The Same People Arguing For An Electoral College Coup Complained About “Norms” Being Violated

I suppose nothing should shock me any more, but it does slightly shock me that prominent media personalities and liberal organs are actively pushing a coup. They want the Electoral College, which has been in effect since 1788 and governed every presidential election in the history of the United States, to be subverted by its participants. They want individual electors to defy the will of their states’ voters and select Hillary over Trump, because… it’s not exactly clear what the rationale would be. Trump is uniquely unfit for office, or so these advocates claim, and therefore the electors are uniquely entitled to exert their independent assessment, ignore the preference of voters who elected them, and perform an act which would dramatically contravene centuries of precedent.

The leading proponents of this extreme subversion tactic include Larry Lessig, a Harvard Law professor and reputed expert on the Constitution. His advocacy is doubly ironic because if his demand were implemented, it would certainly provoke a Constitutional Crisis unlike anything ever before seen in this country. I guess Lessig is willing to accept that eventuality.

Presidents have frequently entered office will all sorts of conflicts-of-interest; Mitt Romney maintained a “blind trust” with his various sleazy private equity endeavors contained therein, but a blind trust can always be made less “blind” if you have the correct lawyers. Hillary and Bill Clinton maintained a sprawling, multi-national, quasi-governmental “philanthropic” enterprise known as the Clinton Foundation, which was deeply enmeshed in all sorts of business interests all over the place. You could make an argument that the Electoral College ought to have rejected Hillary on that ground, had she won the election. But since she lost, it’s a moot point. The same goes for Trump. Are his “conflicts-of-interest” more consequential than others’? Maybe. Probably. Do they warrant scrutiny? Absolutely, yes. Is that sufficient grounds to agitate for an Electoral College putsch, throwing the country into chaos, and obliterating the credibility of the American political system? Erm… likely not.

Recall that many of these same people promoting such harebrained tactics were not so long ago passionately objecting to Trump’s supposed violation of “norms.” The big “norm” that Trump allegedly violated was that he didn’t declare in advance that he’d accept the election result, because he wanted to look at it first. OK, I guess that was a violation of a “norm” in that Trump didn’t issue a preemptive, unqualified endorsement of the veracity of the election outcome. Maybe Trump should have done that. It’s up for debate. But people have always suspected that elections are “rigged” — that was never unique to Trump, although maybe he communicated his belief more loudly and brashly than most.

We know that belief in “rigging” is not unique to Trump or Trump supporters because that view has now been adopted by legions of pro-Clinton people across the internet and beyond. They believe the election result was “rigged” by some combination of FBI malfeasance, Russian hacking, and god knows what else. There might be a kernel of truth to their worries, and they shouldn’t just be summarily dismissed. They should be rebutted where necessary by marshaling evidence, arguments, and that kind of thing.

Look at the comment section of any recent New York Times article and you will see the top-rated comments espousing such theories.

So it should go without saying that adherence to the “rigged” heuristic has never been exclusive to any one party or ideological disposition.

That said, look at what the Clinton media apparatus is doing now. They purported to be so concerned about norms just a month ago, but now their new strategy is to call for the total annihilation of norms. They want the Electoral College to essentially launch a hostile coup. They want electors to exercise a power never before exercised in the entire history of the United States. That would be the most basic definition of a “norm violation,” if there ever was one.

Leading lights of the DC “progressive” media apparatus such as Neera Tanden are now using their full propagandistic weight to agitate for this act. In a sense, I don’t hold this against them: in politics, you want to achieve your desired ends by whatever means possible. But just be honest about that instead of hand-waving about norms, as if you are oh-so-interested in preserving the integrity of US democratic institutions. You’re not: you just want your favorite candidate in power. Again, that’s not an unreasonable view, but it’s unreasonable to portray your desire as some kind of pure-hearted “institutionalism” when it’s the opposite.

Judd Legum, the “ThinkProgress” propagandist now agitating for an Electoral College coup, previously had this to say:

Can you spot the contradiction? Look very closely.