"When a man unprincipled in private life, desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper... despotic in his ordinary demeanour - known to have scoffed in private at the principles of liberty - when such a man is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity — to join in the cry of danger to liberty - to take every opportunity of embarrassing the General Government & bringing it under suspicion - to flatter and fall in with all the nonsense of the zealots of the day — It may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may 'ride the storm and direct the whirlwind.'" - Alexander Hamilton Our Founding Fathers anticipated what one man could do - and is now doing - to our Democracy. Hamilton also knew that the ignorant and unprincipled would follow such a man.
I didn't know that Trump was old enough to have been alive at the same time as Hamilton. Seems like it, though, as Hamilton nailed him.
The horse left the barn 200 years ago and is in Bismark, ND. But if he crosses the Missouri River it was because of Trump.
what do you think Alexander Hamilton would say when one party’s answer to a ‘threat to democracy’ would be to eliminate the electoral college and go to simple majority? That is a far Greater threat to the founding fathers intent than one man, regardless of party.
Easy. When you got skin in the game, you stay in the game But you don’t get a win unless you play in the game Oh, you get love for it. You get hate for it You get nothing if you… Wait for it, wait for it, wait!
With respect to the Electoral College discussion above, I don't know how the Founders would feel today. We know that Washington, for example, warned us against having political parties, which we have. The EC and election laws have also changed significantly since the founding. I've also read that slavery was a key to many of the debates about the EC over the years. Here is one take: The Troubling Reason the Electoral College Exists Enter the 12th Amendment, which allowed each party to designate one candidate for president and a separate candidate for vice president. The amendment’s modifications of the electoral process transformed the Framers’ framework, enabling future presidential elections to be openly populist and partisan affairs featuring two competing tickets. It is the 12th Amendment’s Electoral College system, not the Philadelphia Framers’, that remains in place today. If the general citizenry’s lack of knowledge had been the real reason for the Electoral College, this problem was largely solved by 1800. So why wasn’t the entire Electoral College contraption scrapped at that point? Standard civics-class accounts of the Electoral College rarely mention the real demon dooming direct national election in 1787 and 1803: slavery. At the Philadelphia convention, the visionary Pennsylvanian James Wilson proposed direct national election of the president. But the savvy Virginian James Madison responded that such a system would prove unacceptable to the South: “The right of suffrage was much more diffusive [i.e., extensive] in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of Negroes.” In other words, in a direct election system, the North would outnumber the South, whose many slaves (more than half a million in all) of course could not vote. But the Electoral College—a prototype of which Madison proposed in this same speech—instead let each southern state count its slaves, albeit with a two-fifths discount, in computing its share of the overall count. **** The 1796 contest between Adams and Jefferson had featured an even sharper division between northern states and southern states. Thus, at the time the Twelfth Amendment tinkered with the Electoral College system rather than tossing it, the system’s pro-slavery bias was hardly a secret. Indeed, in the floor debate over the amendment in late 1803, Massachusetts Congressman Samuel Thatcher complained that “The representation of slaves adds thirteen members to this House in the present Congress, and eighteen Electors of President and Vice President at the next election.” But Thatcher’s complaint went unredressed. Once again, the North caved to the South by refusing to insist on direct national election.
That time article sounds exactly like musings of someone wanting to hasten the termination of the EC. I expect them to increase as the idea goes from fringe to mainstream. If trumps wins the EC and loses the popular vote we will see these ‘history lessons’ daily.
Madison warns us in Federalist 10 about the tyranny of the majority. We are now in danger from the tyranny of the minority. In Federalist 51 he tells us that “we will not always have enlightened statesmen at the helm” as an explanation of the necessity of checks and balances/separation of powers. I think the greater problem is a lessening of these safeguards.
Only one Republican has won the popular vote since 1988. Do you think that that is problematic in and of itself?
As much as some do not want to admit it…our problem is fascism. If any of you think Biden is not a puppet (controlled by elite billionaires). You are naive imo.
I’d say it seems like you’re an enabler with a penchant for “what aboutism” and mistaking apples for oranges. There are lots of threats, some immediate and likely, others remote and unlikely. You know good and well the difference here.
Don't forget the part just before that... @Trickster it's times like this when I truly have no idea what that rating means to others. Go GATORS! ,WESGATORS
I have read this a few times in the past several years and it is more and more obvious that Madison sensed our future.
It's not a subject I have researched much personally. The fact that proponents and opponents of the EC will put it in the best and worst lights possible, respectively, is obviously not surprising. I think whether the institution of slavery was a significant factor in the establishment of the EC is relevant. Of course, the EC seems to be a mostly partisan debate at this point given whom it's helped versus hurt in recent years. It's not going anywhere anytime soon.
The poster that you are replying to appears to have forgotten that Trump won the EC and lost the popular vote once already.
The electoral college is the only possible means to Trump winning. He cannot win the overall popular vote. And even with that paradigm, I think the electoral college remains imperative to our democracy. It gives a relatively fair representative say for each state for the general election. Otherwise, the dense urban population centers, like NY, LA, and Chicago, would have a disproportionate say in the election.
He also sensed the inability of some to distinguish faint cries to do away with the EC from the immediate threat of a madman and his disciples to dismantle democracy (and making the EC irrelevant).
Why should where someone lives matter? They vote how they want to vote the end. Every vote counts the same.
