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Originally Posted by Adder
Don't entirely disagree with you, but part of the issue is that there just aren't voters in the middle of the country to appeal to. Literally. "Forget about 10 million Californians and go court 10,000 people from Wyoming" is pretty seriously anti-democratic.
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We're a representative democracy (as opposed to a direct one) that has many features of a republic.
That's a mouthful, but there's no other way to define us. Focusing on the difference between direct and representative democracy, I'd take issue with your assessment that our system is anti-democratic. It's anti-direct democracy. And this isn't a bad thing. Direct democracy is effectively referendum democracy, which is a mess. It's also a system in which the thinnest of majorities is allowed to dictate policy to the rest.
I see no greater fairness accruing from removal of the electoral college. It would just be a reversal of the current situation in favor of the Democrats and the Left. One side, with a 1-5% vote margin (3 million votes is roughly 1/110th of the population), would be able to dictate to the other. That's not much different than the current situation in which one side, with the thinnest of electoral college majorities, dictates to the other side. Stated most simplistically, fighting unfairness with unfairness doesn't make fairness.
Also, direct democracy inevitably leads to pandering candidates and voters voting themselves increased transfers from the treasury. You can see a mild variant of that in action right now with the tax cuts. And that's in a representative democracy, where the minority party is able to check excesses of the majority. Imagine the kinds of policies we'd have in a system where one party merely had to acquire 51% of the popular vote? "Everybody gets a pony" would win every election.
The current system, flawed as it is, is still the best structure to avoid tyranny and national insolvency (well, perhaps not the latter...). If the Democrats win the House, Trump is cornered. Gridlock wins. Compromise is compelled, and with it, rational and reasonable centrist policies will emerge.
