White Supremacy as a Political Doctrine
Currently, Hillary Clinton leads POTUS-delictum Donald J. Trump by 1,677,000 votes. As we know, though, Trump has an overwhelming electoral college advantage. The original intent of the electoral college, according to Hamilton — the politician, not the Broadway musical — was to thwart the possibility of interference by a foreign power in choosing the chief executive.
Nothing was more to be desired than that every practicable obstacle should be opposed to cabal, intrigue, and corruption. These most deadly adversaries of republican government might naturally have been expected to make their approaches from more than one quarter, but chiefly from the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils. How could they better gratify this, than by raising a creature of their own to the chief magistracy of the Union? But the convention have guarded against all danger of this sort, with the most provident and judicious attention.
According to NSA Director, Admiral Michael Rogers, that is exactly what happened this time around, “There shouldn’t be any doubt in anybody’s mind,” Rogers said. “This was not something that was done casually. This was not something that was done by chance. This was not a target that was selected purely arbitrarily. This was a conscious effort by a nation-state to attempt to achieve a specific effect.” Fortunately, the electoral college was there to spare us from the election of that foreign power’s creature (sarcasm).
Be that as it may, I would like to distinguish between the original design and intent of the electoral college and the strategic preservation and capture of that admittedly flawed institution by proponents of white supremacy. It was no accident that attempts to amend the constitution to abolish the electoral college system were abortive. An important part of the story behind the white supremacist abuse of the electoral college has been outlined in Joseph Lowndes’s From the New Deal to the New Right and the Southern Origins of Modern Conservatism and in a 1996 Yale Law Journal article by Matthew Hoffman, “The Illegitimate President: Minority Vote Dilution and the Electoral College.”
As teasers, I am presenting, below, an excerpt from chapter two of Lowndes’s book –“‘White Supremacy is a Political Doctrine’: Charles Wallace Collins and the Dixiecrat revolt of 1948” — and a section from Hoffman’s article — “Race, Presidential Politics and the Winner-Take-All Rule” — in a subsequent series of separate posts. White supremacist manipulation of the electoral college was intimately related to efforts to dismantle the collective bargaining framework established by the FDR New Deal. I hope to write on that issue later, after I have obtained more of the formative documents and analysis. But first, an excerpt from the chapter,”White Supremacy is a Political Doctrine”:
On November 8, 1944, one day after Franklin Roosevelt was elected to his fourth presidential term [and 72 years, to the day, before the election of Donald J. Trump], southern attorney Charles Wallace Collins retired from his legal practice to write a book that would, he states, “rationalize and strengthen the position of the orthodox Southerner and . . . arouse him to action in the face of organized hostility to Southern States.” Finally published in 1947, Collins’s book Whither Solid South? A Study in Politics and Race Relations became both manifesto and blueprint for the states’ rights—soon nicknamed the “Dixiecrat”— Revolt. Although Collins’s intellectual guidance is generally acknowledged in accounts of the Dixiecrats, there have been no sustained analyses of his ideas, nor examinations of the political substance of his influence.
Collins’s writings and political biography offer an essential perspective for understanding the origins and development not only of the states’ rights movement but also of the role of race in the evolution of the modern Right. Collins’s writings demonstrate how southern elites began to link racism and free market conservatism in theory, and began the first steps to break with the Democratic political order in practice. This process of forging new political identifications and severing old ones involved ideas, long- term strategies, and improvised tactics. Viewing the complex matrix of theory, strategy, and implementation of the Dixiecrat Revolt and its aftermath in massive resistance through one of its central figures, we see that there was nothing automatic or natural about the political changes that came to pass in the 1960s. …
Race, Presidential Politics, and the Winner-Take-All Rule (links)
Hmm. Sounds like constitutional originalists have reason to think the Electoral College should elect Clinton rather than Trump.
Go, constitutional originalists!
Well, no. Only when it suits THEM.
I take it that you DIDN’T believe Justice Scalia?
Given the overall framework of the constitution as written at the time, I think there’s strong reason to think that the framers would have written a document that would have enforced rich white male hegemony.
The Hamilton quote from the Federalist papers is as misleading as any other propaganda. I favor Hamilton for what he did ..but his publications in every form were propaganda to push things in the direction of a much stronger central gov’t (during the Revolutionary war) and to enact one after that war and the constitutional convention had been submitted to the States for ratification.
