WaPo:
If your response to this is that it’s crazy and offensive, that all American adults are equal and so is their vote, you might want to familiarize yourself with the U.S. Senate, where a Wyoming resident’s vote is worth almost 70 times as much as a Californian’s, or the electoral college, where the presidency could be won by a candidate who loses the popular vote 4:1.
All of which is to say, we already reweight voting in this country. But we do it to give residents from small states more power. Does that really make more sense than reweighting by age, education, race, income or some other demographic characteristic?
Update, 3:15 p.m.: Some people seem to think I’m advocating reweighting votes by age. I’m not. I’m pointing out that weighting votes by state, which is what we currently do, doesn’t make any more sense. It was an important political compromise that helped coax concerned states into the union, but a lot of time has passed since then, and now it’s an anachronism that unwisely gives a resident of Montana a more powerful vote than a resident of Michigan. I’m for unweighting votes entirely, and anyone who feels themselves getting angry at the idea of tilting democracy toward the young or the college-educated other group should ask themselves whether they aren’t, also.
[my emphasis]
Yes, Ezra. A lot of time has passed — something like, over a hundred years, even! — but what you call “an anachronism” the founders and framers (some of whom were maybe even as smart as you, and perhaps a handful of whom put almost as much cogitation into how to form a nation around the idea of individual liberty and protecting natural rights as you yourself have in between Georgetown pomegranate martinis and self-congratulatory tugs on your rhetorical junk), thought was a good idea, a way to protect individual states from an overreaching central authority, which they correctly feared would eat away at our freedoms. That idea was weakened, of course, when the Constitution was amended to move the Senate elections to a popular vote — and I suspect your end game here is to posit an extension of that initial populist mistake by laying the ground work for an argument for the abolition of the Electoral College, creating a “truer” form of democracy, and a country run by the voters in urban centers, where the federal government can provide the most concentrated largess in exchange for votes.
Me, I say rather than treat as some sort of outmoded nonsense standing in the way of a benevolent central government’s longing to move us toward a progressive Utopia the bicameral idea used to forge a compromise between the federalists and anti-federalists, we cease pretending, in the courts and elsewhere, that the Ninth and Tenth Amendments don’t exist, and that they don’t exist precisely to protect the states from a voracious central authority, as well as minorities from the whims of the majority.
That is, to protect non-leftists from the statists and their apparatchiks like you, Ezra.
In other words, rather than double down on an idea that leads us away from individual liberty and toward an all-powerful central government that seeks to regulate and control our every move out of a couple of marble-adorned buildings in DC, we revisit the 17th Amendment and move to repeal it. Such an idea is equally as valid as one in which, as you favor, we do away with the Senate itself — because that is in effect what a “unweighing” vote requires — in the process, doing away with state sovereignty, as well.
And then we can all live in a paradise where Barack Obama can, in fact, tell governors like Scott Walker, for instance, how he must run that particular one of Obama’s 57 states. JOY!
Or, here’s David Harsanyi’s idea, which may be even more practical than my own, and one that I can get behind, if we concede that a sort of intellectual poll tax is out of the question:
Klein might want to re-read the Federalist Papers, but nevertheless, it’s an interesting thought to ponder. How about this one: Since he’s so concerned with the consequences of political decisions, why not give proportional weight to the votes of the productive and unproductive. The more you pay in taxes the more your vote counts. This way those who vote to increase the size of government but contribute little to keeping that government afloat can sit on the sidelines? You know, just a thought.
Skin in the game, baby.
Where’s the shared sacrifice?
That Ezra sure is precious when he tries to argue with the grown-ups, isn’t he?
Mr Harsanyi seems to be jumping to a conclusion for which I see no supporting evidence.
C’mon, Pablo. Those “Federalist Papers” of which you speak are at least a hundred years old or something. They didn’t even have email back then! It’s impossible to understand those powdered-wigged knickerbocker-wearin’ fogies anyway, so why even try?
I think Pablo meant that it’s unlikely Klein ever read the Federalist Papers even once.
Does Ezra Klein have nudie pictures of someone high up at the WaPo? That’s the only reason I can imagine they’d continue to employ a political columnist with a 9th grade understanding of politics (apologies to all insulted 9th graders).
Juice Box Mafia, indeed.
I’d like to give Ezra Klein’s vote the same weight I give his opinion.
Federalist papers? Like Zig-Zags?
-Ezra Klein’s left pinky toenail, which apparently has more historical sensibility than the rest of Ezra.
