Pete Buttigieg Thinks Abolishing the Electoral College is a Path to Unity

Pete Buttigieg did an interview at the University of Chicago Institute of Politics with David Axelrod, and it’s. . . sort of a mixed bag. They spent a fair amount of time talking about the institutions in place to facilitate elections in the US, and Pete had two main points.

Point 1: Gerrymandering is bad and needs to go away.

Point 2: The electoral college is bad and needs to go away.

Bonus Point: Climate change is sexy.

Okay fine, the bonus point is taken wildly out of context. What he actually said was, “The process stuff is never sexy, but that’s got to be done right alongside dealing with climate, and wages, and racial inequity, and healthcare if we want to advance as a country in our lifetime.” But, in a way, he DID suggest that climate change is sexy and if you take nothing else from this article, I hope you remember that.

Back to the actual meat of the story. I give Pete 10/10 on his first point. Government should exist to protect the rights of the people, and laws should, by and large, be there to limit the abilities of the government. Outlawing gerrymandering would do exactly that. Or, to hear it from Buttigieg,

“I think that Trump’s arrival largely reflects a sense of frustration about those structures. For example, in his campaign he said the elections are rigged. Now in one sense that was a lie because he was saying that it was undocumented immigrants by the busload showing up at precincts … But in another sense, if the outcome of a congressional race is effectively predetermined by gerrymandering, then in a certain very transparent, naked, and real way that’s true.”

Of course, gerrymandering is Trump’s fault, which is sort of how this all starts to fall apart (insofar as it was ever together, which in Buttigieg’s case is never). Pete also said,

“I think the work that has to go on right away is to make sure our institutions actually reflect us. Not that we have majority popular rule on every decision, but there should at least be some resemblance between the decisions that are being made and what the American people want.”

That’s the thing. There IS a resemblance between decisions being made and what the people want. The only reason Buttigieg and other Democrats feel like there’s not is because what the people want isn’t what they want. And that’s Donald Trump’s fault, apparently.

“So the things that he was saying that weren’t true often rhymed with something that was true and tapped into this more general desire, I think, to burn the house down, Which is why all of the racism, and the misogyny, and the xenophobia in his campaign found such fertile ground.”

Just say “basket of deplorables” next time, Mayor Pete. That’s what you’re getting at, isn’t it?

As for this whole “burning the house down” rhetoric, let’s think really hard about who this really applies to. The side that elected a leader through Constitutional practices and is happy to uphold said practices, even if it means they might not remain victorious? Or the side that wants to abolish and rip out those very same Constitutional practices because boo hoo, they didn’t get their way?