote were all that mattered, maybe a person could get elected President while (by?) telling important constituencies that they don't matter.  Is that really the kind of country we want to live in?

As the software guys say, the Electoral College is a feature, not a bug.  It did its job this time, and we may each be glad at some time or another when it does it again.  The rules were fine.  The losing player just failed to win by them.