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Dems want end to Electoral College. Is it idiocracy or a rush to the 'Hunger Games'?

John Kass

By John Kass

Published March 25, 2019

I've just taken a good, long hit on the Kasshish pipe, and now my eyes are finally open to the wisdom of Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.

Kasshish makes you see reality, but it also gives you the munchies, so if you don't mind, I'd very much like a plate of "Cold Omelets with Crab Meat," the "authentic" Cherokee recipe Warren published in the "Pow Wow Chow" cookbook, back when she was vigorously Native American.

But her identity politics isn't the issue. Her wisdom is the issue, in wanting to toss the Electoral College on the ash heap of history.

Sen. Kamala Harris wouldn't mind tossing out the Electoral College, either, nor would other 2020 presidential candidates of the Creative Destruction Party, all of whom want real change in this country. Not fake change, but the real Green New Deal.

These candidates don't mind packing the Supreme Court or giving 16-year-olds the right to vote or letting the majority rule us in all things.

We've been talking about real change for some time now. But years have passed, and now it appears that "everybody" agrees we are running out of time.

As some scientific-sounding expert said once in a movie, Americans have not become smarter, they've become more stupid with each passing year.

"The years passed, mankind became stupider at a frightening rate. Some had high hopes that genetic engineering would correct this trend in evolution," he said. "But sadly, the greatest minds and resources were focused on conquering hair loss and prolonging erections."

As we lurch toward idiocracy — the real thing, not the movie — we must change course.

Before I began smoking Kasshish, I'd wasted much of my time puffing away on Hopium, reading conservative journals and holding onto the old-fashioned belief expressed in the Constitution that the rights of the minority were important too.

But since we only have 12 years to live, like the climate scientists say, who the heck has got time for minority rights?

If Houston will soon be underwater, like Beto says, then we don't have the time to let passions cool before making rash decisions. Those decisions that could plunge us into chaos and bring forth the rule of the mob — which would invariably be followed by imposition of federal martial order, just like those old dead European dudes warned us about.

Let's just do it.

Let's pack the Supreme Court to get the judicial decisions we want.

Let's give 16-year-olds the right to vote to get the voters we want. The 14-year-olds will complain, so we'll have to give them that right as well. Who can withstand the whining of an adolescent? I certainly can't.

Let's also finally get rid of that ridiculous dusty relic called the Electoral College so we can get the political results most of us want, unless, of course, you happen to live in a poor, rural area and your name is Katniss Everdeen.

"My view is that every vote matters," Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat, said to wild applause at a CNN town hall in Mississippi. "And the way we can make that happen is that we can have national voting, and that means to get rid of the Electoral College!"

Yay!

Abolishing the Electoral College was also supported in concept by Harris, who sat next to Jimmy Kimmel to discuss political philosophy.

"There's no question that the popular vote has been diminished in terms of making the final decision about who's the president of the United States, and we need to deal with that, so I'm open to the discussion." Harris said.

There's no question about a lot of things, Sen. Harris, including whether making prostitution legal would truly empower sex workers, as you're saying now, or whether, as you said some time ago when serving as a prosecutor, it would "empower pimps and human traffickers … to exploit their victims without repercussion."

Beto also thinks there is reason to abolish the Electoral College.

"I think there's a lot of wisdom in that," he said in a video on Twitter. "You had an election in 2016 where the loser got 3 million more votes than the victor. It puts some states out of play altogether."

That's brilliant. Beto knows what plants crave. It's the electrolytes.



It's all in the Constitution, so getting rid of it won't happen as easily as Warren, Harris and Beto might wish or leaders of the House of Representin' might want.

But it could happen if a huge majority of the states say it should be so.

Democrats don't much like the Electoral College, and they've liked it even less after Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in 2016 but lost the votes of the states.

The presidency is our only office subject to a national election, and the founders created the Electoral College to prevent heavily populated states like New York and California from exerting their will on the rest of us, in the manner of Emma Stone putting her foot down on that poor little rabbit in "The Favourite."

As Warren and Harris and Beto tell us of the wonders of the future, none of us think of ourselves as the rabbit about to scream.

We're always the foot.

And so, when all this happens, when their plans come to fruition and the toilet paper and food disappear, as in Venezuela, I call dibs on the tapirs in the zoo.

I hear they're easy to roast over coals.

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John Kass is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune who also hosts a radio show on WLS-AM.

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