A Little Explainer, Electionwise

 

How these things work...

For those who don't know, American presidential elections work via a slavery-era compromise called the Electoral College. Each state automatically gets three electoral votes, and the rest are apportioned by population. As such, states with tiny populations have outsized influence relative to voter population. In 48 of the 50 states, all electoral votes go to the winner of the popular vote in that state -- in two of them, they're apportioned based on the vote. The winner is the one who gets the most electoral votes, and yes, a tie is theoretically possible, at which point another bunch of nonsense kicks in.

Here's the thing that screws us up -- Republican policies are generally unpopular. But because of the way the electoral college gives a proportionately outsized vote to smaller-population states, it is possible for them to win a majority of electoral votes without a popular majority.

Republicans have a simple enough coalition -- they depend on the votes of wealthy people who want tax breaks, and conservative religious people who want punitive social policies against women, and the LGBT+ community. It doesn't matter who the specific candidate is. A banana dipped in shit could win the electoral college, so long as it purportedly hated abortion, gays, and taxes. An aggressive military foreign policy used to be thought of as essential, but Trump surprisingly melted that one down.

Democrats have it tougher, needing to assemble a broad coalition of groups who don't agree on the same things. In broad strokes, a winning Democrat usually has to have supported at least some positive Civil Rights action, AND at least some punitive police policies. Just enough on each side to bridge the coalition of non-whites and scared working-class whites. It's also essential to be in favor of women's health care, including abortion, but not so absolutist on abortion that religious Catholics can't vote for you under any circumstances. It's a much more delicate dance.

When I hear people complain both that "Harris is a Leftist!" AND "Harris is a cop!" I think we may have that balance. It's as exciting to see first-time voters getting involved as it will be dismaying when they're inevitably disappointed that Harris isn't as amazingly great a president as they'd hoped (nobody ever is).

Harris abused her power as a prosecutor, in my opinion, on a number of cases I can think of. But she sure as hell beats the alternative.