The primary reason d’etre for the Electoral Collage was insurance against there being any chance of electing a caudate that didn’t have the best interests of the leading and controlling economic class of the times. The southern aristocracy states could not and would not tolerate there being a northern President who was opposed to the gift of slavery and the northern wealth class could allow it to be restricted.
The Constitutional Convention was held in utmost secrecy so that it was only Hamilton and Madison who wrote later in the Federalists papers as a means persuading reluctant state legislators, governors, and other conservative elements to support the proposed constition.
Don’t forget that it was the same delegates that insisted the Senate be appointed by State legislators… oh, and btw, the delegates were sent by their state controllers (governors and legislators) to insure the other delegates interests didn’t override their own in argument and persuasions..
You can read the Federalist papers as one set of propaganda bent on persuading to adopt the proposed Constitution or as a history of what occurred during the Constitutional convention —but the latter is unknown so if you believe this version you’re in denial of reality.
Hamilton was using Publius to persuade and neither he nor Madison could very well succeed n getting the public to support it also if they told it like it was and whose primary interests it served.
Recall that times were desperate… war and usurpation questions between larger and smaller states or just adjacent states; ; foreign powers taking parts of or making deals with some states at the expense of others without there being an adequate “common” defense. These things were prevalent and real issues of the times and the inadequacies of the Articles of Confederation were already evident … the hope by most was just to patch the Articles up a bit to cover some of the major problems with it … like no funding for defense and no means to enforce.
The constitutional convention was in fact a political coup d’état.. it abandoned it’s own basis of government without so much as a shred of law or historical case or English law to back abandoning it… lock, stock, and barrel. The delegates of the convention were not trying to establish a full blown popular democracy … they were trying to create a gov’t system that might endure a bit longer than the Articles of Confederation and overcome it’s shortcomings in the process..
And then as now there were two sides of the issue — strong or weak federal power. Hamilton was a federalist.. among if not the most ardent proponents of a strong federal gov’t and federalism. His Publius nom-du-pen Federalist paper’s as NYC opinion pieces in the newspapers were arguments to persuade and cajole and get people to not oppose the proposed new fangled experiment in progress. Both he and Madison at that time were on the same page.. it wasn’t until much later that Madison broke with the strong federalist position he’d taken during the convention and after during the ratification process.– better to abandon the Articles of Confederation and the sooner the better and worry about the effects of its replacement later.
Addendum:
The problem and issues you’re all trying to deal with isn’t with Trump at all or what he represents is may or may not do .. it’s with the terms and conditions inscribed into a seriously flawed basis of our governing — the Constitution and the fact that the nature of the beast is to support and defend maintenance of an antiquated colonial independent and sovereign nations into a shared power structure with a gov’t over the states own powers and independence.
The Electoral College is simply a necessary manifestation of maintaining State sovereignty to the extent possible. You are assuming, wrongly I might add, that these now individual states must use their electors to follow the will of the popular majority in their states. This can be changed on a dime by any State at any time to insure their own State interests are used to influence the outcome of the Electoral Collage’s votes for the President.
If you want a popular democracy then you cannot want State autonomy at the same time. If you want a popular democracy you cannot also want State defined legislative districts. If you want a popular democracy then you cannot have state governors and legislators that have enforceable boundaries and significant powers to tax and maintain State militias (National Guard is the term used now)..
You can have “states” as indicators of geographic and demographic shifts but not as having any power to effect a national system… you can have geographic regions which vote for a representative… not of their state, but of their region independent of a “state” being anything more than a region. If you want ‘states” then divide the US into equal sized grids (square miles)… roughly 538 equal sized and simply shaped regions (squares, rectangles, parallelograms, hexagons or pentagons) to carry those shaped region’s interests by popular vote.. which of course means that sparsely populated regions will have no political power unless there are many of those low density regions in the US composite, and then their combined power will be in actual common interests that transcend individual regional low density interests.
But for these things you need to unwed yourselves from the whole idea of individually governable states. Then of course you’re taking about a nation.. not a confederation.
“You are assuming…”
No I am not, Longtooth.
Please don’t put thoughts in my head. It is already full of my own. I share your view of the propaganda provenance of Hamilton’s words. Propaganda or no propaganda, those words can still be held to account against actual practice. I don’t see much to argue with in what you write other than the attribution to me of a conveniently contrary opinion. The use of a foil in making an argument is also a propaganda technique. Just be careful who you choose to attribute assumption to, Longtooth, or I might have to knock a few cm. off of your teeth.
