Elizabeth Warren has her heart set on eliminating the Electoral College and she’s considering it a major steps towards reform. According to CNN, Warren said: “Every vote matters and the way we can make that happen is that we can have national voting, and that means get rid of the Electoral College.”
Warren made the argument that presidential nominees are no longer campaigning in certain places, like Massachusetts and California, because they are not swing states. Instead, they focus their energy on the states that are up for grabs.
This may be true, but eliminating the Electoral College certainly has its drawbacks. For example, if there wasn’t an Electoral College then candidates could stay in the megastates like Texas, Florida, California, and New York in an attempt to build up their popular vote. The Electoral College forces nominees to move around the country to smaller states whose electoral votes could make a huge difference. The Electoral College also makes it easier to avoid a national recount.
Even so, Democratic primary politics are the driving force behind Warren’s desire to get rid of the Electoral College. If it wasn’t for that part of the Constitution, Al Gore would have become president in 2000, and Hillary Clinton would have won in 2016.
A lot of Democrats believe that the college is keeping them out of the White House, which is why Warren is trying to hard to make it pass. But why would she even try knowing that it would take years to do?
The state of Colorado just joined 11 other states in signing a compact that will give their electoral votes to the national popular vote winner, even if that candidate loses the state of Colorado. The deal won’t go into effect until states 270 electoral votes sign the compact. Right now, they are standing at 181 votes.
In the meantime, Kamala Harris and Kirsten Gillibrand have joined Warren in an attempt to expand the Supreme Court. According to Politico, the three 2020 hopefuls said that they support the idea, which Warren stated would be about “depoliticizing” the Supreme Court.
The motivation behind their idea isn’t too hard to figure out. First off, the Democrats have openly complained about being unfairly denied the Senate vote for the nomination of Merrick Garland in 2016. Also, President Trump has already appointed 91 federal judges, with the intent of choosing many more in the future.
They also see this as the only way to balance out the Supreme Court, which is clearly driven by a conservative majority. President Trump spoke about that during a news conference yesterday where he predicted that it was never going to happen. “The only reason they’re doing that is they’re trying to catch up. So if they can’t catch up through the ballot box by winning an election they want to try doing it in a different way,” said President Trump.
If the Democrats want a chance they’ll have to win the White House as well as the Senate majority in 2020. As it stands, the Democrats pushing these ideas are trying to sell them as process reforms when it’s blatantly obvious that they’re not. While Warren is looking to excite the activists that show up to Democratic primaries, she would be better off motivating them with health care or climate change.
