thenation--2020-09-22--Will We Ever Get Rid of the Electoral College?

We Americans live in a debased version of democracy in which basic parts of the federal government betray , by design , the principle of majority rule .
Wyoming elects the same number of senators as California does , although Wyoming ’ s entire population is not much larger than the city of Fresno ’ s .
When voting as a bloc , five members of the Supreme Court can negate any act passed by Congress ; barring an unlikely impeachment , every justice , once confirmed by the Senate , remains on the bench until she or he retires @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the Supreme Court or the Senate would require a constitutional amendment that the legislatures of as few as 13 states could prevent from being ratified .
Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College ?
Yet neither is the greatest insult to popular sovereignty .
That would be the fact that it takes just 270 electors—individuals whose names are virtually unknown to the public—to formally decide who will be one of the most powerful human beings on earth .
A candidate can win a plurality of the popular vote , as did @ @ @ @ @ @ @ yet the decision of who becomes president can still come down to a small set of electors in one or two states .
And no minimum vote is required to win any state ’ s electoral votes : If a horrendously massive earthquake killed most Californians this fall , Donald Trump could legally win all of that state ’ s 55 electoral votes by edging out Joe Biden by a margin typical in a low-scoring baseball game .
Unlike with the other venerable pillars of our less-than-democratic order , most Americans have seldom @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Surprisingly , the very men who drafted the Constitution also had their doubts .
The ungainly apparatus got welded into the document as a compromise between those framers who wanted Congress to pick the president and those who wanted to leave it up to state governments .
The system they came up with was nobody ’ s first choice .
Over the past two centuries , Congress has repeatedly debated enacting major changes to the Electoral College or scrapping it ; on a few occasions , lawmakers came agonizingly close to doing so @ @ @ @ @ @ @ figure in the drafting of the Constitution , was never fond of the Electoral College and sought to replace it with a national popular vote ( which in his day , of course , would have been limited to white men ) .
In nearly every opinion poll conducted from the 1940s to the present , majorities have favored switching to that simple and—ever since women and Black people got the right to vote—quite democratic alternative .
One of the chief virtues of Alexander Keyssar ’ s remarkable new book Why Do We @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that it conclusively demonstrates the absurdity of preserving an institution that has been so contentious throughout US history and has not infrequently produced results that defied the popular will .
No presidential contest has ended up in the House of Representatives since 1824 , when that body chose John Quincy Adams after a multicandidate race in which his nearest competitor , Andrew Jackson , won a plurality of both the popular and the electoral vote .
But on four other occasions , fewer ballots were cast for the winner than the loser , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 1884 and 1916 , the switch of a few thousand votes in a single state would have handed victory to the less popular nominee .
More galling , those anonymous electors have usually also had the liberty to defy the people ’ s choice by voting for someone who did not carry their state or did not even run for the presidency at all .
This is a prospect that a recent Supreme Court decision sought to correct , in a unanimous ruling that a state can compel electors to abide by the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s nominee .
“ The State instructs its electors that they have no ground for reversing the vote of millions of its citizens , ” wrote Justice Elena Kagan .
“ That direction accords with the Constitution—as well as with the trust of a Nation that here , We the People rule.
” Despite this ruling , 17 states , including ones that tend to swing , like Florida and Ohio , still allow electors to vote their conscience .
The premise of Keyssar ’ s book is an uncommon one for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ spend their time seeking to explain something they wish had happened but never did .
Even writers who probe the perennial question of why socialism never gained a mass following in the United States as it did in Europe still have a good deal to say about such topics as the popularity of Eugene V. Debs and the vital role played by Marxist radicals in the labor movement and the crusade for racial justice .
But the centuries of fruitless effort inspired Keyssar to create a scholarly masterpiece .
No other historian has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ditch or change a process that , as he puts it , “ is ill understood by many Americans , bewildering to nearly everyone abroad , and [ was ] never imitated by another country or by any state of the United States .
Many countries have struggled with the problem of electoral reform , but few , if any , have done so with such lack of success over so prolonged a period.
” This is clearly not a book for anyone who believes the moral arc of politics is long but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his story , Keyssar has crafted an absorbing , if dispiriting , narrative about the durable obstacles to structural change in the United States .
Running through this long history of failed reform schemes were the often intersecting realities of the two-party system and a fear of the potential power that Black voters could wield after Emancipation .
