This is an adapted excerpt from the Sept. 17 episode of “All In with Chris Hayes.”
We’re in the final stretch of the presidential campaign and everyone is obsessing over swing state polling. The reason behind the obsession with just seven or eight states is that we do not elect our presidents by popular vote in this country.
Instead, we have a frankly undemocratic system: the Electoral College. It’s the reality of how American elections have worked for more than 230 years. Our citizens, our parties and our candidates have to work within these constraints.
The Electoral College is a perverse system, a jerry-rigged compromise between slave states and small states and everyone else.
There’s also another key truth that defines this election: One of the two candidates has shown us — and told us — that he will not commit to a peaceful transfer of power.
In other words, the Harris-Walz campaign is running uphill. The only thing that Kamala Harris and Democrats and the pro-democracy popular front can do is organize, mobilize and persuade voters. If they win, they can and should strongly defend their victory in court and, if they lose, they must peacefully transfer power. Those are the only options on the table.
However, we also should not ignore how nuts all this truly is. The Electoral College is a perverse system, a jerry-rigged compromise between slave states and small states and everyone else. It results in a world in which we often end up with what is essentially minority rule.
Just look at the results over the last 30 years. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall we have had eight presidential elections, the Democratic candidate won the popular vote every time except one — when George W. Bush was re–elected in 2004. But of course, Republicans have won the presidency more than once in that time period. Thanks to the Electoral College, they got three terms in office, 2000, 2004 and 2016. Not to mention a super majority on the Supreme Court.
To put it another way, in 30 years the Republican Party was able to build a national majority only once. But they held the highest office in the land for 12 years. That is a pretty sweet deal.
In 2016, nearly 3 million more Americans voted for Hillary Clinton than Donald Trump. But thanks to the Electoral College, he still made it to the Oval Office. Clearly, the Electoral College puts an incredible weight on one side.
Depending on how it all shakes out this year, Harris will likely have to win 4 or 5 million more votes than Trump to actually secure victory. Even if she is able to mobilize that big of a majority, win the right swing states and secure 270 electoral votes, Harris will then have to deal with what will undoubtedly be a full-scale MAGA Republican effort to overthrow the election.
Trump will rerun his playbook from 2020. He will use the courts, manipulate state lawmakers and manipulate members of Congress. He will target election workers. He will rile up his supporters and likely urge them in his own coded-not-so-coded way to violence.
In fact, he is already doing it right now. In an interview with a right-wing conspiracy theorist on Tuesday, Trump told his supporters not to trust the outcome of the election:
“I don’t trust the system at all. They are horrible, horrible cheaters. They were in the last election. Probably they were in 2016, but they didn’t cheat enough, you know.” Trump followed that up with a social media post vowing, “WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences.” He specifically targeted “Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters, & Corrupt Election Officials” and promised that “Those involved in unscrupulous behavior will be sought out, caught, and prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our Country.” Despite these rising threats, with less than 50 days left before the election, Trump is still spreading menace and fear. Trump’s post came just one day after election officials in several states received threatening letters containing suspicious substances. NBC News reports that “Secretaries of state, attorney general offices and state election offices in Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, Tennessee, Wyoming and Oklahoma were targeted” with packages that contained a white powder and “The return address identified the sender as the ‘USTEA — US Traitor Elimination Army.’” Thankfully, there were no reports of injuries as “the substances appeared to be nonharmful after testing.” But the envelopes did force several of the offices to evacuate. The FBI is now investigating and working with the Postal Inspection Service “to intercept any additional letters before they are delivered.” The office of the Secretary of State of Colorado received a similar package containing white powder on Wednesday. That’s under investigation by the FBI, Postal Inspection Service and Colorado State Patrol. Despite these rising threats, with less than 50 days left before the election, Trump is still spreading menace and fear. He’s making sure his supporters believe that the only way the election will be fair is if he wins. If you were looking at this set of facts in another country, you would rightly think that this democracy was under threat. But the only way to preserve democracy is through democratic means. This November, Americans must join together with our fellow citizens and build a majority big enough to win this campaign. It’s the only hope to preserve our democratic birthright.
Chris Hayes hosts “All In with Chris Hayes” at 8 p.m. ET Tuesday through Friday on MS NOW. He is the editor-at-large at The Nation. A former fellow at Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics, Hayes was a Bernard Schwartz Fellow at the New America Foundation. His latest book is “The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource” (Penguin Press).
Allison Detzel is an editor/producer for MS NOW.
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