Month: August 2024

And the long weekend off

I accidentally published last Wednesday’s post, “A Straw Man and “Free” Market Economics,” at 5PM instead of AM. If you missed it and would like to read it, simply click the title (the underlined bit above) and you should be able to read it on Substack rather than hunting for it in your email. It generated more than the usual number of positive “Reply” emails from among those who did see it.

Notes:

RFK Jr. joining the Trump/Vance campaign is just one more addition to the Trump version of the Star Wars’ “Creature Cantina.” (Credit for that image goes to Steve Schmidt of The Warning.)

I cannot quite remember where I read this contrast, but I thought it was worth thinking about and sharing: The whole Republican National Convention (and several incidents since, like the Arlington National Cemetery incident on Monday, were exercises in the toxic masculinity of the Trump/Vance/Hulk Hogan team. The DNC, as exemplified in particular by VP Candidate, teacher, family man, hunter, and veteran Tim Walz was an exercise in tonicmasculinity. 

I plan to skip posting on Labor Day. I should be back on Wednesday, September 2nd. Have a great last holiday weekend of summer and be sure to 

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

High time to re-think regulation

Recently I participated in a bi-partisan gathering that turned to discussing regulation and free-market economics. Dismantling regulation, of course, has been a favorite talking point from the right for at least the last four decades. (Witness our now-retiring U.S. Rep. to Congress Cathy McMorris Rodgers’ endless declarations that we must rid ourselves of “burdensome regulations,”a harbinger of the current Republican Party’s push to “dismantle the administrative state.”) Several at the gathering, including people with both conservative and liberal leanings, nodded to the impression that regulation and the burden of excess paperwork are stifling business—and, thereby, stifling the hallowed workings of the “free” market. Within the discussion group it seems curious to me in retrospect that I cannot recall a single concrete example of a burdensome regulation being raised. Perhaps that shouldn’t surprise us considering the pervasive intellectual stew we have all been simmering in for most of our lives. 

For decades the economist Milton Friedman promoted the idea that a market maximally free of regulation would also maximize societal good as a desired (but incidental) side effect of its participants’ freewheeling pursuit of individual profit. Partly thanks to Professor Friedman and his intellectual predecessors, probably every one of us was introduced in school to the marvelous workings of “supply-and-demand,” essentially Adam Smith’s “invisible hand,” in establishing optimal prices for products and services—the essential ingredient of the “free” market ideal. Since the 1970s these ideas have been endlessly hammered home in our brains in media blather by talking heads of right wing “think tanks” like the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, and the Claremont Institute, as well as local manifestations like the “Washington Policy Center” or the recently Idaho-hatched “Mountain States Policy Center” (led by Chris Cargill, current member of the City of Liberty Lake city council).

After this passive acknowledgement of supposed oppressive regulation, several members of the discussion group raised examples where a lack of regulation of the free market (and enforcement of those regulations) was damaging to the common good. In the midst of a widely acknowledged housing crisis rents and home prices are rising in significant part on account of excess money in investment funds (as well as wealthy foreign interests) being used to buy up whole tracts of new homes and artificially jacking up prices with a demand signal that has nothing to do with individual prospective home buyers seeking shelter. 

Worse, some pointed to the recent government lawsuit against landlords and property management companies like the real estate tech company RealPage that uses algorithms to discern the profit maximization point that a given rental market will bear. As the Federal Trade Commission points out, price-fixing by algorithm is still price-fixing. (Washington State under Attorney General Bob Ferguson recently joined the federal lawsuit against RealPage.) Simply put, if landlords and property management companies are able to share on RealPage the rent levels that enough people are willing to economically stretch to in order to have a place to live, then they can set a regional monthly rent that maximizes profit even if some units sit empty. The added benefit? The government, not the colluders, can be blamed for “inflation.”

Others in the group noted the movement among online vendors to set prices offered to individual consumers by using data on that particular consumer’s buying history.