Many Republicans and Democrats admitted the inequity of awarding a state ’ s entire electoral vote to whoever won a mere plurality of its ballots .
But a filibuster-proof majority balked at endorsing any of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ scrapped the state-based system of winner take all .
They knew awarding electoral votes by congressional district or by the proportion each candidate won in a state could destroy an advantage precious to their party ’ s chances to win the presidency .
Thus , Southern Democrats in the late 19th century asserted that any proportional division would trample on the right of states to control their own elections , which was enshrined in the Constitution .
One group of Dixie congressmen , contradicting the name of their party , derided the idea @ @ @ @ @ @ @ presidency as embodying “ the false assumption that our government was intended to represent the will of the majority of the whole people of the United States.
” In 1889 an overly sanguine Republican predicted that with proportional elections , “ the solid South , that bugbear of our politics…would immediately disappear , together with many of the attending evils of sectional hatred and race prejudice.
” Yet by the early 20th century , when Southern legislatures had effectively disenfranchised most Black citizens , GOP politicians had found their own reason to oppose @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to sweep the South every four years , then the GOP needed to ensure that states like Massachusetts and Wisconsin would remain bastions of a solidly Republican North .
Only during those brief periods when partisanship waned did lawmakers from different regions come close to passing measures that would have brought an end to the Electoral College .
The first near miss occurred in 1821 .
By then , the aristocratic Federalists first organized around Alexander Hamilton had all but disappeared , allowing politicians from the party that Madison and Thomas Jefferson had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the so-called Era of Good Feelings .
In 1820 , after James Monroe was reelected as president without facing a challenger , the Senate approved , by more than the required two-thirds vote , an amendment mandating district elections .
After months of delays and debates , the House favored the idea , too—but with six fewer votes than were needed to send the amendment on to the states for ratification .
According to Keyssar , the lawmakers who resisted had a variety of motives .
Some feared that future gerrymanderers could skew @ @ @ @ @ @ @ candidate or defeat another .
Others were just accustomed to a system that had temporarily made their party the only one in the land .
A congressman from South Carolina justified his nay vote by quoting Hamlet : “ It is better…to bear those ills we have than to fly to others that we know not of.
” Coming from a state where enslaved people were the majority , he probably never imagined that Black people would someday have a hand in making such decisions .
A century and a half later , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ returned .
For much of 1968 , George Wallace , the militant racist from Alabama who ran on a third-party ticket , was riding so high in the polls that it seemed entirely possible he could win enough states to force the House to choose the president .
In the end , Richard Nixon won a clear majority of the electoral votes .
But the fear that in a future contest , members of the lower chamber might have to negotiate with Wallace or another rogue independent mobilized support for a constitutional amendment @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a national popular vote , supplemented by a runoff election if necessary .
Leading figures in both parties jumped on board , and the amendment even found support in the pages of the conservative National Review .
The editor of the major daily paper in Charlotte , N.C. , happily reported that the “ creaky old system has few defenders left.
” Alas , given the need for a supermajority , the old system ended up having just enough .
In the fall of 1969 the House passed the amendment with ease ; @ @ @ @ @ @ @ A Gallup poll at the time found that more than four-fifths of the public endorsed the change as well .
But as so often in the past , Southern senators used delays and a filibuster to kill the opportunity to abolish a major obstacle to democratic rule .
Leading the opposition was Sam Ervin from North Carolina , a longtime champion of segregation and other right-wing causes .
Three years later , liberals would applaud him for heading the select committee that helped uncover the slimy facts of the Watergate scandal .
Ironically @ @ @ @ @ @ @ withheld support from the effort , too : He did not want to abandon the potential power Black people had to swing the vote in big Northern states and insisted that , so soon after the enactment of the 1965 Voting Rights Act , which was up for renewal in 1970 , guaranteeing the franchise to African Americans in the South should come first .
For the remainder of the 20th century , the cause of reforming the way presidents get elected fell prey to the apathy of most politicians , who found @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cause .
“ It is a waste of time to talk about changing the Electoral College , ” said Jimmy Carter in 2001 .
The former chief executive predicted the institution would last for another 200 years .
The Nebraska legislature did decide in 1991 to award its electoral votes to the winner of each congressional district in the state .
And in 1992 the fear that Ross Perot ’ s strong third-party run would prevent any of the presidential candidates from achieving an electoral vote majority spurred the Senate to hold a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ made such a contingency possible .
