NRO: Electoral College gives "real Americans" a voice in 21st Century

[BurtWorm]

"Real" people: I.e., white winger gun nuts from the boondocks.

:eyes:


http://www.nationalreview.com/gregg/gregg200410270939.asp

October 27, 2004, 9:39 a.m.
Counting the Real People’s Vote
Retro vs. Metro.

by Gary R. Gregg


Take a look at the results of the 2000 election and it becomes radically clear that the electoral college that produced the Bush victory is having an important and salutary impact on our political system. Its the electoral college that keeps the values of traditional America relevant in the 21st century and the electoral college that helps rural America balance the immense cultural, economic, and social power of urban centers.

Abolishing the electoral college would mean transferring near complete political power to metropolitan areas who are already producing the candidates and funding them as well. Al Gore demonstrated in 2000 that the national popular vote can be won by appealing to a narrow band of the electorate heavily secular, single, and concentrated in cities.

In 2000, Al Gore won the vote in major cities 71 percent to 26 percent for George Bush. Alternatively, Bush won rural communities 59 percent to 37 percent. These are very large margins showing a drastic difference in the geographic centers of the divided electorate.

In 2000 we discovered, though the media didn't focus on it, that the much discussed "gender gap" was really a marriage gap with Bush overwhelmingly winning the votes of married people and Gore solidly winning the votes of unmarried people. For instance, Gore bested Bush among unmarried women by more than 30 percent while Bush actually won the vote among married women.

[joeybee12]

1. In other words, WHITE FOLKS! This is thinly--very thinly--disgused racism

It's SICK!

[eataTREE]

2. A "narrow band of the electorate"....

A "narrow band of the electorate" that just happens to comprise a majority of the population, eh Mr. Gregg?

The right has abandoned any pretense of being interested in democracy. They don't want rule by the people. They want rule by the "decent people", which is to say, them.

[pmbryant]

5. A truly shameful attitude from Mr. Gregg

Of all the arguments for the Electoral College, this is the most reprehensible. The idea that some people's votes should count more than others because they are "real" and the others are not.

They apparently fail to understand that this bigoted concept does not even apply to the electoral college. But since the electoral college (ok, the Supreme Court plus the electoral college) gave Bush the Presidency, they think it must be a good thing.

Again, shameful.

--Peter

[American Tragedy]

3. Yeah, I'm headed to his class in a couple hours

He teaches my American Presidency class. We're having a debate on the electoral college today, in fact.

[BurtWorm]

4. This bigot teaches college students?!

What do you think of him as a teacher and person?


PS: Here's his last paragraph:

"Our politics would be radicalized as even more power came into the hands of a metropolitan elite who distain the cultures and values of middle America."

Distain? Is that a typo or a Freudian slip? :eyes:

[American Tragedy]

7. Well, he must be a lonely guy in academia

He is the only conservative I have ever met in the entire political science faculty. Until I started going through his national review articles and read his own book (which he assigned us!) I struggled to pick up on his ideological persuasion, since he deliberately avoids giving his take on anything. He spends alot of time talking about the two Americas, Retro/Metro, and gave what I initially thought to be an extremely critical take on the Retro segment, regarding religiosity, relative ignorance and distrust of minority and exotic culture, and institutionalized racism and homogeneity. Now, I wonder if he didn't mean it in a neutral or even positive fashion, and it merely sounded negative to my sensibilities.

I talk to him after class most days and he seems like an okay guy. He knows where I stand, since I am probably the most outspoken person in the room and my stuff is covered in buttons that are extremely explicit in my opinion of the current administration.

[BurtWorm]

8. Will you ask him about this article?

Welcome to DU, by the way. :toast:

[Bridget Burke]

19. So, how does he get to class?

Does he drive his tractor in from the farm? What's his favorite brand of overalls? Is there a spitoon in the classroom?

Surely, your school is in some small, isolated community far from the city-welling elite!

Give him hell. (Politely, of course.)

[American Tragedy]

24. LOL

Actually it's an urban university, so he's exposed overwhelmingly to us city types. Maybe that's why he tries to downplay his own particular sympathies.

[cally]

6. This is disgusing

As an aside, I'm in the middle of the Kitty Kelley book. Bush, Sr. ran his campaigns targetting rich white folk and spoke at whites only clubs. He was racist from the beginning.

[rogerashton]

9. This is the same mag that

endorsed the John Birch slogan "This is a republic, not a democracy, ... " etc. They are explicitly opposed to democracy, and always have been.

[MostlyLurks]

10. "One Acre, One Vote" - What A Jackass. n/t

[K-W]

11. The electoral college allows the few to dominate the many....

and that is a defense of the electoral college...

these people are amazing.

[Eric J in MN]

12. Gore got more votes, by appealing to a "narrow band of the electorate."

Doesn't anyone else find that sentence strange?