Not mentioned during the discussion, but rattling around in my head were the trust-busting activities of the Theodore Roosevelt administration and how I was taught in high school economics that the formation of monopolies, the ever greater gobbling up of small companies by large ones, distorted “free” market economic principles. 

Several participants chimed in citing the monopolistic behavior of grocery conglomerates and the resultant “food deserts” as small grocers are forced out of business.

The general sense of the group seemed to turn toward the idea that, while certain regulations could be cited as a drag on the “free” market, further reducing government regulation of mergers, acquisitions, and monopolistic behavior would be worse. 

Somewhere in the midst of the discussion, a member of the group and an earnest conservative asked, rather pointedly, did we really want an economy in which the government controlled what goods and the price of the goods that would appear on the shelves of our grocery stores? The question seemed out of place. No one responded, asked for clarification, or challenged it. It was only later that I could see the straw man hidden in the question. 

This was a conservative, it seems to me, suggesting that any regulation would lead to the planned economy of the “communist” U.S.S.R. with its scarcity and empty shelves we were all taught in school to expect of the “communist” alternative to unfettered “free” market capitalism. The question was a subtle way of suggesting that Democrats are closet communists or socialists, a frequent accusation from parts of the right, rather than citizens suggesting that giant multinational corporations, conglomerates and trusts definitely need regulation precisely for the purpose of insuring that the economy works for all of us and is insured of being relatively “free” rather than dominated by the whims of the uber-wealthy. 

The straw man, the dishonest idea that Democrats advocate for communism, fell on its face. Whether the speaker intended it or not, the question they posed served to underscore the intellectual poverty of right wing attempts to invoke fear of communism in any attempt to level the economic playing field. That no one took the bait suggested to me the emergence of a new paradigm, one in which regulation helps assure the freedom of the market.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

Primaries, the down-ballot, and a couple of notes on campaign money

Jim Camden’s “Spin Control” article in the Spokesman yesterday, “Close primary races didn’t have to be,” highlights the primary race for Washington State Commissioner of Public Lands. (Hilary Franz, the current commissioner, decided not to pursue another term and, instead, ran to represent Congressional District 6 in the U.S. House—and lost in the August Primary.)

The second place position in the primary race for WA State Commissioner of Public Lands is undergoing a hand recount of all 1,994,096 ballots statewide. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R) holds a decent lead for first position in our “Top-two” primary, but the second place contender, Dave Upthegrove (D) leads Sue Kuehl Pederson (R) by just 51 votes (as of August 20 at 5:17PM) out of 792,549 cast for the two of them combined. That narrow a margin triggers a mandatory hand recount (RCW 29A.64.021(1)(b)(i)). 

Mr. Camden makes the point that if only a small percentage of voters who “under-voted” in this race had filled out an oval, a recount likely wouldn’t be required. (In Spokane County alone, 6400 ballots of 144,832 ballots cast were turned in with this race left blank.) I don’t have a solid reference, but I have heard that Republican voters are more inclined to fill in the oval for down-ballot races than are Democratic voters. That tendency certainly could have changed the outcome in this race where (see below) Democrats may be left after the recount with a choice between two Republicans in the November General Election.

More to the point than speaking of undervotes is the fact that only 41% of registered voters in Washington State bothered to cast a primary ballot at all. In Washington State if just another 1% could be motivated to vote in the primary there would be roughly another 48,000 votes mobilized in statewide races. Turnout is powerful. (Typically, around 60% of WA State registered voters cast a ballot in the November General Election in presidential election years like this one. In 2020 it peaked at 69.09%!)

At the risk of rambling, there are more lessons in this race than Mr. Camden explored. There were seven candidates in this primary race for Washington State Commissioner of Public Lands, five “Prefers Democratic Party” and two “Prefers Republican Party” candidates. The votes of the “Prefers Democratic Party” taken together as a round number add up to 1,085,000 whereas the aggregate of the “Prefers Republican Party” votes tally to 815,000. Ms. Pederson (R), who is now effectively tied with the leading “D”, Mr. Upthegrove, raised only $31K in campaign funds, a tiny fraction (5%) of Mr. Upthegrove’s $626K war chest. Clearly, campaign funds are not the determinant here, party loyalty is. 

