Who thought the Electoral College was a good idea? In two of the last five presidential elections, the candidate who lost the popular vote still managed to win the White House. So why are we still electing the most powerful position this way and what are the alternatives? Jesse Wegman, author of the new book “Let the People Pick the President”, gives amazing insight into the slapdash construction of the Electoral College. Hear him make the case that the institution we ended up with is divisive and undemocratic and ought to be done away with once and for all.
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Chris Hayes Podcast With Jesse Wegman | Why Is This Happening? – Ep 112 | MSNBC
“In Reality, They’re Not After Me, They’re After You. I’m Just In the Way”.
Donald Trump.
Kia Ora from Aotearoa New Zealand 🌻🌷🌻
Where we use a system called MMP to democratically elect our Members of Parliament.
From that, the government is formed by the coalition of the majority.
Jacinda Ardern is our Prime Minister.
And in her 1st term in office she’s had her first baby, a terrorist attack, a natural disaster and a global pandemic.
She’s doinga better job than Boris Johnson of the U.K…..who’s also had a baby in his 1st term as leader.
Just sayin.
#ChuffedKiwi 💗
As a Brit I’m thoroughly jealous of you having such a thoughtful, compassionate and well balanced head of state.
Peoples Republic of Ninj me too! Let us borrow your PM! From USA, california 🙂
Thanks for your kind words👍🏾😀👍🏾
I’ve had to travel for my job for more than a decade. I’m home now and truthfully; while my career has taken a backseat(maybe permanently),…there’s no place I’d rather be. ❤
None of this is magic or unattainable….you just have to get out and #VOTE.
(Yes …. Democracy is a small club, and we too have our democracy under attack….looking right at you and those illegal campaign finance donations, China …. but those matters are before the courts…we shall have to wait and see on that.)
There are many more, just like Jacinda….but it’s up to YOU to get them elected.
#StayHomeAndStaySafe
Kia Kaha!
Kia Toa!
and listen to the scientists my fellow humans 💗💗💗
@OGxTRAPxGOD Sorry – the whole point about PM Ardern is that she has too much good sense to want to try doing her job in a country as disunified and with so many gun-toting egotists. Your best bet – and I’m not American but watch the political and events news world-wide – is to elevate Governor Cuomo if he should run in the election-after-next. Intelligence, Compassion and Truthfulness is what you need in any head of state and that’s a hard thing to maintain in American politics, where so much is image without substance. One good idea would be to pass a law that no lobbyist/s may have a private audience with any elected official. Some third party – and an accurate recorder – must be present at all times; the conversations formally requested and entered in the official diary and the conversation then made part of the public record.
2 Party system just doesn’t fit today’s world anymore…I don’t have the ultimate system at hand..but it seems there are just to many people being dissapointed on the Views both Parties have…
In programming terms, the code upon which the system is built is riddled with bugs, some intentionally included in the coding, some incidental.
great video bro
Elections are too important to let people meddle with them.
I hope that’s an ironic allusion to the line in ‘Runaway Jury’.
Chirs Hayes, the person who’s helped msdnc lose 35% of their ratings in just the last 12 months lmao. Great job!
You insult that Irish flag. I am Irish, and in Ireland you would be in a tiny minority. We Irish have contempt for Trump and the racist anti democratic GOP
SHOULD be done with ELECTORAL COLLEGE NOW
So if the slaves can vote now shouldn’t that undo the Electoral College💋
Probably you don’t really understand why America is as it is. The Constitution is the basis of law in this country. Law is one of the American elitist’s main tools assuring continued dominance of all that is not caucasian. Why is this and how is it? Word smithery is the answer, always augmented by police power (in the broadest sense of that term). (Historically, the Sovereign of the land was the Keeper of the Fist, while the priests and philosophers were the Keepers of the Word.)
