I don't mean to provoke you.
Matter of fact I am trying to thank you.
For your occasional outbreak of rationality
Which I have monitored for some time.
So I know you.
About me: a sample thought below.

On The Machinery of Democracy.

Background: The People's Party was a farmer's party active in the Midwest in
the last two decades of the 19th century.  They decried the trend towards
"plutocracy" (government by the rich), and advanced a platform of reforms
designed to ensure the voice of the people would be heard in Washington.
Reforms included primary elections for party nominations of president, the
direct election of senators and the direct election of the president. Below,
Hicks, an historian writing in the 30s, comments:

The direct election of the president and vice president was a reform hard to
reconcile with state control of election machinery and state definition of
the right to vote.  Hence this reform never made headway; but the danger of
one presidential candidate receiving a majority of the popular vote and
another the majority of the electoral vote, as was the case in the
Cleveland-Harrison contest of 1888, seems definitely to have passed.  Recent
elections may not prove that the popular voice always speaks intelligently,
but they do seem to show that it speaks decisively.

>From John D Hicks, 1931, The Populist Revolt, A History of the Farmers
Alliance and the People's Party.


Comment:  Wow!  What a little jewel from the past!  Why would Hick's
discount the possibility of another Cleveland-Harrison result (CHR)?  He
clearly identifies it as a danger, a value judgement triggered by populist
concern that the machinery of democracy, election results, might not reflect
the voice of the people.  Liberals since the Clinton-Bush election will
snort derisively: See the plutocrats you have yoked us with!  Do you imagine
Bush's preference for baiting dessert snakes is mandated by the majority of
people?

f



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