While Mr. Upthegrove, with his vast war chest, took the highest number of votes among the five “Prefers Democratic Party” candidates, the order of finishing among the Democratic contenders wasn’t dependent on money either. Mr. Lebovitz came in third among the Ds, 2.7 percentage points ahead of Mr. Van de Wege in spite of Van de Wege spending 71 times more than Mr. Lebovitz on the primary campaign ($3.6K to $256K).

There are three take-homes. One, pay attention and enjoin others to pay attention to the down-ballot races (but don’t let perplexity keep you from voting. Two, money helps, but it isn’t everything, perhaps especially in running for an office about which most voters may know very little. Three, to a significant degree, voters sort themselves first by their party preference and then choose from among those candidates of their preferred party.

Since even in a “Top-two” primary system voters still tend to choose from among their preferred party’s candidates, the “Top-two” system risks advancing two candidates to the General Election whose prime attribute is that they belong to the party that has fielded the fewest candidates for that position. A ranked choice voting system would be an improvement.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

P.S. An earlier post that you can read by clicking here detailed the complicated history that steered us toward our current flawed system. Hint: what we’d been happily doing for many decades was found “unconstitutional” by a conservative U.S. Supreme Court in a decision written by Antonin Scalia in 2000.

P.P.S. All of the data quoted in this post is available at the tips of your fingers (with a little time spent exploring). The voting numbers (for statewide races) are available at sos.wa.gov . All the campaign finance data is available at pdc.wa.gov . The county websites like spokanecounty.org also have voting numbers and information, but, beware, only votes cast by voters registered in that county are tallied at the county sites. That is, in a statewide race or a legislative district race that crosses county boundaries the tallied votes are only those cast in that county.

McWhorter on the power and story of that word

John McWhorter is a Columbia University linguist who writes weekly columns “explor[ing] how race and language shape our politics and culture” that appear in the NYTimes. Words are slippery. They morph. They take on different meanings in different eras: just read try to read Shakespeare or Beowulf in the original—or compare the multitude of modern-day interpretations of Biblical text. 

I plan to return to my usual focus on Eastern Washington civics and politics next week. For today, the day after the close of the Democratic National Convention, and the day after another immuno-chemo infusion, I’m going to take a break. Instead, I offer below John McWhorter’s NYTimes essay on the word “weird.” (A gift link is found by clicking the title so you should also be able read it at the Times website for free.) I found it fascinating and I wanted to share its wordy insight

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

The Hidden Grammatical Reason That ‘Weird’ Works

By John McWhorter

Aug. 22, 2024

When Gov. Tim Walz called Donald Trump and his worldview “weird,” it got immediate attention, launched a thousand memes and may very well have helped him land the job as Kamala Harris’s running mate. Michelle Obama’s dictum that “when they go low, we go high” is admirable, but there’s a lot to be said for the occasional step or two down the ladder. To many observers, “weird” immediately seemed right, a fresh approach to the mix of childish cattiness and outright menace coming from opponents of Walz and Harris. But the reasons for its success as an epithet aren’t as obvious. They come from deep in the word’s history, and in the ultimate purpose to which we put language.

In Old English the word meant, believe it or not, “what the future holds,” as in what we now refer to as fate. The sisters in “Macbeth” were the “weird sisters,” in the meaning of “fate sisters,” telling the future. But they were also portrayed as ghoulish in appearance and attire. With the prominence of this play and similar fate-sister figures in other ones, the sense set in that “weird” meant frighteningly odd.

In the 20th century, the word lost its hint of the macabre as its meaning became something quieter. “Weird” now means peculiar — perhaps passingly so, but against what one would expect.

In this sense, “weird” has settled into a realm of the language that isn’t taught as grammar in our schools but should be. Verbal communication is not only about whether something is in the past or the future, or whether it is singular or plural. It’s also about what is novel. We tend to seek people’s attention to tell them something they don’t yet know.

