Avax

Yes, it is irrelevant now, and sometimes it inadvertently blocks popular will (it was meant to block popular will, but deliberately, not accidently).

Fact is, we don’t live at all under the system that was set up so carefully in 1787. John Adams thought that system died during Jefferson’s term. It definitely changed into something else in the 1820s. And the Civil War totally swept it off the table.

Yet why do we keep the foundation structure of the old house, even after we’ve knocked it down and built a new one in its place? I think that knocking down the electoral college would be a national admission that we no longer live under the system the Founders created.

The psychological impact of that would be enormous. It would shock many of us into realization that whatever they gave us (I think it was a work of genius, but most “progressives” seem to find it deeply flawed — what an odd lot of ideas now crawl about under the word “progressive”) isn’t functioning anymore, and it would force us to think through the entire system of governance in the United States.

It would be sensible to do away with the current accidental arrangement of states, too, and re-district the country some other way. But it won’t happen, and for the same reason. Sentimental attachments are as important to a nation as ruthlessly logical constructions.

A major act of foundational dismantling took place in 1913 when the Constitution was amended to shift Senate election from the state legislatures to the popular vote. But this came after generations of corrupt bargains and tainted choices that thoroughly disgusted all parties.

When I look around at the leadership currently on the scene, and compare it to the men (and women) of 1787, I say, “no, let’s continue the illusion for another generation. Better to be sleep-walking through government, carrying around its old trappings like a security blanket, than to let these clowns monkey with the structure of it.”