If someone would enlighten me? I’ve heard the 17th amendment criticized before, but never an explanation for the criticism.
How exactly did putting up senators to state wide election change things?
Better yet, why don’t we just throw the whole constitution in the trash? What the fuck do we need it for, anyway? It’s just stupid really, when we have a President who “took a step down” to become POTUS. He is the smartest man in the history of the world, rivaled only by Mao, Pol Pot, Stalin, and, of course, Yassar Arafat.
The Nazis aren’t coming, they’re already here. Sometimes I miss the USSR. At least then we had something concrete to point to when these asshats started spewing their ignorant vomit.
It’s hard to believe that any supposedly educated facsist (like Ezra Klein) is so absolutely unaware of history, and just BEGGING to repeat it.
As the question was asked about Obama: “Is it willing stupidity, or arrogance?”
Both, as far as I can tell. One has to look back only a little more than 25 years to see the undeniable and miserable end result of these moron’s ravings.
They were no longer beholden to the interests of the states, as seen by those with the state’s best interests in mind. Senators were to be a complement to the House.
Imagine California today if it wasn’t beholden to the big urban centers whose voters Klein wants to empower further.
LBascom:
As originally set up:
The House of Representatives is for the people’s direct representatives via direct election. They are a citizen’s voice in national gov’t.
The Senate is for states to send their direct representatives as appointed by the state gov;t. They are the state’s voice in national gov’t.
By putting Senators up for popular vote rather than direct appointment, the voice of the States in national gov’t was severely reduced, if not eliminated. It’s now essentially a smaller, unbalanced House of Representatives.
In a very small, poorly shaped nutshell.
Stolen: “rhetorical junk”. I’m going to hang onto it (so to speak) until things cool down and I can fence it, so to speak.
Lee
Let’s look at CA again … you hardly ever see Feinstein or Boxer making appearances outside of either Frisco or El-Lay. Why the fuck should they care about the rural and semi-rural areas except for demonizing them to pander to the citified Greenies.
Neither one really cares about California’s interests.
MadamSenator Boxer has better things to do.Indeed. It’s hard out here on a boy genius. Brother, can you spare a juice box?
Imbedded in Klein’s blather, one can clearly see the results of our failed public education system and the reduction of much of what passes for academia these days to institutions of indoctrination.
A charitable opinion would be that his views are completely shaped by his own, and his teachers, experiences in the post-New Deal-monstrosity that America has become, one where the federal government’s overreach, aided and abetted by perversions of the commerce clause and an activist judiciary, has far exceeded what our founders envisioned it to be. All reinforced by selective instruction in, and interpretations of, American history.
But I’m not in a charitable mood…
What he believes that he so cagily masks in his “edgy” thought experiment in simply the unabashed will to power of the progressive left; the “by any means necessary” approach. They’ve bought and paid for the votes of most of the large urban centers in this country, where people have by and large chosen to trade their individual liberty for “their economic interests”. And now, as he not-so-clever-by-half reveals, they’d like to do away with all of those pesky rubes in flyover country that stubbornly cling to their guns and religion as well as the ideals of our founders, by essentially transforming the US into a collection of enlightened city-states, like in ancient Greece, with Obama as our benevolent tyrant.
He and his fellow travelers will keep singing this song, in the hopes that they can get enough of the low information voters to buy into their notion of “what democracy looks like!”; hoping to coopt enought righties, disgruntled by the fact that conservatives in Ca-for instance-have to suffer two liberal Senators-to put them over the top.
But just as with the “winner take all!” movement vis-a-vis the electoral college that has been adopted by some states, Klein and his ilk will only be calling for these kind of reforms until they don’t break in their favor; which I believe we’ll see examples of in 2012, by the way.
Then they too will suddenly become interested in the rights of the minority…
Thanks people.
Welcome back Darleen.
Ezra seems to be continually surprised by what he discovers in the course of writing his columns. Stuff that we learned in civic decades ago. His is a childlike mind in the body of a…well, you decide.
I recall a time when I was ridiculed by acquaintances on the left for not having been aware of who Grover Norquist was. Those same people are almost certainly giving Ezra a pass right now.
Some people would see the situation as an opportunity to reduce the power of the Federal government so that what they do matters less to the day to day lives of individuals. Ezra thinks it better to not only increase the reach of the Federal government, but to make sure that the people who get it (all of whom live in large cities, like he does) have a larger say in who gets elected president.
Dweeb.
So who is Grover Norquist? Because I don’t feel like Binging :-P
Welcome back Darleen.
Thanks, Lee. My body clock is outta whack, but the surge of adrenaline I’m getting by catching up on the stupidity of the last week or so while I was gone (and, omg, why does the precious Ezra get paid for such dreck?) will probably snap me back.
Another question. What was the justification for the 17th? I mean, to amend the constitution, there must have been a pretty strong catalyst.
Yeah, I’m too lazy to research this myself.
Great idea (sarcasm high). Go pass a constitutional amendment to implement it.
This is the reason why we have an amendment process, to glean out crap like this. But if you allow a Supreme Court 5-4 majority to revise anything, well then the Erza Klein question starts getting a lot more scary.
Populist era.
Yep. The Woodrow Wilson era. Progressives.
Welcome back Darleen, catching you up just in case
Senator Boxer has better things to do.
Like endorsing General Dynamics (Motto: Happy to comply with any Executive Orders, Mr. President) proposal to name a U.S. navy warship for that great nautical hero, Cesar Chavez.
” Populist era.
Yep. The Woodrow Wilson era. Progressives.”
Umm, enough said. Thanks again.
So, it seems the progressive strategy includes moving from a representative republic to a pure democracy.
Preserving the electoral college then requires a strong defense of states rights, as with most battles against proggs.
Obvious, but I thought I’d throw it out there.
Which…
Collapse the system? Where have we heard that before?
It takes an awful lot of education to be able to deny the reality of what is right in front of you. Young Mr. Klein’s heart has preempted the question of “Who are you going to believe, me or your lyin’ eyes?”
A little OT, but I think this might be Ezra’s daughter. Hope the link works.
http://whitewhine.com/post/4391013523/a-classic-white-whine-from-the-rich-bitching-hall#disqus_thread
The comments on Klein’s drivel give me hope. Almost every comment took Ezra to task and more than a few tried to enlighten Klein about the purpose behind the Electoral College.
People like Klein love to scream about racial minorities being disenfranchised of their voting rights. However, the Kleins of the world have no problem with the disenfranchisement of middle America voting rights.
Go figure.
“…but a lot of time has passed since then, and now it’s an anachronism.”
Gosh, if only there was some way to fix that pesky old document. Maybe you could convince some rocket surgeon or brain scientist Democrat like Harry Reid to introduce something in Congress….a …whatdoyoucallit … Constitutional Ame______…something or other? I am sure the debate and vote on it would be of great educational value!
One thing about a Seventeenth repeal is, it would have to include language explicitly prohibiting popular election of Senators — even before the Seventeenth was proposed, a lot of states had already enacted a process effectively establishing popular election.
I’d also like to see language in it exempting the upper houses of state legislatures from “one man one vote.”
I hope WaPo has a taser they can use. This level of ignorance should be painful.
Zino3, it might be Ezra’s older sister.
RACIST!
Less kiddingly: not rights, but rather powers.
It’s impossible to understand those powdered-wigged knickerbocker-wearin’ fogies anyway
Trivia: I’m pretty sure that was the original, full name of New York’s basketball team.
“not rights, but rather powers”
Poh-tay-toh, poh-tah-toh? ;-)
Juice Box Mafia, indeed.
The Fredo Corleone of the Juice Box Mafia.
Now that’s pretty darn good; enough so to shamelessly repeat…
But would that make “Attackerman” the Sonny of the Juice Boxers? Is there even a Sonny among them?
Is there even a Sonny among them?
The Juice Box Mafia? Fredos and Tatallias, the lot of ’em. One or two aspiring Moe Greens maybe.
You would think that scheme would run afoul of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, not to mention the Civil Rights Act.
Klein apparently wants to plumb the full depth of stupidity.
eople like Klein love to scream about racial minorities being disenfranchised of their voting rights. However, the Kleins of the world have no problem with the disenfranchisement of middle America voting rights.
Go figure.
Duh, because the voting interests of the racial minorities will be taken care of by the left. You see? They are the protectors of minority interest.
It’s middle America that’s keeping them down. Once we can minimize the votes of flyover country it will be manna for everyone.
well here’s an example of senators not serving their state’s interests. rather they are free agents.
link
not sure what texas and minnesota have to do with the affairs of big media states like ny and ca.
Klein apparently wants to plumb the full depth of stupidity.
Yeah, and he’s showing his rhetorical buttcrack…
[…] us a little further along this time. A right-wing Visigoth and EXTREEEEMIST hatemongering racist roadblocks this particularly stupid one with the simple truth: Yes, Ezra. A lot of time has passed — something like, over a hundred […]