Addendum #2
538 equal sized regions doesn’t divide equally by 100 (currant number of Senate seats) so the closest alternative is 540 equal sized regions. to maintain the present ratio of House to Senate seats as close as possible.
Every 54 contiguous regions would get to elect 2 Senators, but would not have equal numbers of representatives… since representatives would still be based on population size to insure a popular democracy.
I think there’s good reason to maintain a two House legislature.. since the representatives of more people have to carry the overall interests of the region in their votes… which tends therefore to homogenize the myriad of interests in the individual sub-regions within the larger one.
This still maintains the idea that not all interests can be equally granted.. those with the majority get preference, which is what popular democracy means. Of course it also undoes the Connecticut Compromise “deal” reached in the Constitutional Convention to keep “State” power in small states (and thus small population states) by each having equal numbers of Senators.
In short the issues you’re really dealing with are the perennial ones of gov’ts of any kind… how to weigh “representative” power of popular voting residents. If you want a popular democracy then you have give up States as we define them and political autonomy of States as “written by compromises” of several competing interests… that those compromises were fleetingly valuable to the insurance of maintaining a nation at ll is to be highly commended in fact. But it was an expediency of a moment in global economic and political power interests of the times.. not a blueprint for “excellent” government systems. .. despite the popular belief and propaganda supporting this version.
Frankly, I think that designing fool-proof systems is a fool’s errand. Our worst problems today are actually solutions to previous problems.
Sandwichman, you made a claim that isn’t supported by reality.
“The original intent of the electoral college, according to Hamilton – the politician, not the Broadway musical – was to thwart the possibility of interference by a foreign power in choosing the chief executive.”
That was not at all the original intent .. even if you want to attribute it to Hamilton’s propaganda. This is all I wanted to set straight.
As to assumptions, and in particular the one I accuse you of making:
“.The Electoral College is simply a necessary manifestation of maintaining State sovereignty to the extent possible. You are assuming, wrongly I might add, that these now individual states must use their electors to follow the will of the popular majority in their states. This can be changed on a dime by any State at any time to insure their own State interests are used to influence the outcome of the Electoral Collage’s votes for the President.”
Mea Culpa.. this was part of my addendum post.. and I should have made it clear that I meant “you” to refer to the general audience complaining about the use of the Electoral Collage to thwart the population vote.. .. as if the intent was to create a popular democracy which was then flawed by the Electoral College system.
There was no such intent as my first post explained.
Sorry for my failure to be clear in whom I was referring “you” to mean.
Longtooth:
Only two states doing apportionment. It can be done and is the easiest method unless I have missed something.
The problem with district selection of electors is that the district can be and are gerrymandered. I am of the view that the “President of the United States” is an unworkable anachronism that attempts to have their king and abolish the monarchy, too. Frankly, terminal capitalism and nuclear arms make nation-state obsolescent. But although the old world is clearly dying, I can’t imagine the new one being born or what it would look like.
No problem about the ambiguous “you”. As for me making a statement unsupported by reality, that was Hamilton’s statement, not mine. I attributed it to him and offered no further endorsement of its validity.
Frankly I’m sick of hearing people complain about a system of shared power in which the Electoral Collage system is one major parts of the power sharing agreement (compromise) made by the delegates to the convention (compromises made in secret I want to reiterate).
People who think the Electoral Collage is an anachronism don’t at the same time acknowledge that individual States is just as much the same anachronism. They want it both ways, which are mutually exclusive conditions.
We “the people” can of course continue to keep trying to make silk purses of sows ears by changing and amending the constitution from now to forever but all that really does is force more and more inconsistencies and mutually exclusive intentions.
We’ve already reached the point long ago of giving five of nine non-elected people the power to decide what the constitutional terms’ inconsistencies’ mean … they simply pick one side or the other of the weights applied to the inconsistencies and these change with each change in the balance of five of nine people.
It really just comes down to whether we’re a nation or a collection of independent autonomous governing states linked together by a power sharing agreement through a federal central power. If the latter remains the case, as I have no doubt that it will,t hen the Electoral Collage is central and pivotal to that power sharing agreement.
Does anybody really think for one moment of rational thought that states with their autonomous power and authority will for one moment contemplate giving up a major part of that power?
There are about half the States of this county (not a nation, imo) that are conservative and have remained so in law and their own constitutions and manifestations of their state institutions since their admittance to the country as representative states with voting power.
About half of the non-conservative states have a lock on maintaining their own independence and autonomy.
