College Education

Electoral College votes tallied in Congress, January 2013

It’s become quite obvious that American politics is broken.  And not just because a malign and ignorant huckster has been elected president, though that is certainly the most glaring symptom of a disease that’s been worsening for decades.  And the real source of our debilitating political dysfunction is our profound ideological polarization.  We’ve split into two roughly equal and mutually hostile camps, with seemingly incompatible instincts and visions of America.  But a well-designed institutional framework might have channeled those deep disagreements into constructive compromise, or better represented them in government such that consensus or conciliation might be reached.  But our Constitution seems utterly incapable of handling or moderating our deep disagreements.  Consider how, in the Obama Era, the dubious notion of Separation of Powers actually exacerbated that deadly polarization, leading to such excesses as the government shutdowns, the debt limit crises, the Obamacare wars.  And consider that an incredibly polarizing and dangerously incompetent extremist has become president without even winning a plurality of the votes cast.  That quite undemocratic outcome occurred because our system for choosing the president is hopelessly overcomplicated and confused, and sitting at the heart of that confusion is that embarrassing constitutional relic, the Electoral College.  The Electoral College is our institutional dysfunction come to life.

The Founders created the Electoral College with two principles in mind. The first was the diffusion principle, the desire that the power to pick the president be spread among all the states, even the smaller states that might otherwise be overlooked in a national popular vote.  The second was the aristocratic principle, the belief that a collection of disinterested statesmen would prevent the election of a demagogue or a fool.  But these are practical principles, they weren’t adopted for theoretical reasons, but to satisfy the interests of the various states at the Constitutional Convention.  Many of the founders, including James Madison, the father of the Constitution, would have preferred direct popular election of the president.  Others wanted Congress to choose the president.  The original version of the Electoral College left it up to the various state legislatures to decide how the electors from their respective states were chosen; and for the first few decades some of those legislatures chose them directly, while others allowed their voting publics to decide.  But those electors were expected to make their own decisions, not necessarily rubber-stamp the choices of those that had put them there.  In the early 1800’s, however, as Jacksonian democracy swept the land, all the states switched over to having their populations choose the electors, and law and custom bound those electors to represent the plurality vote for president within their respective states.

And that’s where things stand today.  We’re stuck with this bizarre hodge-podge, an aristocratic structure that tries to channel democratic desires.  But it’s the worst of both worlds, since it can override the national popular vote while – quite obviously! – failing to prevent a demagogue and a fool from becoming president.  The Electoral College has bitterly failed the demands of both democracy and statesmanship, and in doing so it has produced something new in the political world: an unpopular demagogue!

The only remaining remotely defensible rationale for the Electoral College is the diffusion principle, the desire to ensure small states aren’t overlooked when choosing the president.  But the Electoral College does absolutely nothing to force presidential campaigns to address small states.  Instead, it forces them to address battleground states like Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, states which are split down the middle and can easily go either way in a given election.  The campaigns smartly ignore all dependably red or blue states, small or big, such as New York or Kansas.  But there’s no principle satisfied by ignoring those states, while a national popular vote would genuinely spread power to the entire country.  The Electoral College fails the diffusion principle too.

And it’s hard to see why the election within each state should be based on majority rule but not majority rule across the country as a whole.  Why should the democratic principle be so inconsistently applied?   There already is a mechanism within the federal government that gives disproportionate power to smaller states: the United States Senate.  (It should be noted that James Madison and other Founders opposed the undemocratic apportionment of Senators too, but accepted it as a necessary practical condition for bringing into the Union the small states who otherwise would not have joined.)   But Senators represent states, while the president is supposed to be the leader of the country as whole, the leader of the people.  That was clearly the intent of (many of) the Founders, and it was clearly the intent of those early 19^th century statesmen who gave the choice of electors directly to the people, and it is clearly the understanding of the present-day voting public.  The president is supposed to represent all of America.