Imagine someone new to the English language asking you what the “even” in “He even had a horse” means. It would be hard, because school doesn’t teach us about the role that identifying novelty plays in how we form sentences. “He even had a horse” implies that someone’s possession of a horse, as opposed to just a big backyard, a fence and some dogs, is unexpected. All languages have ways of doing this. In Saramaccan, a language I have studied that was created by Africans who escaped slavery in Suriname, a little word, “noo” — pronounced “naw” — shows that something is news. “Noo mi o haika i” means not just “I will call you” but also “So, OK then, I will call you.”

Applying “weird” to MAGA is a great debate team tactic, a deceptively complex rhetorical trick that uses the simplest of language to make a sophisticated point: that the beliefs that MAGA is supposed to be getting us back to defy expectation, usually for the simple reason that they’re false.

The idea that Central American countries engage in an effort to send criminals to America not only is mean, it also fails to accord with any intuitive or documented analysis. The idea that we should all go smilingly back to an era when it was illegal for women to obtain an abortion — as though there was something sweet about Roberta’s situation in Theodore Dreiser’s “An American Tragedy” in 1925 — goes against what 90 percent of Americans espouse. It is callous to a degree that a great many find perplexing. The idea that a single woman without children is less qualified to lead is jarring even amid the trash talk flying throughout our political landscape.

The typical response to all of this from the outside is to shudder at the nastiness. But an equally valid response is “Huh?” And that’s why “weird” works.

“Weird” works in another way, too: There is no great comeback. You can’t respond to being called peculiar by simply saying, “No, I’m not,” though Trump tried: “He said we’re weird,” the candidate complained, “that JD and I are weird. I think we’re extremely normal people, exactly like you.” Just asserting it convinces no one. Nor does the “No, you are!” defense. On X, Representative Matt Gaetz jibed: “The party of gender blockers and drag shows for kids is calling us weird? Ok.” But we’ve heard all that before. “Weird” is a way to call out the unexpected. Any perceived weirdness on the left is old news. It’s the Democrats who are offering the novel take.

The goal here is not getting down into the mud but opening ourselves to broader perception. Outsiders can view MAGA with dismay, intimidated by how many people subscribe to it, watch its adherents portray themselves as the only true Americans and shake our heads in horror and submission. Or we can dismiss MAGA as more heat than light. We can resist the notion that the essence of America is an ideology whose figurehead lost the popular vote in the presidential election of 2016, lost the election entirely in 2020 and may well lose again this fall. “Weird” pegs MAGA as a detour, a regrettable temptation that a serious politics ought to render obsolete. Calling it “weird” is deft, articulate, and possibly prophetic.

It’s also an example of the power of language, in particular a kind of grammar that too few people are taught. Wouldn’t more kids take interest in the subject if they knew they could use it to shut down a bully.

Musings on Message

For the first time in my life I’ve been watching at least the evening broadcasts of the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Chicago. For any of you who might be interested, the Convention is available to stream via the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS): click here and scroll down. This channel has the considerable advantage of NOT intruding with talking heads offering distracting “analysis.” 

After trying to listen to Trump’s acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention (I confess that I only make it through an hour of his ninety-some minute, lie-filled ramble) I find the speeches at the DNC humane and upbeat with emphasis on the Christian message of acceptance, community, and American ideals of freedom with which I grew up. 

A couple of days ago I was offered a free article from Medium entitled “The Real Secret to Donald Trump’s Success.” Written by “T. J. Brearton” and published almost a year ago. Its final paragraphs shine some light on the contrast between the tenor of the two conventions.

Brearton develops the idea that Trump is doing the easy sell of justifying the unleashing of the basest aspects of human nature.

Trump message to his followers is:

America is your birthright. Do whatever you want; fulfill yourself. You, especially if you’re white, male, straight, and Republican, are the beating heart of the world. Get that extra large truck, take that extra-long vacation, make all the money you can, and gobble up everything in your path.

