The Chris Moeller Archives

Winner-take-some

Like the gubernatorial recall election of 2003, another shameless power grab by California Republicans may be leading to an unintended outbreak of progressive democracy in America. GOP legislators in the Golden State are proposing a statewide ballot initiative for later this year that would split the state's 55 electoral college votes, the largest of such in the nation, among the 53 congressional districts. (Two extra to the winner.) In other words, "winner-take-all" would be replaced with 53 separate races, and Republicans could conceivably make off with at least 20 of this so-called "blue state's" electoral votes, the electoral equivalent of winning Ohio. Two other states, Maine and Nebraska, already allocate electoral votes according to congressional district.

Democrats, naturally, are crying foul, in their grand tradition of blaming others for their own failure in wooing voters. Dem consultant Chris Lehane, who worked in the Clinton White House and for the Gore 2000 presidential campaign, called the plan "an effort to rig the system in order to fix the election." And Lehane knows from system rigging. He called Ralph Nader's entry into the 2004 presidential election "another vainglorious effort to promote himself at the expense of the best interests of the country," as his party sued in state after state to keep Nader's name off the ballot, and in 2000, helped to establish the private debate commission, in cahoots with Republicans, that kept the independent candidate Nader, not only from participation in the nationally-televised debates, but out of the debate hall altogether.

The logical eventuality of splintered vote allocation is the collapse of the Electoral College, the principal protection of the Republi-crats concentration of power. What Lehane and Democrats fear most in California, but won't 'fess to publicly, for fear of sowing further dissent, is not the 20-something electoral votes potentially lost to Republicans, but the five or more they might lose to an energized Green Party from the left. Less than a month after citizen hero Cindy Sheehan threatened a congressional challenge to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in her home district in San Francisco, don't bet that Democrats aren't feeling the heat from a neglected constituency, even as they continue to claim abuse from the executive branch of government, while simultaneously ignoring the firm Constitutional options at their disposal; and still they sell out the people at almost every turn.

Two weeks ago, the Greens met at a national forum in Reading, Pennsylvania, and may have discovered their candidate for 2008-- former U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney of Georgia. (Warning: Sound link.) McKinney was shunned by corporate Democrats in her state's primary election in 2006, but would figure to pull a lot of support from the symbolically-popular campaigns of both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in '08, and with political courage to boot. A McKinney/Nader Green ticket in '08?

posted by CM @ 8:56 PM