Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence

[onenote]

104. My "slavish" devotion isn't to the politics of 1787, it's to our particular constitutional system

Last edited Tue Jan 10, 2017, 11:42 PM - Edit history (1)

that, warts and all (and some of those warts include the difficult process for amending it as well as the outmoded electoral college) has worked well, albeit slowly at times. Yes, because it is slow moving, we've had years before certain reforms could be made (and others that still haven't been made). But we've also avoided the awful consequences of all the bad changes that would have occurred if we had a constitution that, like those of some countries, can be changed as frequently as some people change hair styles. The list of odious constitutional amendments that haven't been adopted is long and most definitely does not bend towards justice.

I don't know how old you are or how long your memory is. Mine is long enough to know that this isn't the first election that feels like the end of the world. Trump is horrid. Trump is dangerous. Trump is a nightmare. All true.

But I felt the same way when Richard Nixon was elected, particularly in 1972, when 20 million more of my fellow citizens chose Nixon over McGovern. At a time when we were in a war that had killed over 50,000 of my peers and torn the country in two in a way that you can't imagine if you didn't live through it. And yet within a couple of years, the Democrats were back in the WH, only to suffer another devastating blow when Reagan was elected winning 44 states- again, it felt like the end of the world, particularly when he was re-elected by an even larger margin. But by 1992 we had the WH again, and after losing it narrowly in 2000 and narrowly failing to regain it in 2004, we won it back in 2008 and kept it for 8 years. Does it suck that we lost it again, to as someone as unfit as Trump? Of course it does, but knowing that unlike some of those years where I was in the group that fell 20 million or eight million or 17 million votes short this time more people voted for Clinton that Trump gives me reason to think that we'll survive this debacle as well.

Now, I know you'll think that I've just proved your point -- that a result in which we win the national popular vote but lose the election is anti-democratic and thus we need to reform the system. And I don't disagree. The system we have is antiquated and in today's world, in which people are more mobile than ever, where nationwide communications are instantaneous, where state boundaries mean little, the old ways should change. But I live in the real world and I'm not going to throw my hands up and say that if we don't change the system we're doomed.

There is a lot of doomsday nonsense on this board now. Yes, as I said, Trump is a dangerous guy and he has facilitators and enablers all around him. But we've survived dangerous times with dangerous leaders before. And I'm confident that we will again. So instead of declaring the end of the world is nigh unless we change the system, knowing full well that we can't change the system before whenever "nigh" comes, I will choose to do what I did in the 60s, the 70s, the 80s, the 90s, and the 2000's: spend my money and work my ass off to get Democrats elected, starting with my own local member of Congress and Senators as well as my state and local level officials.