MAGA Declares Support for Electoral College Reform
No, really! Just not in the way you would normally think
Have you heard the news? MAGA is apparently on board for a serious look at Electoral College reform!
They have been bothered by their inexplicable ability to achieve anything close to sustained power in this country due to the anachronistic presidential electoral rules set up by the Founders. The favoring of the minority over the will of the majority is already ingrained enough in our system through the Senate and States’ rights, they say. It’s too much that the presidency should be included within this philosophical arena.
Oh, sorry, I read that wrong, actually. They just want to get one more electoral vote to increase the chances of Donald Trump becoming president again. Well, at least it still counts as “Electoral College reform”, right?
In their latest expert-level attempt at their political version of a “pump and dump” stock scheme, MAGA has created another partisan bubble for themselves to be riled up and giddy about only to be eventually disappointed and enraged about. Which is kind of the point, I suppose.
On Tuesday, April 2, noted MAGA circus barker Charlie Kirk Xeeted out the following “Xeet heard ‘round the state of Nebraska”:
This apparently immediately poked and woke the bear known as Governor of Nebraska Jim Pillen, who endorsed the bill mentioned in Kirk’s Xeet within 6 hours:
This is a bill that was introduced last year and languished in committee, where it became a complete non-issue for this current legislative session….until it suddenly and conveniently became an issue again, and all due to the majesty of Charlie Kirk’s rhetoric and mobilization ability.
But, as rhetoric professor Matthew Boedy points out, this was a win-win for Kirk, even if the bill fails to pass, as is likely. Sad trombone!
However, Charlie Kirk doesn’t give up easily! His fans’ repeated calls and lobbying—completely respectfully, of course—of Nebraska legislators and governor paid off further by this shocking development:
NE Sen. McDonnell was a Democrat for 40 years. So his switch must mean big things, right? In fact, liberals could apparently see it too, as they started “panicking”:
“BOOM!” indeed.
But, as they also often say…..”Doh!” (cue sad trombone again):
And yet, there’s still life in this bill, as it is possible it could be taken up again in the form of an amendment to another bill in process. There are 5 days left in the Nebraska legislative session, so it can still be valiantly shoved through at the last minute, right? It must be shoved through, to save the Republic!
Double “Doh!” and louder and sadder trombone, from a conservative NE State Sen.:
Wow. I feel like I just watched the movie Whiplash on meth.
What did this futile endeavor accomplish?
This push to change the Nebraska law for electoral vote allocation was, on its face, designed to give Trump more chance to win the presidency, as Kirk’s first Xeet on the subject explains. Overall, not a bad idea or strategy, even if it is cynically brazen in its attempt at a political power grab.
But what’s also brazen is what can now happen as a result of this failure, and is baked into essentially every MAGA “strategy” to “win”. This will provide weeks-long fodder for MAGA cultists to ponder and theorize, or, to put it more bluntly, “conspiratorialize”1, about how the Deep State is out to get Trump and deny him his rightful allotment of electoral votes, which to them should be a unanimous amount.
Never mind that this is already deep red Nebraska, and the Deep State wouldn’t really reach to rural Nebraska if it existed in the first place. And never mind that this was a huge uphill battle, even if there was momentum in the state legislature to get this done. With 5 days left in the session and hundreds of bills in front of it, it was pretty much DOA.
But as Prof. Boedy mentioned, Kirk wins either way. He successfully moved the needle on…something, which will continue to aggrandize his influence. And he’ll have subject matter for his podcast with which to create another rage feedback loop among his listeners. Speaking of his listeners, he teed them up, and set them off, just like he planned. And now they are primed for “active measures”, however that may play out in the future.
MAGA’s strategy seems to continue to be no strategy
One of the major obstacles to further MAGA electoral influence is the sheer revulsion towards them among the population. You’d think at some point they would want to rectify that and try hard to attract more voters. But this Electoral College play in Nebraska verifies that they don’t have a strategy—or seem to even care about developing one—to win over more voters.
This effort would have garnered them one more Electoral College vote, which, to their credit, is a valuable return. But it would not have gained them one more voter among the electorate. In fact, it probably will turn off more voters and push people away from their movement for the very reasons I laid out earlier.
The sentiments behind this bill are obviously not tantamount to voters in Nebraska. Otherwise, the bill would have already had more momentum and gone further in the legislative process. Charlie Kirk coming in and pushing his followers to contact the NE legislators and governor, even though most of them probably don’t actually live in Nebraska, is not going to suddenly endear them to these sentiments.
Kirk and his like are going to have to realize that hyping up a few hundred people via Xitter2 for a few days does not equal a grass-roots movement. Sure, it’s kind of cool to be able to move a state governor to action via manipulating one’s followers, but it’s not furthering anything but resentment among the general populace.
Is Charlie Kirk’s philosophy about state electoral votes absolute?
I would love the opportunity to ask Charlie Kirk if his efforts in Nebraska are due to a conviction that all states, not just Nebraska, should have their electoral votes be winner-take-all in favor of the overall winner in the state. If so, then Maine is probably next on his list of states to convert. Actually, it’s the only other state on his list, as only two states allocate their electoral votes this way.
Maine is the mirror image of Nebraska, as it is typically won by Democrats (a Republican last won in 1988), and occasionally allocates one of its electoral votes—originating from the more rural area of the state—to the Republican candidate. Actually, it has only split its electoral votes twice, and both times were for Trump, in 2016 and 2020. That doesn’t seem fair, does it? I mean, talk about a weird outlier that should be corrected. If any state is in need of reform away from this system, it sure seems like it’s Maine.
So I'll be looking forward to Kirk’s upcoming podcast where he rails on the unfairness of the split-electoral vote system in Maine and lobbies his followers to call on Maine’s legislators and governor to change this radical system. I’m sure it will happen, since it’s simply the right thing to do.
© 2024, Thinker at the Gates, Inc.
© 2024, Thinker at the Gates, Inc.
Kirk only speaks to the already converted which isn’t much of a strategy. He may have gained more notoriety but that doesn’t necessarily translate into more votes.
Why don’t they just start a hue and cry to abolish the electoral college and simply vote, showing the country who their favorite candidate is? Majority takes all.
In all 50 states, of course.
That could be fun. 😃