Forget the rest.

Trump sells you permission to indulge your vices, your baser instincts.

He sells you the right to be selfish, to lack any real moral fiber or scruples. He sells you the idea that intellectualism [as represented by the “elites”, the college professors, the “deep state”] is bad, institutions are untrustworthy, everything and everyone is corrupt and you can put your faith in only him, your martyr, who’s currently under major federal and state indictments for you.

He pays lips service to nationalism: let’s stay out of war, like the one in Ukraine, while praising the autocrat who started it. He bemoans the grift of D.C. while fleecing his constituency for millions.

Shameless, he’s never in danger of being a hypocrite because he can declare “So what?” To every charge. Either it’s persecution, it’s overreaction, or it’s simply fake.

Wouldn’t we all love this in our own lives? I’m rubber and you’re glue; whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you.

Imagine if this attitude got us everything we ever wanted.

This is the easiest thing, in the history of things, to sell to people. F__k everyone else, it’s you, baby. F__k the gays and the blacks and the trans and the immigrants. F__k those people from shithole countries. Women should know their place, the government should let you do whatever you want, and you shouldn’t have to lift a finger to help anyone else. Ever. Just as America shouldn’t be helping anyone else, not unless we get something for it. It’s all a zero-sum game. Winners and losers.

I’m selling you a win.

Trump takes cultural issues, domestic and foreign policy issues, and economic issues, and gives you the easiest answer. Don’t like climate change? Don’t think about it, don’t worry about it; f__k the Paris Accord. Don’t like change in general? Let’s get back to the way things were. Don’t like the economy? Don’t like subprime mortgage fraud? Don’t like inflation or stagflation? Just get rich. Or blame D.C. for keeping you down. It’s the government and taxes, it’s not you.

Easy, easy, easy.

Don’t like something? Get rid of it. Don’t understand something? Blow it up, and sweep away the pieces. It’s never your fault, there’s nothing for you to do except hate the people doing this to you. The libtards and the immigrants and wokeism and other countries — it’s China. It’s always China’s fault; it’s got nothing to do with our rapacious consumer appetites. We’d build everything in America if we could!

Yeah, right.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying the Democrats or any other party are doing the work of the hard sell — you don’t get elected telling people to shut up and endure hard times. It’s always “have cake and eat too” — just different versions. The last moment we ever had that even came close to preaching selflessness was probably JFK saying, “Ask not what your country can do for you.” And look what happened to him.

But Trump has taken modern hedonism to a whole new level. This kind of thing, this easy sell — it’s timeless. We tell stories about it; probably the biggest and most well-known story of all is in the Bible. The tempting Devil. While I don’t believe those stories are literally true, Trumpism rivals these Biblical tales for its sheer scope and scale.

What Trump does is the easiest thing in the world; he’s not selling anything hard at all. He’s not asking anyone to try to be a better person, to consider their neighbor, to consider the future.

He’s selling you the right to be a complete a__hole, just like he is.

The speeches that I find inspiring at the Democratic National Convention offer hope of coming together, of tackling the big long-term problems, of having a future, rather than descending into a hell of hate and repression. 

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

His obstruction–and his stock portfolio–suggest he does not

Spokane County Commissioner Al French is up against a formidable, community-centered, science-supporting opponent, Lt Col (Ret.) Molly Marshall, in the upcoming November General Election. For an immensely powerful elected official like Al French, a consummate politician, to accuse his opponent of “political attacks” over the deadly serious issue of PFAS contamination of our drinking water is richly ironic. It is time for a change.

The PFAS Issue

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)—also referred to a “forever chemicals”—are a risk factor for the development of a number of cancers. Two PFAS chemicals, PFOS and PFOA, are major constituents of fire-fighting foams used in training exercises at airports nationwide for decades, including Fairchild Air Force Base (FAFB) and Spokane International Airport (SIA) west of Spokane. 

