Article 2, Section 1 of the Constitution stipulated how Presidents are to be elected. It never uses the term “Electoral College,” but in effect it establishes that peculiarly undemocratic American electoral entity. The founders wanted to avoid a popular election of the nation’s chief executive. They had an aristocratic innate aversion to “the people.” Therefore they created a system in which each state legislature would select electors who would represent that state’s presidential vote totals.

The election of 2016 was a major miscarriage of justice and fairness inflicted on the American electorate by the hopelessly flawed concept and existence of the Electoral College. What you just heard is not necessarily the most objective statement ever made, but it is uttered equally from both the head and heart. The election of 2016 was the most stomach-churning, mind-warping, soul-wrenching presidential election in the memory of millions of Americans. Ditto re. the objectivity of that statement.

The years 1932 to 1960 displayed unusual national political cohesion, even though there were significant differences between the Democrats and the Republicans. The Great Depression, World War II, and the Soviet menace united the American people. By the time the two parties settled on John Kennedy and Richard Nixon as their candidates for President in 1960, there was less inter-party political goodwill than there had been previously.

The American victory in the American Revolution was a surprise to nearly everyone, perhaps most of all to the Americans. The colonial army was outmanned, outgunned, often outsmarted, under-supplied, under-fed, and under-paid. Despite all, they won, and in 1783 a new nation, of sorts, was born. But was it truly one nation? Apparently the signers of the Declaration of Independence thought it should be. After all, the document itself declared before its resounding opening sentence that it was “The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America.”