David Gregory Does Not Understand The Constitution

David Gregory, formerly of NBC and now of CNN, was on the Brian Lehrer show this morning and the topic was the Electoral college vote today. Unfortunately, there is no audio or transcript of the segment up yet, so I am doing this mostly from memory. Specifically, the issue was whether the Electoral College voters should be encouraged to be faithless and vote their conscience. Gregory basically kept on harping that not enough Democratic voters came out and voted for Hillary Clinton in the states that mattered, In addition, the popular vote was meaningless because Trump would have run a different campaign if those had been the rules. Both are valid points but have nothing to do with answering the question. When callers pointed out the fact that it is clear there was foreign interference in the election, that Trump’s foreign business ventures are unknown, and that Trump is a demagogue, Gregory response is that was just a liberal point of view. Yes, he said, we need to investigate the foreign interference thoroughly but calling Trump a demagogue and a danger to our country is purely politics and will not invalidate the election. He frequently went to the same old trope, that liberals would be up in arms if the shoe were on the other foot. I think I can almost guarantee that Republicans would be pressing even harder to have the Electoral College step in and that there would be at least a significant number of Democrats who would also oppose an action by the Electoral College to overturn the results. In fact, even today, there are a significant number of Democrats who do not want to see the Electoral College intervene. Of course, Gregory sweeps all that under the rug with his blanket statement that liberals’ position would change if the situation was reversed. As noted, I have no transcript, but he never mentions that Republicans’ positions would also change. He specifically focused on, his term, “liberals”. He then went to say that, after the 2000 election, there was pressure to change the Electoral College but that momentum as never followed up on. He neglected to mention that Republicans have been the only ones who have benefited from the Electoral College and there might not be a great incentive for them to change that. Nor did he focus on the fact that the disconnect between the popular vote and the Electoral College winner has happened more frequently in the last 15 years than in the prior 200 and is likely to happen even more frequently in the future.

But the most disturbing part of the conversation was Gregory’s insistence, and I will use his words, that we should not “empower” the Electors to overturn the vote because that would be “undemocratic”. But, as callers pointed out to Gregory, the Electoral College is enshrined in the Constitution. Hamilton, in a letter to the People of New York State the he ably represented, described his support for the Electoral College, saying, “Nothing was to be more desired than that every practicable obstacle should be opposed to cabal, intrigue, and corruption. The most deadly adversaries of republican government might naturally have been expected to make their approaches for more than one quarter, but chiefly from the desire of foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils.” The Russian hacking and Trump’s business ties to Russia are probably the closest thing this country this has ever seen to exactly what Hamilton feared. Now, other supporters of enshrining the Electoral College had differing reasons for doing so but the fear that Hamilton expressed can not be discounted.

I am not in favor of the Electoral College overturning the result of this election and I’m sure it will not happen, although I would be happy to see a significant number of “faithless” Electors if only to send a signal that this election had serious problems. I am in favor of abolishing the Electoral College as it violates the principal of one person and one vote and, based on the continuing divide between urban and rural America, the likelihood of similar results in the years ahead are high and will further erode American’s faith in democracy. The Electoral College is enshrined in the Constitution, but it is totally undemocratic. So the fact that Gregory describes the idea that Electors fulfill their Constitutional duty as the framers wished as “undemocratic” without bothering to mention that the whole process itself is “undemocratic” is laughable, yet shocking. He is essentially telling us to ignore the Constitutional provisions that were given to the Electors in order to defend the Electoral College itself, a stance that makes no sense.

Gregory’s inability to face the fact that the Electoral College is totally undemocratic is bad enough. It seems that he also wants to deny the Electors’ right to fulfill their Constitutional role simply because that would highlight how undemocratic the system is. All the while, he continues to harp on the fact that “both sides would do it”. If this is what passes for media analysis even in the wake of this election, then our democracy is seriously under threat.