In 2017 PFAS chemicals were detected in high concentrations in the municipal water supply of the City of Airway Heights. PFAS from Fairchild Air Force Base had leached into the groundwater and into the municipal wells. FAFB owned up to its role in the contamination. Airway Heights officials scrambled to connect their municipal water system, via wells maintained by the City of Spokane, to the purer water of the Spokane Valley–Rathdrum Prairie Aquifer underlying Spokane and points east and northeast.

But that was not the end of it. Seepage of contaminants in ground water does not respect municipal boundaries. Testing of private wells providing water for drinking, for livestock and for gardens for households outside of Airway Heights also began turning up high levels of PFAS contamination. Based on the hydrogeology of Spokane County’s west plains, Fairchild Air Force Base took some responsibility for the PFAS contamination for wells west of Hayford Road, a north-south dividing line east of FAFB, but drew the line there. 

Spokane International Airport’s Silence

Spokane International Airport had found high levels of PFAS in test wells on its property in 2017. This was an entirely logical finding considering that SIA had, like FAFB, used PFAS-containing Aqueous Fire-Fighting Films (AFFFs) for decades—but SIA remained silent. Down-channel from SIA (east of Hayford Road) people drawing water from private wells for domestic use were left to wonder about their well water or to pony up hundreds of dollars to have it tested.

“Spokane International Airport”, like similar entities, has neither an ass to kick nor a soul to damn. The actions and declarations of “Spokane International Airport” are really the actions and declarations of the people most intimately involved in running the Airport. Spokane County Commissioner Al French is a prominent member and sometimes chairman of the Board of SIA, a vocal supporter of SIA’s CEO, Larry Krauter, and a tireless promoter of property development out on Spokane’s west plains.

For seven years Mr. French not only remained mostly silent on the PFAS issue, but he worked behind the scenes to stymie efforts to study the extent of PFAS contamination east of Hayford Road. 

Many have suggested that Commissioner French stood in the way of disclosing PFAS-contaminated test wells at SIA and sought regulatory relief from PFAS regulations for pecuniary reasons. French and real estate development interests connected to SIA and to S3R3, a private-public entity in which Mr. French also figures prominently, were thought to be guarding their interests, while hoping the issue would just go away. 

There may be a deeper conviction at work here. Adept politicians like Mr. French would never come right out and declare disdain for scientific evidence of harm to human health or the environment. Even if that were their firm belief, it would be impolitic to own it. 

But what do Mr. French and many of his like Republican politicians really think about the science? Here it is useful to inspect a little used resource that is publicly available at the tips of your fingers, the candidate financial statements at the Public Disclosure Commission’s website, pdc.wa.gov. (See the link “Financial Affairs Report” on the candidate’s page you can locate by exploring “For Voters and the Public”. )

Commissioner French’s financial affairs statement for calendar year 2023discloses (among other investments) his holdings of individual stocks of thirteen companies and one Exchanged Traded Fund (ETF). He holds stock in Chemours, DuPont and Corteva, three of four chemical companies (3M is the fourth) that have reached billion dollar agreements to settle claims concerning PFAS contamination. He also owns Dow Chemical stock, another flagship of the chemical industry. In a nod to his confidence that climate change isn’t an imminent threat worthy of concern, Mr. French also holds stock in the fossil fuel companies Phillips 66, Conoco-Phillips, and Chevron and a stake in XLE, a fossil fuel based ETF. All told, those chemical and fossil-fuel stocks comprise more than half of Mr. French’s stock portfolio. 

Would a man with such lopsided stock ownership be inclined to take seriously a science-based assessment of a threat to human health of low concentrations of PFAS chemicals in drinking water? One must suspect that Mr. French’s actions around PFAS contamination speak of the same denial of the significance of PFAS as he holds for the threat of climate change. 

