For years people talk about term limits, now you can add to
this madness abolishing the Electoral College.
You are always told do not insult your audience or say bad
things about them, so I know the readers here understand that Democracy is a
participatory sport. And that participation is more than just voting. You must
get involved at the very least by being an informed voter and holding your
representatives accountable. For a Republic like ours to be successful the
citizenry cannot shirk their responsibilities and hide behind term limits.
I commented before on this topic and the main point was term
limits will only change the name of the Representatives it will not change the
behavior. It is the behavior that we need changed to take our country in a
better direction. While the lobbyists have Congress ear, a new face will not
make much difference.
And now we have some members of the Democrat party, Congress,
and the Media telling us we need to abolish the Electoral college. And yes,
they do have good points as to why, but do not address the complete picture.
The whole point of the Electoral College was to balance the power between the
less populated states and the more populated states. And recently we have had a
couple of times where the popular vote went to one candidate and the electoral college
voting went to the other candidate. And I agree a good campaign strategy can
take advantage of the perceived problem and win an election they maybe should
not have won (Trump; and yes, there is more, but for now one issue at a time).
This isn’t because of the Electoral College though; this is
a bad campaign by the other candidate. The whole point of the Presidency is to
find a united message for the country to rally around. The Presidency is only
1/3 of the government. Any presidential candidate’s goal is to create a message
that resonates as a whole so the entire country, rural, suburban, urban, geographically,
industry, new vs old, etc. can find some common themes that we, as a general
whole, want our country to follow. Not everyone will be happy nor agree with
the whole message. A good campaign addresses this philosophy and addresses the
people. And it does not take for granted anything. (Clinton, she owns her
campaign’s failures to be more proactive in the Midwest, no other excuses)
Right now, we have huge gaps in population density
throughout our country so this creates a unique situation as to a small portion
of the country could conceivably have overt influence over the rest of the
country due to this population concentration. This means large swaths of the
country would be run by a like minded group that does not have their best
interests at heart.
Which leads to why people think we need to abolish the
Electoral College. The opposite occurred where due to manipulation through
gerrymandering and targeted propaganda large portions of the less populated
regions control too much power indirectly. This is not because of the Electoral
College, but rather because we fail to address the true problems we face in
this country which is gerrymandering that protects power structures in these
lower population regions and the grossly unjust power lobbyists have over our
Congress.
Term limits and abolishing the Electoral Colleges are lazy
ineffective ways to attempt to solve the real political problems facing our
country.
The real solutions take work and yes I call the Democrats
clueless and these are some of the reasons why. The pretentious left thinks
they know all and all their policies are the correct policies and completely ignore
the problems of what is now known as the rust belt and the plains regions where
agriculture is the main industry. If we were allowed to let just a few densely
populated regions control all the policy of this country, there would be gross
inequities of resource distribution throughout the country. The Electoral
College and two senators per state were built in as compromises to balance the power
throughout the country. And yes, I am not naïve, I do know that some of the
energy to get this compromise was driven by some representatives of the
Constitutional Convention to protect slavery in their states. And yes it
shouldn’t have been. The case though for a balance of power by having the
Senators and Electoral College and having the House of Representatives to give equitable
representation to the more populated regions was a compromise that was needed
then and now.
So, it goes back to what is the work that is needed to
maintain a government that successfully represents the country as a whole. As
you know, it never will completely. The goal is to find solutions and policy
that generally benefit the whole of the country, move us forward economically,
socially, culturally, etc. all the while not infringing on others’ rights whether
they be political, religious, race or creed, economic, geographical etc. This
is the work of responsible citizens. It is our responsibility to remove public
servants who fail the public. It is our responsibility to become the other set
of checks and balances on our government besides the stated one between the
three branches of government.
So why aren’t we, as a whole, not being this check and
balance of our government. The reasons have simple sentences to write but are going
to be extremely difficult to put back into play.
Our public education system has been on a decline for
decades, when it should have been rising since the 1960’s. The ever-growing wealth
gap has created a Congress more receptive to special interests than to the
general populace. I say repeatedly,
capitalism is good, having the winners of a capitalistic system write the rules
is horrendous. This completely destroys the higher goal of equal opportunity
for all. Campaigns overly reliant on contributions causes even more divergence
from our Constitution’s goals of equal representation. The list can go on, but
the general principle is we, the people, need to be stronger, need to be more
active, need to inform ourselves more, and we need to help each other
accomplish these goals rather than promote changes that are based on knee jerk
reactions to deep seated problems that have risen by us shirking our responsibilities
as citizens.
The truth hurts and that truth is: doing what is right always
takes more work.
And on a side note, there are other issues with the growing
divisions in our country but abolishing the Electoral College won’t fix the
election problems from these issues either. Education and communication are the
starting points for these issues.
Cheers
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