Electors aren’t even apportioned according to population, because each state gets as many electors as it has Representatives in the House of Representatives (which is proportional to state populations) plus two more for its two Senators.  Thus, for instance, Wyoming gets 3 electoral votes (it has one Representative in the House plus its two Senators), while California gets 55 electoral votes (53 Representatives plus 2 Senators).  But California had about 37 million people as of the 2010 census, while Wyoming had only about 564,000.  So California has about 672,000 people for each electoral vote while Wyoming has only about 188,000 for each of its electoral votes.  That means the vote of one person in Wyoming has 3.5 times as much power as the vote of one person in California.  But why should a citizen in Wyoming have so much more power than a citizen in California when picking the one person who is the leader of the country as a whole?  The Electoral College doesn’t protect small states, it disenfranchises big ones!  It’s a failure in every conceivable way.  And it’s clearly failed us this year.

Brilliant, decent, imperfect, practical men, 1787

That’s not to say that Hillary should be president by virtue of winning the popular vote by over 2 million votes (that’s almost 2 percentage points, though with 48.2% it’s still shy of an outright majority).  If we’d had a national popular vote system in place for the 2016 election both Clinton and Trump would certainly have campaigned quite differently, and the popular vote might have gone for Trump.  Still, a lot of people did take the time and effort to vote, even in states that were definitively red or blue.  That is, they must have known their votes couldn’t make a difference in the Electoral College yet they voted anyway; and that deserves respect in a generally democratic society.  It can’t be said that the popular vote means nothing.  And given that the Electoral College system is inherently undemocratic, it’s not consistent to argue that electors are morally bound to obey their state pluralities but obligated to disregard the national one.  Either we respect the wishes of the American people or we don’t.  So it’s not entirely unfair to suggest, as some have done, that the electors reject the state pluralities and deny the presidency to someone who not only failed to win a plurality of the national popular vote but who is also an irresponsible demagogue and a dribbling fool.  In that case both the democratic and aristocratic principles would be satisfied, and that would probably have made James Madison very happy.

All the logic, all the theory, all our reason and sanity and common sense suggest the Electoral College should ignore the wishes of the people in the states and obey the wishes of the people of the United States.  Except for one thing.  We all agreed before the election that we would choose our presidents in this bizarre, old-fashioned, ridiculous way.  Or rather, history and convention and expectation have stuck us with this absurd system, and it would just be terribly unfair and destabilizing to change the rules after the fact.  People would be enraged, and rightly so.  As tempting as the thought is of the electors saving us deus ex machina from the Great Orange Disaster, our respect for fair play and democratic norms renders it unthinkable.  No principle is safe if we can’t all rely on the procedures.

But then let Trump supporters stop this dishonest and baseless talk that he has a “mandate”, or he won because “the American people have spoken.”  No, he won because the Elector College has spoken (or will soon).  Or because enough unrepresentative people in enough unrepresentative states have spoken.  Or because we have our heads stuck up our Constitution and can’t create a better system.  Those sentiments don’t make great slogans, but they have the virtue of being true.  At strongest, the American people chose Hillary Clinton.  At weakest, their choice is unclear and muddled, the exact thing an election is supposed to avoid.

And that is the real problem.  This election, like 2000, was a virtual tie, but the technical winners will enact policies the technical losers find frightening and abhorrent. And to add mendacious insult to juridical injury they’ll likely speak and rule as if they had actually won an overwhelming victory.  They’ll claim a mandate to shred the social safety net and distribute huge tax cuts to the rich.  And if you don’t look closely the Electoral College appears to give them some plausible cover for that undemocratic chicanery.  But that will just add to the bitter disappointment of the vaguely leftish half of the country, who now feel, and effectively are, disenfranchised.  For at least the next two years the comprehensively Republican federal government will trample upon their deeply held convictions and damage the institutions and programs they love, even though their candidate essentially tied.  They don’t deserve that.  We don’t deserve that.

But we’ll get it, and that’s because of other imperfections of our system, specifically Separation of Powers and fixed terms in office.  In parliamentary systems, as obtain in most of the English-speaking world and in Europe, the head of government is whoever can lead a ruling coalition in the democratically elected parliament (and many of those parliamentary elections have mechanisms for making sure minority parties are proportionally represented).  If the party in power governs ineffectively or against sustained popular opinion then elections are held and the people get to choose their rulers again, even if the terms of office aren’t close to being over.  And such a unified government makes the ruling party accountable; it doesn’t have independent executive and legislative branches that can blame each other for government failure or inaction.  And it doesn’t permit the constant war between those separate powers that results when they’re controlled by bitterly opposed and sharply polarized factions.