A past criminology professor of mine once asked our class if we didn’t think American law was the finest on Earth, to which the majority of the class eagerly assented. I’m a Vietnam veteran with travels and postings around lots of NATO countries. Being hyper curious and investigative, I tend to make up my own mind about such things. I replied that I really didn’t think our law was so great, insofar as a person with lots of money and connections could skirt around just about any law. And crime in the top realms of America — financial crime, business crime, drug crime — are the rule rather than the exception. It’s how America has developed. In some minds, Law is a problem, and problems demand solutions, but not universally applicable solutions. So bottom line is there is nothing in the U.S. Constitution and, the worst of all outgrowths of it, Case Law, which is judge-made law, that cannot be avoided or evaded by skillful Lawyering. All judges are products of their communities; law is very much a product of community. Lawyering skill comes at a price, and the elite education underlying that skill comes at an enormous price. At that skill level, the only law that matters is the law that gets “me” what I want, while at the same time preventing you from getting what you want. Also, skillful manipulation of the public narrative is a vital part of law in this country. Some would call it propaganda, but that’s not really true in the absolute meaning of the term. That right there is the starting point of the confusion that allows the elites to maintain their grip on the country. Definitions. Definitions. Definitions. Or, Word Smithery.
I add this here having no other place to add it: A prominent flaw in The American Way was/is arming a low-IQ, pre-psychotic, white nationalist citizenry with weapons of enormous destructive capability, and then passing Open Carry laws to enable that quite sizable rabble.
@John Carpenter so we still stand at the mercies of our oppressors, or Rebellion and deaths of many 💋
Thank you Jesse Wegman. It’s always a pleasure to listen to a person with deep knowledge of this nation past.
If you create ANY other form of voting other than majority rules, then you MUST expect there to be elections where the majority does not pick the winner. That doesn’t mean it is inherently unfair.
Give an example of the Minority winning an election and it being fair.
I’ll wait.
@keef davis Well, I guess you could argue that the founders had the French revolution in mind. Dictators constantly begin as demagogues who tell the poor-with-memories-of-greatness that they will return their former prosperity and privilege. Then an initially egalitarian hope can turn into a total bloodbath aimed against those with the most enlightened ideas. Demagogues hate intellectuals – they prefer an emotion-driven mob to a group of thinking persons. In fact, the popular frenzy which led to the murder of Russia’s last tsars and the Austrian arch-duke actually prevented those countries peaceful evolution into democracy and opened the way for dictatorships which create and maintain wars to keep the people obedient. Trump just followed the model-book .. and has kept following its trajectory, including trying to find another place against which to announce another US invasion. The difference is that Trump hasn’t been able to identify and isolate a particular scapegoat-community so well as Hitler or the French revolutionaries or Stalin or Mao did in their time. So I suppose the founders imagined that the ‘best and finest’ minds and characters would be chosen for the Electoral College and balance any occasional tendency towards mass sentiment over good thinking. If so… didn’t work out as planned.
It’s one of the most undemocratic things in politics through out the entire world.
Winner take ALL . ALL. Yikes.
Superlative interview.
it should be the popular vote,the will of the majority,not bought electorals
You mean – this crazy idea of democracy is what the US is imposing on every country it invades? The Electoral College is just a version of the English House of Lords.
Not so. The House of Lords has no power whatsoever to decide who gets to form a Government in the House of Commons.
Oh, and it’s British not English
@Pauline Foster No – it is English in origin. ‘Britain’ includes Scotland, Wales and northern Ireland, where the English system was imposed (with greater or lesser success) but the system is England’s. When I said ‘a version’ I meant what I said. The electoral college now, as the HOL used to do, has power to – in effect – veto the wishes of the people.
@D Ntodo It scarcely matters how it arose, it’s British now. But the main point is that the House of Lords does not get to decide who wins a general election, and thus is nothing like the US electoral college
@Pauline Foster I think historians would disagree with you about your first notion, and it’s evident that you can’t grasp what I’m saying about relative scales of power or the still more basic point that the Constitution was written by men whose notion of power-structures had been learned in predominantly English intellectual environment. But there’s no point in using youtube vid comments to explain a passing historical point which you plainly will never grasp or agree with. Doesn’t matter as much as American representatives actively undermining the peoples’ choices by direct and indirect means.
A two party nation makes it much easier for the lobbyist to have control of what happens, THEY rule Your country, Democracy only in the name
If each state has the same representation in the Federal system the each state should pay the same amount of taxes to the Federal government I am shore NY and CA would be happy for that as they have been propping up the small state with there taxes
Voter ID
I am a descendant of James Wilson on my mother’s side and John Hancock in my father’s side so I find any historical information about them interesting and it was a treat to learn more about James Wilson because you don’t hear a lot about him compared to Hancock (who always struck me as overblown). I will tell you that there are many of us descendents who definitely inherited his outlook and beliefs. I love this podcast. It never fails to make me think about things I never thought much about before and I think that’s invaluable.
How many of the 11 statues are democrats?