On the whole therefore approx. 2/3’s to 3/4’s of these independent entities wouldn’t for a moment give up their constitutional powers, when it would take 3/4’s of them to agree to do so via constitutional amendment.. It took 100 years just to get a few states to become subject to federal power of enforcement of civll rights by the Civil Rights act, ferchristssakes. Why do you think the amendments after the Civil War intentionally withheld the federal gov’t from enforcing these amendments.. The liberals gave up their Dixicrat support in return for providing our disenfranchised non-white citizens the power to vote and do so freely and equally with all others, enforceable by federal powers not just state power as had been the case for the prior 100 years.
Recently we’ve seen over half the states pass laws to limit and restrict equal voting rights once again… as soon as the supreme courts’ five of nine decided the old law was no longer applicable. .. the law enacted to insure the federal gov’t could enforce the Civil Rights and Constitutional provisions related thereto.
And some people still want to think that States would voluntarily give up a major part of their power in the power sharing agreement of yore in favor of using a popular democracy? I call that Utopianism and denial of reality … living in a bubble, beliefs in fantasies and fairytales . the same thing liberals (like me) accuse the conservative right wing of dong.
Our electorate, even the so called “informed” electorate as might perhaps be represented by posts to AB, are not rational and not that informed. It’s not their fault.. we don’t, even won’t, teach these things to our kids in civics or history or socially classes… even in college level under-division classes..
People who think the Electoral College is an anachronism don’t at the same time acknowledge that individual States is just as much the same anachronism? They want it both ways, which are mutually exclusive conditions?
Whoa. Those are pretty strange statements. Somehow other democratic countries manage to have regional elections for members of national legislative bodies and also have their chief of state elected by national popular vote or by some semblance of reflection of popular-vote tallies in their parliament. These are not mutually exclusive, and they do not mean that a system of states, provinces, whatever, is per se an anachronism. Much less the SAME anachronism.
What I find to be ludicrous is that we just had a major non-violent revolution — and that’s what it really was in fact — just no deaths and cannons involved., and one side lost that war… or at the very least a major battle that has long term consequence..
Yet here they stand to write and complain about having lost, and in real effect saying they won’t support the new regime… which is a form of protest that may in fact border or encroach upon not following rule of law.
It’s a legitimate regime, like it or not, and no blood was shed this time… which I think we can all be very thankful for… e.g. our system, as flawed as it is, kept us from pursing violent means of regime change.
Sure it’s gong to upset the status quo.. that’s what radical regime change is supposed to do isn’t it?
Blaming the Electoral College system for this is silly. It’s the system that we have chosen to live by, agree to live by, and that’s clear because there’s been ample time to change that system but it’s never even been approached for change
For sure some Senator is going to propose a constitutional amendment and it might even get to a vote someday in the Senate only to be turned down by a vast majority…. and if not, and there’s a President in;power at the time to also agree with the change, then there’s 3/4’s of the states that have to agree as well..
Call me in 100 years and let me know how it’s going. Meanwhile quit blaming a system of power sharing that’s required to maintain a federal system when a national one is clearly out of the realm of possibility for the next century at least.
Put your effort to changing people’s minds about what will be in their own best interests, organizing local districts to take back the House in two years and get a majority in the Senate.
Blame never works .. it’s a waste of your time and effort which can be put to much more productive purpose, And oh, btw, you can’t influence people you won’t engage with.. like the opposition for example.
If it pleases you L., I wasn’t on the side that lost. I wasn’t on the side that won either. I question the legitimacy of the system regardless of the outcome. Trump’s presidency doesn’t challenge the status quo but, based on its rhetoric, seeks to reinforce it in a way that avoids the inconvenience of due process. If you believe Trump’s promise that all your dreams for your family will now come true, I have an extremely valuable and exclusive university course to sell you.
Yeah, there have hardly ever been discussions about the ludicrous Electoral College until this election.
Let me know when we are back in the 19th Century, where many people would identify themselves as Texans or Virginians or whatever, as opposed to today when people identify themselves as Americans.
The law sucks. It, like the Senate, is totally undemocratic. And those thoughts have been around for a long, long time.
But to talk about it is a waste of time. Cause no change is possible, as the small states would have to be willing to give up their ability to wag the dog, and that ain’t happening.
BTW,
LOL at this “major revolution” bs.
Same old, same old GOPsters won by being racist and lying to the middle class that tax cuts on the rich will save their lives.