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Democrats Better off Playing by the Rules Than Denouncing the Rules
Townhall.com ^ | August 24, 2018 | Michael Barone

Posted on 08/24/2018 10:20:57 AM PDT by Kaslin

When you lose a game, particularly a game you had good reason to expect you'd win, do you try to figure out how to play better? Or is your first reaction to demand changes in the rules?

In the case of the Democratic Party, it's the latter. Perhaps that comes naturally to a party that takes some pride in having advocated changes in rules that everyone today sees as unfair (even those they enacted themselves, like racial segregation laws). But sometimes it's wiser to change the way you play than to denounce long-established rules.

The Democrats argue that they've been winning more votes but don't control the federal government. They've won a plurality of the popular vote in six of the last seven presidential elections but elected presidents in only four of them. That darn Electoral College -- "land," as one liberal commentator puts it -- gave the presidency to George W. Bush in 2000, and Donald Trump in 2016.

Of course, the Al Gore and Hillary Clinton campaigns knew that the winner is determined by electoral votes, not popular votes. But that hasn't stopped many Democrats from calling for a change in the rules to election by popular vote.

Or from complaining about the composition of the Senate. A majority of senators, writes ace election analyst David Wasserman, represents only 18 percent of the nation's population. That's because under the Constitution, each state elects two senators, and a majority of Americans today lives in just nine states.

It's suggested that the framers didn't expect population to be so heavily concentrated in a few states. Actually, it was similarly concentrated in big states 50, 100, 150 and 200 years ago. And when the framers met in 1787, small states demanded equal Senate representation for fear that big states would dominate.

Moreover, small states today aren't uniformly Republican. Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Delaware and Hawaii currently send two Democrats to the Senate, and Maine, North Dakota and Montana each send one. The 12 smallest states are represented by 13 Democratic senators and 11 Republicans.

Moreover, Article V of the Constitution provides that "No State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of equal Suffrage in the Senate." Changing that would require a new constitutional convention. That's not going to happen.

Democrats are also complaining loudly that, as The Economist puts it, "In the past three elections, Republicans' share of House seats has been 4-5 percentage points greater than their share of the two-party vote."

This is not earth-shaking stuff. Winning parties typically get a higher share of seats than votes in every system, and three elections isn't a whole lot. Republicans enjoyed an advantage in redistricting after the last two Census cycles, but Democrats did in the 1970s and 1980s.

That advantage turned out to be reversible, and the Republicans' looks to be as well. Democrats are favored to gain governorships and state legislature majorities, and some states are setting up supposedly nonpartisan (in practice, always liberal-leaning) redistricting commissions.

Other reforms are being considered. Maine is tinkering with ranked-choice voting, which supposedly encourages the emergence of a moderate candidate. Of course, a proliferation of parties hasn't always produced functional government, even in nations as full of creative and talented people as Italy and Israel, and many reforms have unintended effects.

It's true that the Electoral College works against a party whose voters are geographically and demographically clustered. For the framers, that was a feature, not a bug. They feared domination by a concentrated bloc of voters with no broad support across the country.

A party that wants to win more elections might take note of that, rather than plead for impossible constitutional changes and fiddle with fixes that might produce unanticipated negative consequences.

Once upon a time, Bill Clinton showed Democrats how. He won the presidency, from which his party had been shut out for 16 of 20 years, by adapting its platform to appeal to additional voters. In 1996, he won 174 electoral votes in states his wife lost 20 years later.

Clinton carried California twice by the solid margin of 13 points. In 2016, Hillary Clinton carried it by 30, but by taking stands that antagonized "deplorables" in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa.

Currently, Democrats -- furiously intent on impeaching Donald Trump, enchanted with youthful socialists, in thrall to identity politics -- are spurning Bill Clinton's course and doubling down on Hillary's. Maybe they'd do better by learning to play by the rules rather than railing against them.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: barone; electoralcollege

1 posted on 08/24/2018 10:20:57 AM PDT by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin

But they just do not care about consequences. Which is good.


2 posted on 08/24/2018 10:26:34 AM PDT by EagleUSA
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To: Kaslin

Good luck convincing the dims to do the right thing.


3 posted on 08/24/2018 10:27:11 AM PDT by Leep
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To: Kaslin

They never play by the rules. That comes from being a party that serves the Dark One.