But wait, this is about as academic as an argument can get.  There is as much chance of America renovating its basic constitution as there is of Donald Trump suddenly becoming an expert on 20^th century African-American literature.  Though there are ways around the Electoral College that might actually be implemented – and more power to them!  But the Electoral College, ridiculous as it is, is only a small part of what’s wrong.  One doesn’t have to be a Democrat or bitter about Trump’s technical win to see the lesson the College teaches us: Our deeply polarized populace is possessed by rage and vindictiveness, the design of our political institutions prevents a constructive handling of that polarization, and that combination is radically undermining our democracy.  And it will probably only get worse.

It’s not sustainable, and there are really only two ways this can end: the polarization can give way, or the institutions can give way.  It could still conceivably happen that, as seemed inevitable until November 8, the demographics keep moving in the liberal direction, with the older, whiter, more conservative percentage of the populace shrinking.  Or populist conservatism could become widely dominant among the broad middle.  Or populist liberalism.  If any of those things happens then the federal government will be safely held by one party with a clear majority among the people, and that’s a situation the Constitution can safely handle.  (Though, if it’s Trumpian populism it’s not necessarily a situation that liberal democracy can handle.)  

Doing his best to elevate the discourse

But if none of those scenarios comes to pass, then the institutions themselves will erode.  If Congress and the Presidency are held by opposing parties the conflict between them will become even more acrimonious and destructive.  If our present situation continues – with one party that only represents half the people holding complete control of the federal government – then the struggle between feds and locals will become more acrimonious and destruction.  There could be widespread unrest, with irresponsible individuals on both sides even embracing violence.  And all these scenarios end just one way, with a president accruing more and more police power until he becomes essentially an elected tyrant.  And soon after, not even an elected one. 

That’s the direction we’re heading if we can’t create a better politics, an understanding of ourselves that satisfies the interests and aspirations of most of us.  America is hurting right now, all of it, the half that lost and the half that won.  And the only way forward is toward some new, moderate consensus that respects us all.  If any good can come from Trump’s win, it will be to force us to question the old rigid ideologies and blind archaic animosities that possess us and make us enemies.  There are fair-minded people on both sides urging tolerance and conciliation and offering constructive and pragmatic solutions.  But conciliation and pragmatism have little hope of being well received in an atmosphere of bitter mistrust, a mistrust happily fomented by special interests, propagandists, ideologues, fanatics, and fools.  But when our institutions fail us, all we have left is ourselves, and our commitments to each other.  There isn’t necessarily a happy ending here, only a chance, a hope that the great reserves of good will, common sense and generosity still possessed by the American people can be marshaled to fight the polarization that is killing us all.

The Deploring and the Deplored

Not every racist is deplorable, though racism always is.  That’s what Hillary overlooked when she dismissed so many Americans as “deplorables” at a recent fund-raiser (italics added):

You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic — you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people – now how 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive hateful mean-spirited rhetoric. Now, some of those folks – they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America.

To be fair, she did label only some of them as “irredeemable”, and she did immediately follow up with expressions of empathy for those driven into Trump’s arms by economic and cultural malaise, rather than by bigotry.   And she later apologized for characterizing so many of his supporters as deplorable.  Undeniably, Trump has come as far as he’s come partly by appealing to white racial, religious and sexual animus, and a significant part of his support comes from those motivated by varying degrees of that animus.  But that doesn’t necessarily make them bad people.  It doesn’t even necessarily make them bigots.  Seriously.

Let’s consider the categories of white racial hostility, particularly.  But before we do, let’s resist the overwhelming contemporary practice of misusing political language; let’s clarify our terms.  The word “racism” means the belief that people of other races are inherently and irredeemably inferior, morally or intellectually.  And, clearly, a “racist” is someone who holds such beliefs.   Obviously, many white Americans are racist; anecdote, empirical study, and everyday observation all bear that out (though how many is in hot dispute).  And given the monumental horror that racism has visited upon our nation, we’re all obligated to aggressively and zealously fight against it.  But there are subtleties lurking here as well.