“ It is nonsense , ” declared Mitch McConnell , then just an ordinary Republican senator , “ to have the House of Representatives choose the president.
” But after the Texas billionaire ’ s 19 percent of the popular vote won him not a single state , the embers of concern turned cold .
During this century , opinion on the merits of a national popular vote , as on nearly every issue that matters , has broken down along partisan lines that grow sharper with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Bush in 2000 and Trump in 2016 made it to the White House despite winning fewer votes than their Democratic rivals has turned most Republicans into big fans of the Electoral College .
Hugh Hewitt , who teaches constitutional law when he ’ s not writing hymns of praise to his authoritarian leader on The Washington Post ’ s op-ed page , recently defended the Electoral College as “ one of the two load-bearing walls on which the Constitution is built.
” His column mentioned none of the faithless electors in 2016 .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ professor why he did not consider the judgment of Madison , the chief architect of that 230-year-old textual edifice , before writing those foolish words .
In contrast , Keyssar reveals throughout his book how complex historical wisdom can be .
Rarely does he offer just a single explanation for why the various efforts to reform the Electoral College or do away with it have failed to gain the necessary votes in Congress or why , for years at a stretch , their proponents saw little point in trying .
The impression he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ incremental moves that enhance democracy , like the Voting Rights Act , are possible , while efforts to cure the fundamental infirmities of the system keep coming up against such barriers as the “ balance of power between the states and the national government ” —which are encrusted with centuries of jurisprudence and defended by politicians whose power might be threatened by change .
“ The history recounted here has a Sisyphean air , ” Keyssar admits near the end of his book .
Fortunately , eternal frustration has not always been the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the subject of his book published in 2000 .
In it Keyssar described , with just as profound a knowledge of his subject , how mass movements of white workers , women , African Americans , and their legislative allies gradually expanded the franchise until , by the late 1960s , it was available to all adult citizens , save the incarcerated and most felons who had served their time .
But because there has never been an insurgency to demand a national popular vote , the Americans who keep straining to push @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are nearly all politicians , academics , and journalists .
Few ordinary voters care enough about how the president gets elected to organize around the issue ; they just prefer a candidate who shares their beliefs and promises to serve their interests and perhaps will make them feel good about their government and their country .
“ The nation has become more democratic since 1787 and more committed to political equality , but the Electoral College has not , ” Keyssar concludes .
And so we endure with the most ridiculous system for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on earth .

This article appears in the October 5/12, 2020 issue.
We Americans live in a debased version of democracy in which basic parts of the federal government betray, by design, the principle of majority rule. Wyoming elects the same number of senators as California does, although Wyoming’s entire population is not much larger than the city of Fresno’s. When voting as a bloc, five members of the Supreme Court can negate any act passed by Congress; barring an unlikely impeachment, every justice, once confirmed by the Senate, remains on the bench until she or he retires or dies. To alter the framework of the Supreme Court or the Senate would require a constitutional amendment that the legislatures of as few as 13 states could prevent from being ratified. Books in Review Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College? By Alexander Keyssar Buy this book
Yet neither is the greatest insult to popular sovereignty. That would be the fact that it takes just 270 electors—individuals whose names are virtually unknown to the public—to formally decide who will be one of the most powerful human beings on earth. A candidate can win a plurality of the popular vote, as did Al Gore and Hillary Clinton, and yet the decision of who becomes president can still come down to a small set of electors in one or two states. And no minimum vote is required to win any state’s electoral votes: If a horrendously massive earthquake killed most Californians this fall, Donald Trump could legally win all of that state’s 55 electoral votes by edging out Joe Biden by a margin typical in a low-scoring baseball game.
Unlike with the other venerable pillars of our less-than-democratic order, most Americans have seldom thought the Electoral College worth preserving. Surprisingly, the very men who drafted the Constitution also had their doubts. The ungainly apparatus got welded into the document as a compromise between those framers who wanted Congress to pick the president and those who wanted to leave it up to state governments. The system they came up with was nobody’s first choice.
Over the past two centuries, Congress has repeatedly debated enacting major changes to the Electoral College or scrapping it; on a few occasions, lawmakers came agonizingly close to doing so. James Madison, the most influential figure in the drafting of the Constitution, was never fond of the Electoral College and sought to replace it with a national popular vote (which in his day, of course, would have been limited to white men). In nearly every opinion poll conducted from the 1940s to the present, majorities have favored switching to that simple and—ever since women and Black people got the right to vote—quite democratic alternative.