We cannot afford to keep such people in office. Vote for Molly Marshall for District 5 Spokane County Commissioner this November.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

Why most states subscribe to “winner-takes-all” (the Electors)

I remember the difficulty my father had in the early 1960s when he tried to explain to me how we elect the president using the U.S. Electoral College system. It made little sense to me—and the more I look at it the less sense it makes. If you need a little brush-up on how the Electoral College system works today (or doesn’t), check out the P.S. below. Why, for example, do 48 states and the District of Columbia pledge all their Electors to the presidential ticket that wins the most votes, a system referred to as “winner-takes-all?” That is definitely not what the framers had in mind, nor was it specified in Article II of the Constitution. Before we examine how we got here, let’s explore the recent frustrating. anti-democratic results of this antiquated system.

For the first half century of my life leading up to the Bush/Gore contest in 2000, the possibility of elevating a candidate who had lost the popular vote to the presidency via the Electoral College system seemed like a minor concern. Instead, the main issue was that, because of the winner-takes-all system of allocating Electors adopted by 48 of the states and the District of Columbia, presidential candidates pay scant attention to campaigning in any state other than “purple” states—the states in which they might arguably win and thereby take all the Electors for themselves. The result of this Electoral College-induced distortion is, for those who have a basic understanding of the red/blue status of their particular state, it can seem pretty meaningless to even bother to cast a ballot. This year, more than any other year, we need to shake off that feeling.

First, with Donald Trump and J.D. Vance making noises and taking actions to suggest preparation to challenge the integrity of the 2024 November election, the larger the overall vote margin for the winning candidate the less viable these challenges will appear. Second, if we manage to elect Harris and Walz there will be a much higher chance of their being able to move forward if they have a sympathetic majority in House and Senate. Finally, given the way the Republicans in Congress have voted as a block for at least the last twenty-five years, what Republican elected to serve in either chamber would have the temerity to vote against the Republican Party leadership if a nationwide abortion or contraceptive ban were proposed and made it to a vote?—regardless of moderation expressed on the campaign trail. 

In our Washington Congressional District 5 working to thwart that grim possibility means supporting and voting for Carmela Conroy rather than Mr. Baumgartner. And while you’re voting don’t forget to vote for down ballot Democrats like Molly Marshall for District 5 Spokane County Commissioner—and against the Republican greed initiatives (more on those in later posts).

Now into the historical weeds

In the U.S. there have been only five presidents elected to office by our antiquated Electoral College system who were elected in spite of having lost the popular vote: John Quincy Adams (1824), Rutherford B. Hayes (1876), Benjamin Harrison (1888), George W. Bush (2000) and Donald J. Trump (2016). Of those five, Trump has the dubious distinction of having lost the popular vote by the largest margin by far, 2,868,686 votes—five times the absolute vote margin by which the next closest contender, George W. Bush, lost the popular vote in 2000. For good measure, in 2020 Trump lost the popular vote to Biden by a margin of 7,059,526 votes (in 2020 the Electoral College and the popular vote yielded the same result, a Biden/Harris win). 

The only Republican president elected with a majority of the popular vote in any election in the last thirty years was George W. Bush in 2004 (and he rode in on the wave of a war based on a lie—”Weapons of Mass Destruction”). Small wonder that Republicans are so enamored of the Electoral College system, a system so antiquated that the U.S. is the only remaining democracy that uses it to elect its executive president [a few still elect a largely figurehead president using an electoral college].

Like so much else in the history of our country the framers of our Constitution developed the indirect election of the president and vice president via Electors as a muddy compromise necessary to get both slave and free states to ratify the Constitution.

Crazier still, the exhausted framers based their Electors method of electing the president on a series of misconceptions [bold is mine]:

For starters, there were no political parties in 1787. The drafters of the Constitution assumed that electors would vote according to their individual discretion, not the dictates of a state or national party. Today, most electors are bound to vote for their party’s candidate.

And even more important, the Constitution says nothing about how the states should allot their electoral votes. The assumption was that each elector’s vote would be counted. But over time, all but two states (Maine and Nebraska) passed laws to give all of their electoral votes to the candidate who wins the state’s popular vote count. Any semblance of elector independence has been fully wiped out.