4 posted on 08/24/2018 10:27:12 AM PDT by fieldmarshaldj ("It's Slappin' Time !")
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To: Kaslin
Once again, Progressive thought propels Dems to the great population centers on East and West Coasts.
"I think our governments will remain virtuous for many centuries; as long as they are chiefly agricultural; and this will be as long as there shall be vacant lands in any part of America. When they get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, they will become corrupt as in Europe." - Thomas Jefferson

5 posted on 08/24/2018 10:29:19 AM PDT by loveliberty2
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To: Kaslin

Democrats——rules? Surely you jest.


6 posted on 08/24/2018 10:29:28 AM PDT by rktman (Enlisted in the Navy in '67 to protect folks rights to strip my rights. WTH?)
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To: Kaslin

The eager rats line-up.

7 posted on 08/24/2018 10:38:39 AM PDT by JPG (MAGA)
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To: rktman
Democrats——rules? Surely you jest.

And don't call me "Shirley" ...

8 posted on 08/24/2018 10:42:14 AM PDT by BlueLancer (Antifa and Social Justice Warriors (SJWs) = SturmAbteilung)
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To: Kaslin

Rules are for little people.


9 posted on 08/24/2018 10:43:41 AM PDT by ClearCase_guy (The MSM is in the business of creating a fake version of reality for political reasons.)
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To: fieldmarshaldj

“the Dark One”

Obama?


10 posted on 08/24/2018 10:50:50 AM PDT by Leep
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To: Leep

Lucifer.


11 posted on 08/24/2018 10:55:45 AM PDT by fieldmarshaldj ("It's Slappin' Time !")
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To: Kaslin

Rules and laws are for republicans, not democrats. Democrats do what they want


12 posted on 08/24/2018 11:04:19 AM PDT by cotton1706
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To: JPG

At the back exit of that building, the sign reads “Communism—work hard, keep nothing.”


13 posted on 08/24/2018 11:21:31 AM PDT by rightwingcrazy
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To: Kaslin
Bill Clinton showed Democrats how. He won the presidency, from which his party had been shut out for 16 of 20 years, by adapting its platform to appeal to additional voters.

Bullcrap. Ross Perot pulled 20% of the vote and Clinton got 43%. Hillary got 48.5% of the vote. Nonsense article.

14 posted on 08/24/2018 11:28:33 AM PDT by Go Gordon (I gave my dog Grady a last name - Trump - because he loves tweets.)
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To: Leep

Rules are for chumps.


15 posted on 08/24/2018 11:34:32 AM PDT by HangThemHigh (Entropy is not what it used to be.)
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To: Kaslin

What goes around comes around.


16 posted on 08/24/2018 11:40:04 AM PDT by Jack Hammer
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To: cotton1706

rules and laws for republicans, not Dems. Dems do what they want.


As some may have notices I say this about once every other day.

What is anyone going to do about it and when?

To paraphrase a Republican in the 1800s:
We cannot exist half slave (GOP has to follow the law or go to prison) and half free (Dems skate and get away with it).
Something quite important and big having to do with that happened in the 1860s.


17 posted on 08/24/2018 12:12:28 PM PDT by frank ballenger (End noncitizen & illegals voting & leftist media news censorship or we're finished.)
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To: frank ballenger

some may have *noticed* not notices.
Wake up, Frank B.


18 posted on 08/24/2018 12:13:32 PM PDT by frank ballenger (End noncitizen & illegals voting & leftist media news censorship or we're finished.)
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To: Go Gordon
Bullcrap. Ross Perot pulled 20% of the vote and Clinton got 43%. Hillary got 48.5% of the vote. Nonsense article.

Exactly and he blew control of Congress with the GOP winning in 94 and running as an incumbent with peace and a booming economy couldn't get 50% in 96
19 posted on 08/24/2018 1:15:52 PM PDT by uncbob
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To: Kaslin; fieldmarshaldj; BillyBoy; Galactic Overlord-In-Chief; LS; AuH2ORepublican; ...
, "In the past three elections, Republicans' share of House seats has been 4-5 percentage points greater than their share of the two-party vote."

So? There aren't many ANY 90% GOP seats that often go uncontested to inflate the "popular vote" tally. The rat vote is "clustered" in urban hellholes. "Popular vote" for the House is an even less relevant a statistic than it is in the Presidential race.

20 posted on 08/26/2018 12:08:34 AM PDT by Impy (I have no virtue to signal.)
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