But let’s start with the unambiguous category, the organized racists, those whose social and political lives center on their conviction that non-whites are indeed inferior, and who actively work to implement policies predicated upon that perception.  This category obviously includes those members of explicitly racist organizations, like Stormfront, or the Klan, or the alt-right.  These people are indeed deplorable and contemptible.  It doesn’t matter whether they’re otherwise hard workers or good parents or responsible citizens; if they’ve dedicated their political lives to subjugating millions of their fellow human beings, if they explicitly and consistently act on their unjustifiable hatreds, then they’ve consigned themselves to moral illegitimacy.

Next are the decided racists, those who are convinced that whites are superior and that the races should be kept separate, but who don’t make those beliefs central to their personality or their politics.  These are people who prefer to live and associate only with other whites.  They think American culture is superior because whites and Christianity are superior, and they think only white Christians (and possibly Jews) can be real Americans.  They generally vote for conservative politicians out of vague fear and hostility toward the Other, but they agree that organizations like the Klan are beneath contempt.  We all know someone who fits in this category, and we all know that their racism doesn’t define them or completely negate whatever good qualities they otherwise have.  Until just a couple of generations ago, almost every white American was squarely in this category.  Of course, by now everyone should know better, and willful ignorance is deplorable, but in and of itself it doesn’t make one a deplorable person.

That’s because every person is a moral mixed bag; none of us is pure.  Racism is an irredeemable evil, but so is greed, or selfishness, or callousness in the face of suffering, etc., and we are all guilty of all of them.  It’s the degree to which we are racist or selfish or greedy or callous that makes it fair to characterize us as good or bad people, as admirable or deplorable.  Racism is different from those more pedestrian evils in that it’s a social artifact (like race itself), not a natural part of human life, and therefore could conceivably be eradicated. But when assessing a given individual’s moral worth there’s no real reason to treat it so different from other, more universal evils.  And let’s be clear, that’s how Hillary meant to assess those people: as individuals, not merely as political actors. Regardless of how many people she was referring to, to her they’re “deplorables”, individuals to be discounted. But is it fair to morally dismiss all the decided racists as casually as the organized ones?

But it’s in the last and most numerous category of white American racial hostility that the most subtleties and confusions lie.  These are the racially resentful, those who feel as if society – the government, the media, the academy, elite opinion – favors non-whites over whites, that it condemns white failings but condones black ones, that it celebrates blackness but disdains whiteness.  Note that this is actually not racism per se.  It’s entirely possible to feel your own race is being treated unfairly without thinking another race is inferior.  In practice, however, many in this category suspect that blacks are more prone to irresponsibility and immorality and violence.  But even this is not necessarily racism.  Since there’s nothing racist in perceiving a culture as dysfunctional, it’s possible to believe African-American culture simply fails to sufficiently inculcate responsibility and self-control, and that if blacks could be raised in the supposedly superior white culture they would be just as virtuous as whites.

It’s possible, but it doesn’t happen very often.  That is, most people in the resentful category are deep down quite suspicious about the inherent shortcomings of black folks.  But typically those suspicions are unconscious.  The resentful don’t consider themselves racist at all, and they don’t intend harm on any race.  Most of them are good people, as good as people anywhere.  Their views on race are foolish and wildly wrong-headed – the notion that blacks have it easier than whites is just laughable, for instance.  But believing such absurdities makes them neither deplorable nor irredeemable.

What it makes them is American.  That is, when it comes to race the vast majority of white Americans are a little bit racist.  None of us is without racial sin.  But it’s only fair to say that if we stipulate that it’s almost entirely unconscious, and it’s only true in the technical sense.  We defined a racist as someone who believes in racism, but maybe that wasn’t such a clear definition after all.  It just doesn’t seem fair to call someone racist for having vague, fleeting, unconscious negative reactions to people of color, especially if he or she on a conscious level concedes that racism is intellectually and morally bankrupt.  The stupid and destructive racial fears imparted by the overwhelming weight of 400 years of racial horror do not negate whatever other admirable qualities those people possess.  What seems to separate conservative whites from their liberal counterparts is the degree of their unconscious racial fear, plus the unwillingness to honestly face that history, and its ongoing effects.

