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I once heard an interview of playwright David Mamet explaining civility and debate in which he said:
“The essence of politics as my rabbi teaches is, we have to be civil with each other. We first have to be able to state the other guy’s position such that he will be able to say, ‘Yes, that’s what I mean’, and he has to say it for us. Then we each adduce our facts, and we agree upon the facts. When we’ve done those two things, then we can progress into an argument.”
This concept has stuck with me for many years. How much might we accomplish if debates and discussions were carried out this way?
For, if the goal of debate is to find the best solutions, then that is exactly what our congressmen should be doing; this is what the talking heads should be doing; and this is what we should be doing. But if the goal of debate is just to be “right”; or to throw out some “gotcha” moments; or to get re-elected, then by all means, keep doing things this way.
If you can’t explain the reason for something, you can’t honestly say you are opposed to it. For example, every four years, many people get frustrated by the Electoral College. Twitter comes alive with angry tweets about the popular vote, and the lack of democracy in America. Yet, most of those voices haven’t a clue about the purpose for it. The point of the EC is to balance out the weight of the vote to people of varying walks of life from all over the country, thus providing a more accurate representation of the nation as a whole. In other words, it’s about empowering demographic minorities. So, opposing the Electoral College makes about as much sense as opposing women’s right to vote. Ignorance is bliss, indeed.
Or how about separation of church and state? The Left loves to throw out this one. But do they realize that the purpose of separation of church and state was to prevent any single church from being declared as the one official denomination? It was never anywhere close to the intention of segregating religion and government. It’s just that most people hear “church” and assume that means “religion”. Notice, it’s not called separation of religion and state.
If you can’t oppose what you don’t understand, and you can’t currently explain the other guy’s position, then we should all be spending vast amounts of time listening and learning from the other side. We should be reading Marx, Upton Sinclair, and the Huffington Post. And learn it legitimately, without mockery, well enough that you could explain it to them. But we don’t, do we? It’s much easier to stay within our comfort zone, and never challenge our beliefs. Never step outside our circle of familiar voices preaching the same things we already know.
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“But do they realize that the purpose of separation of church and state was to prevent any single church from being declared as the one official denomination? It was never anywhere close to the intention of segregating religion and government.”
Madison disagreed with that assessment. More limited wordings of what would become the first amendment were considered and rejected in favor of the much broader one we ended up with.
In the current system, battleground states are the only states that matter in presidential elections. Campaigns are tailored to address the issues that matter to voters in these states.
Safe red-winning and blue-winning states are considered a waste of time, money and energy to candidates. These “spectator” states receive no campaign attention, polling, organizing, visits, or ads. Their concerns are utterly ignored.
The influence of ethnic minority voters has decreased tremendously as the number of battleground states dwindles. For example, in 1976, 73% of blacks lived in battleground states. In 2004, that proportion fell to a mere 17%. Just 21% of African Americans and 18% of Latinos lived in the 12 closest battleground states. So, roughly 80% of non-white voters might as well have not existed when there were 12 battleground states..
The National Popular Vote bill has been endorsed by organizations such as the League of Women Voters, Common Cause, FairVote, Sierra Club, NAACP, National Black Caucus of State Legislators, ACLU, the National Latino Congreso, Asian American Action Fund, DEMOS, National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, Public Citizen, U.S. PIRG, and the Brennan Center for Justice.
Because of state-by-state winner-take-all laws, not mentioned, much less endorsed, in the Constitution. . .
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker in 2015 was correct when he said
“The nation as a whole is not going to elect the next president,”
“The presidential election will not be decided by all states, but rather just 12 of them.
Candidates have no reason to poll, visit, advertise, organize, campaign, or care about the voter concerns in the dozens of states where they are safely ahead or hopelessly behind.
With the end of the primaries, without the National Popular Vote bill in effect, the political relevance of 70% of all Americans was finished for the presidential election.
In the 2016 general election campaign
Over half (57%) of the campaign events were held in just 4 states (Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Ohio).
Virtually all (94%) of the campaign events were in just 12 states (containing only 30% of the country’s population).
Over 87% of both Romney and Obama campaign offices were in just the then 12 swing states. The few campaign offices in the 38 remaining states were for fund-raising, volunteer phone calls, and arranging travel to battleground states.
Issues of importance to 38 non-battleground states are of so little interest to presidential candidates that they don’t even bother to poll them individually.
Charlie Cook reported in 2004:
“Senior Bush campaign strategist Matthew Dowd pointed out yesterday that the Bush campaign hadn’t taken a national poll in almost two years; instead, it has been polling [the then] 18 battleground states.”
Bush White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer acknowledging the reality that [then] more than 2/3rds of Americans were ignored in the 2008 presidential campaign, said in the Washington Post on June 21, 2009:
“If people don’t like it, they can move from a safe state to a swing state.”
Trump, October 11, 2017, on interview with Sean Hannity
“I would rather have the popular vote.”
Trump, November 13, 2016, on “60 Minutes”
“ I would rather see it, where you went with simple votes. You know, you get 100 million votes, and somebody else gets 90 million votes, and you win. There’s a reason for doing this. Because it brings all the states into play.”
In 2012, the night Romney lost, Trump tweeted.
“The phoney electoral college made a laughing stock out of our nation. . . . The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy.”
In 1969, The U.S. House of Representatives voted for a national popular vote by a 338–70 margin.
Recent and past presidential candidates who supported direct election of the President in the form of a constitutional amendment, before the National Popular Vote bill was introduced: George H.W. Bush (R-TX-1969), Bob Dole (R-KS-1969), Gerald Ford (R-MI-1969), Richard Nixon (R-CA-1969), Michael Dukakis (D-MA), Jimmy Carter (D-GA-1977), and Hillary Clinton (D-NY-2001).
Recent and past presidential candidates with a public record of support, before November 2016, for the National Popular Vote bill that would guarantee the majority of Electoral College votes and the presidency to the candidate with the most national popular votes: Bob Barr (Libertarian- GA), U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R–GA), Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-CO), and Senator Fred Thompson (R–TN), Senator and Vice President Al Gore (D-TN), Ralph Nader, Governor Martin O’Malley (D-MD), Jill Stein (Green), Senator Birch Bayh (D-IN), Senator and Governor Lincoln Chafee (R-I-D, -RI), Governor and former Democratic National Committee Chair Howard Dean (D–VT), Congressmen John Anderson (R, I –ILL).
Newt Gingrich summarized his support for the National Popular Vote bill, which would guarantee the majority of Electoral College votes to the winner of the national popular vote, by saying: “No one should become president of the United States without speaking to the needs and hopes of Americans in all 50 states. … America would be better served with a presidential election process that treated citizens across the country equally. The National Popular Vote bill accomplishes this in a manner consistent with the Constitution and with our fundamental democratic principles.”