One of the chief virtues of Alexander Keyssar’s remarkable new book Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College? is that it conclusively demonstrates the absurdity of preserving an institution that has been so contentious throughout US history and has not infrequently produced results that defied the popular will. No presidential contest has ended up in the House of Representatives since 1824, when that body chose John Quincy Adams after a multicandidate race in which his nearest competitor, Andrew Jackson, won a plurality of both the popular and the electoral vote. But on four other occasions, fewer ballots were cast for the winner than the loser, and in the exceedingly close elections of 1884 and 1916, the switch of a few thousand votes in a single state would have handed victory to the less popular nominee. Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann
More galling, those anonymous electors have usually also had the liberty to defy the people’s choice by voting for someone who did not carry their state or did not even run for the presidency at all. This is a prospect that a recent Supreme Court decision sought to correct, in a unanimous ruling that a state can compel electors to abide by the pledge they made to support their party’s nominee. “The State instructs its electors that they have no ground for reversing the vote of millions of its citizens,” wrote Justice Elena Kagan. “That direction accords with the Constitution—as well as with the trust of a Nation that here, We the People rule.” Despite this ruling, 17 states, including ones that tend to swing, like Florida and Ohio, still allow electors to vote their conscience.
The premise of Keyssar’s book is an uncommon one for a historian to pursue. Few scholars spend their time seeking to explain something they wish had happened but never did. Even writers who probe the perennial question of why socialism never gained a mass following in the United States as it did in Europe still have a good deal to say about such topics as the popularity of Eugene V. Debs and the vital role played by Marxist radicals in the labor movement and the crusade for racial justice. But the centuries of fruitless effort inspired Keyssar to create a scholarly masterpiece. No other historian has so persuasively explained the utter failure to ditch or change a process that, as he puts it, “is ill understood by many Americans, bewildering to nearly everyone abroad, and [was] never imitated by another country or by any state of the United States. Many countries have struggled with the problem of electoral reform, but few, if any, have done so with such lack of success over so prolonged a period.” This is clearly not a book for anyone who believes the moral arc of politics is long but always bends toward justice.
To tell his story, Keyssar has crafted an absorbing, if dispiriting, narrative about the durable obstacles to structural change in the United States. Running through this long history of failed reform schemes were the often intersecting realities of the two-party system and a fear of the potential power that Black voters could wield after Emancipation. Many Republicans and Democrats admitted the inequity of awarding a state’s entire electoral vote to whoever won a mere plurality of its ballots. But a filibuster-proof majority balked at endorsing any of the plans on offer that would have scrapped the state-based system of winner take all. They knew awarding electoral votes by congressional district or by the proportion each candidate won in a state could destroy an advantage precious to their party’s chances to win the presidency.
Thus, Southern Democrats in the late 19th century asserted that any proportional division would trample on the right of states to control their own elections, which was enshrined in the Constitution. One group of Dixie congressmen, contradicting the name of their party, derided the idea of a popular vote to decide the presidency as embodying “the false assumption that our government was intended to represent the will of the majority of the whole people of the United States.” In 1889 an overly sanguine Republican predicted that with proportional elections, “the solid South, that bugbear of our politics…would immediately disappear, together with many of the attending evils of sectional hatred and race prejudice.” Yet by the early 20th century, when Southern legislatures had effectively disenfranchised most Black citizens, GOP politicians had found their own reason to oppose such reforms. If Democrats were going to sweep the South every four years, then the GOP needed to ensure that states like Massachusetts and Wisconsin would remain bastions of a solidly Republican North. Current Issue View our current issue
Only during those brief periods when partisanship waned did lawmakers from different regions come close to passing measures that would have brought an end to the Electoral College. The first near miss occurred in 1821. By then, the aristocratic Federalists first organized around Alexander Hamilton had all but disappeared, allowing politicians from the party that Madison and Thomas Jefferson had founded as the Democratic-Republicans to thoroughly dominate the so-called Era of Good Feelings. In 1820, after James Monroe was reelected as president without facing a challenger, the Senate approved, by more than the required two-thirds vote, an amendment mandating district elections. After months of delays and debates, the House favored the idea, too—but with six fewer votes than were needed to send the amendment on to the states for ratification.
