“No, it’s actually pretty meaningless”
Was it “meaningless” in the 2000 election?
You have a VERY short recollection of recent history.
Without the Electoral College, Al Gore would have been president. He indeed won the “popular vote”.
If that had happened, I shudder to think at where we might have been today.
Even with the current non-legitimate holder of the Oval Office...
As for what-ifs, who knows? We might have been better off now had Gore won in 2000. There's no way to know what might have been.