The Founders also assumed that most elections would ultimately be decided by neither the people nor the electors, but by the [nonpartisan] House of Representatives. According to the Constitution, if no single candidate wins a majority of the electoral votes, the decision goes to the House, where each state gets one vote.

So how did we go from the framer’s vision of electing wise Electors as another layer of representative democracy? Most writing on the history concerns the mess that the original Constitutional Elector system produced in the first few elections—a president of one stripe and a vice president in strong political opposition—a situation that might have sounded to some like a temptation to plot against the president. The 12th Amendment (second after the Bill of Rights) passed in 1804. It patched up the details of how the Electors cast votes for president and vice president.

For the first forty years after ratification most states experimented with different methods of choosing Electors. Some used the state legislature to choose Electors, others chose them with statewide or district elections, hybrid systems of selection, or other experiments. But here’s the crux laid out in an excellent article (click the underlined words to go there):

The shift to statewide winner-take-all was not done for idealistic reasons. Rather, it was the product of partisan pragmatism, as state leaders wanted to maximize support for their preferred candidate. Once some states made this calculation, others had to follow, to avoid hurting their side. James Madison’s 1823 letter to George Hay, described in my earlier post , explains that few of the constitutional framers anticipated electors being chosen based on winner-take-all rules.

From the linked post above:

Attempts to defend the Electoral College based on the fact that it was introduced by brilliant political thinkers such as Madison fail to appreciate the unique political context in which it was created and the fundamental differences between that time and ours.

Historian Heather Cox Richardson, in a recent “Politics Chat”, verbally stated that it was Thomas Jefferson that got the ball rolling on “winner-take-all” Electoral College voting when he realized the Electoral advantage of the method as applied to his Elector rich home state of Virginia. HCR credits Jefferson with starting the tread. 

The Electoral College is a vestige of the original compromise with the slave states necessary to ratify the Constitution. The Founders argued at length over its details. It never functioned in the manner intended by those who pushed it forward. It ought to be scrapped by Constitutional Amendment and relegated to the dustbin of history where it belongs—a daunting task but a worthwhile one.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

P.S. Quick Brush-Up on how the Electoral College system works these days (click here for the source of most of this): 

Each state is allotted a number of Electors, specified in Article II of the U.S. Constitution, a number equal to the number of U.S. Senators (two for each state) plus the number of that state’s U.S. Representatives. For example, Washington State has ten U.S. Congressional Districts (CD) each of which elects a U.S. Representative, therefore Washington State “gets” 2+10=12 Electors. Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution left it up to each state to decide on a method of choosing their Electors [the bold is mine]:

Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.

There are 435 total voting members of the U.S. House of Representativesand 100 U.S. Senators for a total of 535. (The total number of Representatives was fixed at 435 by The Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929, instead of expanding with growth in population. The Act fundamentally changed the balance of power in electing the president through the Electoral College by limiting the increase in number of Electors [which, of course, depends on a state’s number of Representatives] allocated to the more populous states.) We arrived at the number “538” for the total number of Electors via the 23rd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, passed in 1961. This Amendment awarded the voters of the District of Columbia 3 Electors, thus giving D.C. voters a say in the election of the president—even as they remain without voting representation in the House and Senate.

So, voila!, 435+100+3=538. Then 538/2=269, and therefore the magic number is 270 Electoral votes to “win” by a majority in the Electoral College. The Constitution (written before political parties were envisioned) specified that if no candidate got to a majority in the Electoral College then the House, voting as a state delegation with one vote per state, would decide. 

In 48 states and D.C., with the exception of Nebraska and Maine, the candidate slate that wins the popular vote in the November general election is effectively electing a slate of Electors chosen by the major party of the winning presidential slate in that state. State laws vary slightly regarding the few “faithless” Electors (who cast their ballot for a different candidate than the one specified by their party). Nebraska and Maine each choose two Electors based on the statewide vote, and one Elector is chose by the voters of each Congressional District. For detail about the actual steps in the process of Electors voting click here.