Having lost the presidency while winning the popular vote twice since 2000, the Democrats were already having a hissy fit over the Electoral College. Now that they’ve seized control of Congress’ lower chamber but have nonetheless lost ground in its upper one, some leftists are intensifying another complaint: The Senate is undemocratic and should be ended as we know it.
A case in point is Salon’s Alt-Left writer Amanda Marcotte, who just penned a rant entitled “Here’s your midterm analysis: America is being held hostage by angry old white guys.” Of course, she’s not fond of mature whites in general, whom she essentially accuses of being “racist” (a term peppered throughout her piece), knuckle-dragging enablers of “the man.”
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Explaining why a “huge, diverse nation is being controlled” by the pale few, Marcotte writes that part “of it is the result of our increasingly outdated electoral system, which give [sic] a disproportionate share of power to votes in suburban and rural areas. That’s how Democrats wound up losing several seats in the Senate this year, despite winning the popular vote by 15 percentage points.”
It was on Twitter, however, where Marcotte really let loose. To wit:
More informed tweeters were quick to respond:
Comically, Marcotte is billed as a “politics writer” for Salon. But math isn’t her forte, either. Democrat candidates did win 57 percent of Senate votes cast, yet they won 68 percent (23) of the 34 seats decided. (Note: I’m putting the Mississippi special-election race in the GOP’s column even though it requires a Nov. 27 run-off.)
In short, had Senate seats Tuesday been apportioned based on popular vote, the GOP’s 41.4 percent share would have translated into 13 or 14, as opposed to the 11 it has thus far captured.
Moreover, that all California’s 6.3 million Senate votes were factored into the popular vote skews the result because two Democrats — and no Republican — were on that state’s Senate ballot. Note, too, that a major reason the GOP was able to increase its margin is that it had to defend only nine of the 35 contested seats.
Of course, there isn’t technically a nationwide “popular vote” for the Senate, anyway; the results would be different if there were because blue-state Republicans would have more incentive to cast ballots (how many voted for Senate in California with no Republican to choose?).
None of this, however, would mollify Marcotte. Her complaint is that someone in, for instance, Wyoming (pop. 579,315) has far more Senate representation proportionately than does a resident of 40-million-strong California. This is true, yet the following astute response to her adds perspective:
In point of fact, we’d have more representation than every nation on Earth but China and India. Yet this would be considered very un-democratic because high-population nations would have inordinate influence. It’s much as with a neighborhood organization: Does it give a family with 12 members more say than one only three-members strong?
Mirroring this, our country was not meant to be a nation state, but a nation of states. House representation corresponds to population, giving large states far more influence; the Senate is meant to give each state an equal place at the table, however. Barring this, why would small states ever have joined the union? After all, harking back to the earlier example, up against California’s 53 congressmen, Wyoming’s one lone representative amounts to having basically no clout whatsoever.
Unfortunately, Marcotte has support and reflects the now visible Alt-Left desire to destroy our system root and branch. Just consider the vile tweet-storm temper-tantrum she had after being corrected by the better-educated Twitter users:
Amanda Marcotte@AmandaMarcotte Nov 7
The reason we don’t have a democracy is simple: Racist, sexist voters who disproportionately live in overpowered areas block democracy because they prefer minority rule over the urban, diverse, Democratic-voting majority. They are, in other words, a[******]s who oppose fairness.
Amanda Marcotte@AmandaMarcotte Nov 7
I continue to believe that it’s not great that the U.S. is being denied a democracy because a bunch of white men who owned slaves, barely bathed, and s[**]t in pots under the bed still manage to control how our elections are conducted.
Apparently, Alt-Left ignorance is not bliss. If Marcotte and her hate-America-first (and last) fellow travelers actually studied the Founding Fathers with an open mind, they’d respect them more and “democracy” far less.
A system sometimes called “Two lions and one lamb voting on the dinner menu,” democracy is merely institutionalized mob rule. A good example occurred in the system’s birthplace, ancient Athens, when legendary Greek philosopher Socrates was convicted by popular vote and put to death for corrupting the young and “mocking the gods.” The people quickly regretted their decision, but it was too late. All they could then do was erect a statue in his honor.
Knowing such history and more, father of the Constitution, James Madison, warned, “Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.”
That said, it’s no surprise that the Alt-Left, whose specialty is street-mob rule, would want its mobs made official.
Photo: lucky-photographer/iStock/Getty Images Plus
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