According to Keyssar, the lawmakers who resisted had a variety of motives. Some feared that future gerrymanderers could skew the shape of districts to favor one candidate or defeat another. Others were just accustomed to a system that had temporarily made their party the only one in the land. A congressman from South Carolina justified his nay vote by quoting Hamlet: “It is better…to bear those ills we have than to fly to others that we know not of.” Coming from a state where enslaved people were the majority, he probably never imagined that Black people would someday have a hand in making such decisions.
A century and a half later, the opportunity for overhauling the Electoral College returned. For much of 1968, George Wallace, the militant racist from Alabama who ran on a third-party ticket, was riding so high in the polls that it seemed entirely possible he could win enough states to force the House to choose the president. In the end, Richard Nixon won a clear majority of the electoral votes. But the fear that in a future contest, members of the lower chamber might have to negotiate with Wallace or another rogue independent mobilized support for a constitutional amendment that would replace the Electoral College with a national popular vote, supplemented by a runoff election if necessary. Leading figures in both parties jumped on board, and the amendment even found support in the pages of the conservative National Review. The editor of the major daily paper in Charlotte, N.C., happily reported that the “creaky old system has few defenders left.”
Alas, given the need for a supermajority, the old system ended up having just enough. In the fall of 1969 the House passed the amendment with ease; just 70 representatives voted against it. A Gallup poll at the time found that more than four-fifths of the public endorsed the change as well. But as so often in the past, Southern senators used delays and a filibuster to kill the opportunity to abolish a major obstacle to democratic rule. Leading the opposition was Sam Ervin from North Carolina, a longtime champion of segregation and other right-wing causes. Three years later, liberals would applaud him for heading the select committee that helped uncover the slimy facts of the Watergate scandal. Ironically, a top official of the NAACP withheld support from the effort, too: He did not want to abandon the potential power Black people had to swing the vote in big Northern states and insisted that, so soon after the enactment of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which was up for renewal in 1970, guaranteeing the franchise to African Americans in the South should come first.
For the remainder of the 20th century, the cause of reforming the way presidents get elected fell prey to the apathy of most politicians, who found no reason to keep flogging a losing cause. “It is a waste of time to talk about changing the Electoral College,” said Jimmy Carter in 2001. The former chief executive predicted the institution would last for another 200 years. The Nebraska legislature did decide in 1991 to award its electoral votes to the winner of each congressional district in the state. And in 1992 the fear that Ross Perot’s strong third-party run would prevent any of the presidential candidates from achieving an electoral vote majority spurred the Senate to hold a major hearing about altering the system that made such a contingency possible. “It is nonsense,” declared Mitch McConnell, then just an ordinary Republican senator, “to have the House of Representatives choose the president.” But after the Texas billionaire’s 19 percent of the popular vote won him not a single state, the embers of concern turned cold.
During this century, opinion on the merits of a national popular vote, as on nearly every issue that matters, has broken down along partisan lines that grow sharper with each presidential tweet. That George W. Bush in 2000 and Trump in 2016 made it to the White House despite winning fewer votes than their Democratic rivals has turned most Republicans into big fans of the Electoral College. Hugh Hewitt, who teaches constitutional law when he’s not writing hymns of praise to his authoritarian leader on The Washington Post’s op-ed page, recently defended the Electoral College as “one of the two load-bearing walls on which the Constitution is built.” His column mentioned none of the faithless electors in 2016. Hewitt’s students might ask their professor why he did not consider the judgment of Madison, the chief architect of that 230-year-old textual edifice, before writing those foolish words.
In contrast, Keyssar reveals throughout his book how complex historical wisdom can be. Rarely does he offer just a single explanation for why the various efforts to reform the Electoral College or do away with it have failed to gain the necessary votes in Congress or why, for years at a stretch, their proponents saw little point in trying. The impression he leaves is of a polity in which incremental moves that enhance democracy, like the Voting Rights Act, are possible, while efforts to cure the fundamental infirmities of the system keep coming up against such barriers as the “balance of power between the states and the national government”—which are encrusted with centuries of jurisprudence and defended by politicians whose power might be threatened by change. “The history recounted here has a Sisyphean air,” Keyssar admits near the end of his book.
