And then I wrote...

by Dick Schilling, "Editor Emeritus"

... that as I sat down to write this around noon on the last Monday of April, I could hear on TV the sounds of a Donald Trump rally taking place in Rhode Island. I could not see the TV screen, but what I heard would seem to only reinforce what I intended to write about. It sounded as if he had to stop several times while protesters were removed. And during those pauses his fans engaged in choreographed chants of support.

In other words, a real mob scene.

This morning, I read an op ed piece urging getting rid of the Electoral College.

Trump is upset because while he is winning the popular vote state-by-state, his opponents are “picking off” delegate support at a level greater than their popular vote draw. Trump’s cry is that this is not the democratic way to do things, and this is supposed to be a democracy.

Except it isn’t.

It’s supposed to be a republic. What’s the difference? In a democracy, a vote for a candidate or a cause counts directly and equally for or against the candidate or cause.

The Founding Fathers, well aware of the differences in education among the new citizens and of the tendency of the less educated to be easily overcome by the moment, decided it would lead to “mobacracy.” So they decided to have the general electorate elect educated and well informed individuals to represent their interests. A republic, in other words. Thus the Senate and House came into existence.

Most of the time, that hasn’t made a difference.

But just as in 2000 and the Bush-Gore race, when the Electoral College came into play, many voters wondered where that system came from, not aware it has always been there.

Same thing is happening this year. Trump, and on the Democrat side Sanders, have rallied voters to their causes in great numbers, and for many of those voters, this is their first adventure into politics. For some, such as many Sanders supporters, it’s because they have just come of voting age, and they have been schooled in the secular humanistic mantra that “the federal government is my shepherd, I shall not want.” For many Trump supporters, they are just “mad as hell and aren’t going to take it anymore,” whatever “it” is in their individual case.

Those voters are upset when they learn that in many cases, their primary and caucus votes are instead going to a convention delegate, not the candidate himself, and those delegates actually will do the nominating. It has “always” been that way, it’s just that most years, it hasn’t mattered, because there have been coronations and not conventions.

And as with the Electoral College, they are surprised to learn the rules the politically educated have always known exist.