[BurtWorm]

13. Now that you mention it, yes!

:wtf:

[Lydia Leftcoast]

14. Dupe--ignore

:-)

[Lydia Leftcoast]

15. False assumptions

The argument about a popular vote allowing "only the cities" to elect the president is simply BOGUS.

It operates on the unspoken and false assumption that in a popular vote, as in the Electoral College, the candidate is IN as long as he reaches a certain number of votes, the "magic number."

Wrong. This is the point that they're neglecting:

In a popular vote race, all that counts is who gets the largest percentage of all the votes cast, however many those are. There is no "magic number." The outcome of the race is not known for sure until Hawaii and Alaska have voted, not unless one candidate has such a huge lead that his opponent couldn't win unless every Alaskan and Islander voted for him. In a really close race, Alaska and Hawaii could make the difference.

What's the magic number for electoral votes...270 or thereabout? Okay, in an Electoral College system, a candidate could win with just the states east of the Mississippi, assuming we had someone who was popular enough to capture both the Northeast and the Deep South. This actually happened in 1980. Reagan had the Electoral College sewn up before the West had even finished voting.

In a popular vote, you'd get new totals coming in from east to west as the polls closed, and they would change constantly. Massachusetts and New York would put a huge number of votes on the D side, but the votes of R's would count, too, as they do not count now. The Deep South would add a huge chunk of R votes, but the votes of D's there would count, too, as they do not count now.

In the swing states, you would no longer have the wishes of 49% of the electorate totally discounted. Their votes would be added to the totals.

Let's say for the sake of simplicity (and I'm just pulling these numbers out of the air) that 100 million people vote nationwide. As we reach the Pacific Coast, we have 54.5 million for the D side and 54 million for the R side. Then the polls close in Alaska and Hawaii. Alaska is having terrible weather, so only 200,000 people, mostly in the cities, vote. That adds 50,000 to the D side and 150,000 to the R side. Total: 54.55 million D, 54.15 million R. But it's a beautiful day in Hawaii, so 300,000 people come out, and vote 2 to 1 D. Final result: 54.75 million D, 54.25 million R, the D's have it. :-)

I repeat: in a pure popular vote, EVERYONE's VOTE WOULD COUNT. Candidates could not ignore any state or demographic, because voters in every state and in all walks of life could provide their margin of victory.

[BurtWorm]

16. Extremely well said!

:toast:

[SoCalDem]

20. TV changed everything anyway.

They used to say that the EC MADE the candidates travel EVERWHERE. We all know that's a lie..they go where they need to shore up support, but most of their campaign is on TV..

EC makes NO SENSE anymore, and should be abolished.

[SoCalDem]

17. Actually the Dems missed a big opportunity to eliminate the EC

It should have been part of the Civil Rights legislation. The EC was set up to "help" slave-owning states, and it should have been eliminated when that legislation passed.. It would not have cost us any more "support" since the racists spun off and re-created the republican party..

We would be way further down the path by now.

[SoCalDem]

18. oops..a dupe

:)

[Cat Atomic]

21. Wait a minute- so those New Yorkers who died on 9-11...

They were lesser humans?

I'm trying to get this straight.

[JHB]

22. You've got it straight.

It's not as if the Rethugs have treated them with any respect that wasn't self-serving, right?

[ProfessorGAC]

23. This Guy Has The Logic Of A Hamster

Gore won the electoral vote by appealing to a narrow band of the electorate, says Gregg.

Exactly how does one gain a plurality of 100 million voters by appealing to a narrow band of the electorate. Nader did that. The Libertarian candidate did that. The Communist party candidate did that.

One does NOT appeal to a narrow band and win 45 million votes.

Once again, we see another analytically challenged rightist who doesn't understand that the reason why this "narrow" band includes all the metro areas is that THIS IS WHERE THE PEOPLE ARE! Soybean fields don't vote! The Grand Tetons don't vote!

The narrow band he's referring to are the PEOPLE!

What an idiot.
The Professor

[semillama]

25. I consider myself a surreal American

so if that guy wants to distance me from his "real americans" I have no problem with it.
:silly:

[Patiod]

26. I heard this same logic from a "friend" - it's pure racism

He asked me if I thought the vote of "some idiot in the inner city" should count as much as a "hard-working farmer". I just stood there with my jaw open. He backpedaled quickly, and tried to explain that education was really bad in the cities (like it's great in Appalachia?) but it was too late.

Also he had just returned from a cross-country bike tour, and explained to me that it taught him that "most people live in the country". I said no, most people live in cities and suburbs, most of the LAND in the US is in the country, but he knew what he had seen and couldn't be persuaded.

Needless to say, we're no longer friends.

[BurtWorm]

27. Sounds like it's no great loss.

:eyes: