Hillary Clinton is still struggling to accept the results of the 2016 election. In an interview for Netflix’s “The American Experiment” docuseries that releases June 24, Clinton calls the Electoral College “an abomination for obvious reasons,” Variety reports.
The “obvious reason” is that it didn’t work in her favor. Clinton handily lost the Electoral College in 2016, receiving just 227 votes compared to President Donald Trump’s 304. Clinton won the popular vote by 2.9 million votes, although only thanks to California and New York, states well-documented as maintaining inaccurate voter rolls and sloppy elections.
Ever since, Clinton has struggled to accept the results of the 2016 election and keeps blaming everything but herself. Speaking to CNN in 2017 Clinton said the Electoral College “needs to be eliminated” and, “In a democracy, we should respect the will of the people and to me, that means it’s time to do away with the Electoral College and move to the popular election of our president.”
In one case, Clinton told The New York Times podcast that she was “the candidate that they basically stole an election from.” She’s also repeatedly blamed foreign interference for her loss — another unsubstantiated claim.
If Clinton and her party succeed in “abolishing” or “eliminating” the Electoral College, then winning California and New York would be all that’s necessary to become president of the entire country. That, of course, would fundamentally change the country.
The Electoral College the American founders designed requires more than just regional density to win the presidency. It requires a geographical balance that forces candidates to take into account varying interests, economies, and industries of all states rather than just coastal or population-dense states such California and New York.
The docuseries also trotted out Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., to claim that the “founders themselves were not in love with the Electoral College,” because “a minority of the population, because of the structure of the Electoral College — in some cases, over the objections of the majority — is ruling the majority.” That’s exactly backwards.
The precise purpose of the Electoral College is to avoid a scenario in which the majority gets to overrule the minority. The Electoral College was designed to prevent the “tyranny of the majority,” as James Madison warned. Alexander Hamilton defended the Electoral College in Federalist 68, arguing its process is a safeguard against “cabal, intrigue, and corruption.”
Madison warned in Federalist No. 10 that under a “popular government,” a majority faction could “sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest both the public good and the rights of other citizens.” As The Federalist’s Shawn Fleetwood pointed out in these pages, the founders would likely have declined to ratify the Constitution without “such protections for smaller states.”
But Clinton doesn’t care about the Constitution or its framers’ historically grounded concerns for majorities stampeding the rights of minorities. Ten years later, she is still unable to accept the results of the 2016 election precisely because she cares more about herself than she does this country.
