Member-only story
Republicans used to believe in democracy. When I was young, we learned the U.S. was a democracy. Our leaders talked about spreading democracy throughout the world. A government by the people, for the people etc.
Of course there was the electoral college but to my teachers that was a formality. After all the winner of the popular vote won the electoral college every election in the 20th century. (I went to high school in the 80's)
Now Republicans don’t talk about democracy. They stress how we are a ‘Representative Republic’ like Rome. And there is some truth to that. We pick our leaders by voting rather than voting directly on the issues. But again, when I was younger this was thought of just a technicality, a structure to implement democracy, not an anti-democratic ideal.
So what happened? Y2K happened. Not the computer crash that was supposed to end the world. But the inflection point where fossil fuels and global warming could be brought under control. Al Gore was running on an environmentalist platform, Bush was a creature of the fossil fuel political machine.
Not only did this result in a divergence of the popular vote and the electoral vote for the first time in over a hundred years, the Supreme Court made an unprecedented intervention in a state recount.