But that doesn’t mean all their resentment is unfounded.  Elite society actually does generally disdain less-than-affluent whites, treating them as rednecks, rubes, white trash, etc.  And it’s true that liberals do tend to excuse any bad behavior by African-Americans – even violence and looting.  And programs like affirmative action do advantage blacks at the expense of whites, within limited contexts.  On the whole, being white in America still brings with it enormous advantages, but working-class whites can’t be blamed for resenting these other things.  Neither can they be criticized for resenting the way globalization, de-industrialization, off-shoring, and loose immigration policies have decimated their wages and economic conditions. They understand – viscerally and accurately – that the people running the country not only don’t care about their values and interests, but positively consider them illegitimate.  They have become starkly alienated, they feel themselves a “forgotten tribe . . . strangers in their own land.”  They know they’re rejected, discounted, deplored.

Conservative ideologues dismiss their economic concerns while liberal ones dismiss them.  And now they’ve found a champion in Donald Trump, who speaks directly to their fears and their alienation, who tells them they are the backbone of the country, and that they can be made great again.  He tells them that they and their concerns are paramount.  But he also incites their anger, and inflames their worst fears regarding suspect groups: African-Americans, Mexicans, Muslims.  This is the true deplorable: the politician who exploits racial fear and anger for his own gain, who gives license to our worst instincts, who would destroy America in order to save it.  His followers are so much better than he is.

Neither perfect nor deplorable

But they have some responsibility here too.  They need not let their irrationalities rule them.  Trump may be the only national figure who directly speaks to their pressing concerns, who has made a real pitch to be their leader.  But they didn’t have to follow.  By choosing to support a race-baiter, they’ve made themselves more complicit in our national sin.  Embracing a candidate because of his racial animus (or failing to reject him for it) is a definite moral failure, one much worse than merely consciously or unconsciously harboring racial animus oneself.  But these are the fruits of denial.  Most of his supporters are in the resentful category; they’re not real racists like the decideds or the organized.  But their stubborn refusal to confront both our sordid racial history and their own subtle biases has left them vulnerable to exploitation by a slimy demagogue like Trump.  He pushes buttons they’re convinced they don’t even have!  They may not be real racists, but by attaching themselves to a man who so inflames racial hostility they’re starting to act like ones.

But liberals like Hillary aren’t giving them any real alternative – almost deliberately!  Liberal sanctimony and condescension – epitomized by Hillary’s “deplorable” comments themselves – only drive resentful whites further away.  They resent being called racist when they’re really not, at least not in the virulent way the decideds or the organized are.  They correctly understand that most liberals consider them irredeemable, enemies to be crushed, not constituents to be induced.  Liberals and white populists seem to be coming to an agreement that the essence of liberalism is contempt for the white working class. 

And contempt for any dissent regarding race.  There’s nothing at all racist in opposing multiculturalism or affirmative action or identity politics or immigration or Black Lives Matter, and there are plenty of honest (and compelling) arguments to be made against them and plenty of honest people making them.  That some people make bad faith arguments doesn’t change that.  There’s a whole lot of space between David Duke and campus leftists.  But liberals have indulged in deploration-creep, labeling as racist and bigoted even the smallest criticism of their officially sanctioned racial views.  This is liberals’ worst instinct: perceiving themselves as saints ridding the world of sinners. It’s simple Puritan witch-hunting, but sporting radical chic and spouting post-modern alibis.  And it doesn’t really do anyone much good, this Politics of Shaming, but it’s so much more self-satisfying than the thankless drudgery of building coalitions and making good-faith arguments.  Crusading is so much more fun than persuading!  Conservatives may be in denial about our racial problems, but liberals seem to have given up on any idea of actually solving them!

And that’s a disaster of the first order, because a more constructive and less self-righteous liberalism is the only thing that can possibly save us.  American racism unfortunately has both a long history and a promising future, and only liberals fully appreciate the enormity of the challenge it represents.  But the fact that we’ve come in just a few decades from a nation of mostly organized and decided racists to one that is mostly racially resentful should be seen as tremendous progress!  Explicit and conscious racism has been almost wiped out.  It’s time for the witch-hunt to stop.  That’s not to say that the foolish and horribly destructive racial attitudes remaining should not be called out and condemned – we are all obligated to do just that.  It’s to say that those harboring and expressing those attitudes should still be respected as individuals and as citizens.  We cannot indulge the racial sin, but we must love the sinner.  We really have no choice.  We’re all Americans, the Black Lives Matter activist and the Trump supporter alike.  We work hard and hope for the future and try to do well by ourselves and our children and our fellow countrymen.  None of us is going anywhere, and no real solutions will exclude any of us.