2020 Election

[Belsnickel]

(11-06-2020, 11:56 AM)bfine32 Wrote: I get the liberal way of thinking is to make it about elitist, but there's a very good chance that the person that owns the land lives in a city. I'm talking about the rural folks that take on the task of feeding America.

This argument makes no sense to me. I don't really see the logic in it.

(11-06-2020, 12:03 PM)michaelsean Wrote: I go back and forth in my mind on popular vote, but the one thing to remember is each state is sovereign, and it doesn't matter if they have 100,000 people or 10 million people. They don't want to be ruled by a few other states. So if not the EC, then at least there is the senate to represent the state, but now we have people starting to complain about that. Keep going this way and we are going to have two coasts deciding everything for everyone in between.

(11-06-2020, 12:07 PM)Brownshoe Wrote: I don't get why people on this forum has to put words in my mouth. I support a federal system, and the EC is the only fair way you support a federal system.

I'm going to kind of address these both (and some other posts) in this way. We have a federalist system, yes. However, our federalist system is not a neat and tidy straight line system like they teach in high school government. Federalism is a mess. It has evolved over the years from dual federalism at the founding to things like marble cake, picket fence, etc. The point here is that federalism is messy and isn't really what most people think it is.

The biggest thing to keep in mind with this, though, is that the federal government grew. It grew in the Progressive era and then under FDR it became the bureaucracy we all know and love. The role of the POTUS is to run this government, this federal bureaucracy, and represent it around the world. The president is not in charge of the governors, they're not in charge of the states in any way, really. The president is in charge of the federal bureaucracy which is a government of, by, and for the people of this country. Not the states; the people. The EC was a compromise from the start and it had some value among a citizenry that was never going to hear or see the POTUS because it was a far-away figure. But in the modern era, with our modern government, those truths are no longer there. The EC is an antiquated system that does nothing but over-complicates our elections and makes our system less representative of the people. The majority in both major parties as well as independents knew this prior to 2016.