Fortunately, eternal frustration has not always been the fate of the right to vote, the subject of his book published in 2000. In it Keyssar described, with just as profound a knowledge of his subject, how mass movements of white workers, women, African Americans, and their legislative allies gradually expanded the franchise until, by the late 1960s, it was available to all adult citizens, save the incarcerated and most felons who had served their time.
But because there has never been an insurgency to demand a national popular vote, the Americans who keep straining to push that rock up the steep constitutional hill are nearly all politicians, academics, and journalists. Few ordinary voters care enough about how the president gets elected to organize around the issue; they just prefer a candidate who shares their beliefs and promises to serve their interests and perhaps will make them feel good about their government and their country. “The nation has become more democratic since 1787 and more committed to political equality, but the Electoral College has not,” Keyssar concludes. And so we endure with the most ridiculous system for producing our head of state and government on earth.


thenation--2020-09-22--Vote as if the Climate and the Future of Humanity Depend on It—Because They Do

This story is part of Covering Climate Now , a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story .
To understand the planetary importance of this autumn ’ s presidential election , check the calendar .
Voting ends on November 3—and by a fluke of timing , on the morning of November 4 the United States is scheduled to pull out of the Paris Agreement .
President Trump announced that we would abrogate our Paris commitments during a Rose Garden speech in 2017 .
But under the terms of the accords , it takes three years to formalize the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ won ’ t be just Americans watching : The people of the world will see whether the country that has poured more carbon into the atmosphere than any other over the course of history will become the only country that refuses to cooperate in the one international effort to do something about the climate crisis .
Trump ’ s withdrawal benefited oil executives , who have donated millions of dollars to his reelection campaign , and the small , strange fringe of climate deniers who continue to insist that the planet is cooling @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rational world were appalled .
Polling showed widespread opposition , and by some measures , Trump is more out of line with the American populace on environmental issues than any other .
In his withdrawal announcement he said he ’ d been elected “ to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh , not Paris ” ; before the day was out , Pittsburgh ’ s mayor had pledged that his city would follow the guidelines set in the French capital .
Young people , above all , have despised the president ’ s climate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ climate change is a top-tier issue with them and often the most important one—mostly , I think , because they ’ ve come to understand how tightly linked it is not just to their future but to questions of justice , equity , and race .
Can the Climate Youth Tip the 2020 Election Against Trump ?
States Are Doing What Big Government Won ’ t to Stop Climate Change These Big City Mayors Want Green Stimulus Spending to Counter Covid-19 More in this series Here ’ s the truth : At this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in Paris will be nowhere near enough .
If you add up the various pledges that nations made at that conference , they plan on moving so timidly that the planet ’ s temperature will still rise more than 3 degrees Celsius from preindustrial levels .
So far , we ’ ve raised the mercury 1 degree Celsius , and that ’ s been enough to melt millions of square miles of ice in the Arctic , extend fire seasons for months , and dramatically alter the planet ’ s rainfall patterns .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ like writing a global suicide note .
Happily , we could go much faster if we wanted .
The price of solar and wind power has fallen so fast and so far in the last few years that they are now the cheapest power on earth .
There are plenty of calculations to show it will soon be cheaper to build solar and wind farms than to operate the fossil fuel power stations we ’ ve already built .
Climate-smart investments are also better for workers and economic equality .
“ We need @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to invest in green energy , [ which ] creates three times more jobs than to invest in fossil fuel energy , ” United Nations Secretary General António Guterres said in an interview with Covering Climate Now in September .
If we wanted to make it happen , in other words , an energy revolution is entirely possible .
The best new study shows that the United States could cut its current power sector emissions 80 percent by 2035 and create 20 million jobs along the way .
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris @ @ @ @ @ @ @ quickly , but their climate plan is the farthest-reaching of any presidential ticket in history .
More to the point , we can pressure them to go farther and faster .
Already , seeing the polling on the wall , they ’ ve adopted many of the proposals of climate stalwarts like Washington Governor Jay Inslee .
A team of Biden and Bernie Sanders representatives worked out a pragmatic but powerful compromise in talks before the Democratic National Convention ; the Biden-Harris ticket seems primed to use a transition to green energy as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rebuild the pandemic-devastated economy .
Perhaps most important , they ’ ve pledged to try to lead the rest of the world in the climate fight .
The United States has never really done this .
Our role as the single biggest producer of hydrocarbons has meant that our response to global warming has always been crippled by the political power of Big Oil .
