The American people chose the right candidates twice, by increasing margins

(The pro-American alternative. Photo source here.)

I suppose you could even say the people chose right three times if you skip to the 2000 election. In the two modern splits between between the Electoral College and the American public, the public chose twice, and in this last election were the Electoral College could've gone the wrong way if less than 100,000 votes shifted, the public was even more right.

Hillary Clinton won the November 2016 election by 2% and three million votes. As of today, Biden's ahead by five million votes, a 3.5% margin over Trump, and that's going to increase to between 4% and 5% as late votes from California and New York finally get counted. An incumbent president also has an edge when running for re-election probably worth about 2-4%, so that also got beat.

I don't expect democracy to get it right all the time, and I have personal experience to verify that, but the flaws in our democratic republic that resulted in terrible presidents have come from not being a sufficiently democratic republic. When idiots like Mike Lee say we're a republic, not a democracy, and pretends he's saying something meaningful, it's an excuse for why the majority shouldn't get to choose the candidate they elected, while saying nothing about what constitutes a meaningful republic. The hoaxsters are full of garbage about vote fraud costing the election, but even so, almost none of them claim the hoax was 6+ million voters or more. It's as if they don't care about that.

What I find interesting about all this is the many Republicans who profess their great love for America while not being very interested in having Americans, not the Electoral College, choose the leaders of the Republic. There is a conflict between waving that American flag and talking up your belief in American exceptionalism while not thinking the people who you profess to love so much should make the decision about leadership.

There are of course areas of policy where minorities should have their rights protected against majorities, and it's self-evident that selection of elected leaders are the least-appropriate category for that, especially for the head of government. Yes, there are borderline arguments for reserving a percentage of parliamentary seats in countries for women and minorities, and that's not what we're talking about. There are also situations where the plurality winner in multi-candidate elections may not best reflect the popular will, which also isn't what we're talking about here.

What we have instead is a system that is fundamentally disrespectful of the American people's will, fundamentally supported by people claiming to be patriotic supporters of those Americans. And they probably never even thought it through.

This year, fortunately, the Electoral College will reflect what a democratic republic would do. And we have the great news of Colorado joining the National Popular Vote Compact to get a step closer to neutralizing the Electoral College. Until we fix it, the right side just has to keep winning by comfortable margins.

UPDATE: The Washington Post agrees on abolishing the Electoral College.