But that power has begun to slip .
Once the biggest economic force on the planet , the oil industry is a shadow of its former self .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ companies in America for less than the cost of Apple ; Tesla is worth more than any other auto company on earth . )
And so it ’ s possible that the hammerlock on policy exercised by this reckless industry will loosen if Trump is beaten .
But only if he ’ s beaten .
Four more years will be enough to cement in place his anti-environmental policies and to make sure it ’ s too late to really change course .
The world ’ s climate scientists declared in 2018 that if @ @ @ @ @ @ @ climate targets , we had to cut emissions almost in half by 2030 .
That ’ s less than 10 years away .
We ’ re at the last possible moment to turn the wheel of the supertanker that is our government .
Captain Trump wants to steer us straight onto the rocks , mumbling all the while about hoaxes .
If we let him do it , history won ’ t forgive us .
Nor will the rest of the world .

This article appears in the October 5/12, 2020 issue.
This story is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story.
To understand the planetary importance of this autumn’s presidential election, check the calendar. Voting ends on November 3—and by a fluke of timing, on the morning of November 4 the United States is scheduled to pull out of the Paris Agreement.
President Trump announced that we would abrogate our Paris commitments during a Rose Garden speech in 2017. But under the terms of the accords, it takes three years to formalize the withdrawal. So on Election Day it won’t be just Americans watching: The people of the world will see whether the country that has poured more carbon into the atmosphere than any other over the course of history will become the only country that refuses to cooperate in the one international effort to do something about the climate crisis.
Trump’s withdrawal benefited oil executives, who have donated millions of dollars to his reelection campaign, and the small, strange fringe of climate deniers who continue to insist that the planet is cooling. But most people living in the rational world were appalled. Polling showed widespread opposition, and by some measures, Trump is more out of line with the American populace on environmental issues than any other. In his withdrawal announcement he said he’d been elected “to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris”; before the day was out, Pittsburgh’s mayor had pledged that his city would follow the guidelines set in the French capital. Young people, above all, have despised the president’s climate moves: Poll after poll shows that climate change is a top-tier issue with them and often the most important one—mostly, I think, because they’ve come to understand how tightly linked it is not just to their future but to questions of justice, equity, and race. Covering Climate Now How to Stop the Spread of Climate Disinformation Erika Seiber and Michael Khoo A Soundtrack for the Climate Emergency Mark Hertsgaard Can Gen Z Save the Midterms for Democrats? Mark Hertsgaard
Here’s the truth: At this late date, meeting the promises set in Paris will be nowhere near enough. If you add up the various pledges that nations made at that conference, they plan on moving so timidly that the planet’s temperature will still rise more than 3 degrees Celsius from preindustrial levels. So far, we’ve raised the mercury 1 degree Celsius, and that’s been enough to melt millions of square miles of ice in the Arctic, extend fire seasons for months, and dramatically alter the planet’s rainfall patterns. Settling for 3 degrees is kind of like writing a global suicide note.
Happily, we could go much faster if we wanted. The price of solar and wind power has fallen so fast and so far in the last few years that they are now the cheapest power on earth. There are plenty of calculations to show it will soon be cheaper to build solar and wind farms than to operate the fossil fuel power stations we’ve already built. Climate-smart investments are also better for workers and economic equality. “We need to have climate justice, which means to invest in green energy, [which] creates three times more jobs than to invest in fossil fuel energy,” United Nations Secretary General António Guterres said in an interview with Covering Climate Now in September. If we wanted to make it happen, in other words, an energy revolution is entirely possible. The best new study shows that the United States could cut its current power sector emissions 80 percent by 2035 and create 20 million jobs along the way. Fight Back This Earth Day, Stop the Money Pipeline Bill McKibben
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris haven’t pledged to move that quickly, but their climate plan is the farthest-reaching of any presidential ticket in history. More to the point, we can pressure them to go farther and faster. Already, seeing the polling on the wall, they’ve adopted many of the proposals of climate stalwarts like Washington Governor Jay Inslee. A team of Biden and Bernie Sanders representatives worked out a pragmatic but powerful compromise in talks before the Democratic National Convention; the Biden-Harris ticket seems primed to use a transition to green energy as a crucial part of a push to rebuild the pandemic-devastated economy.
Perhaps most important, they’ve pledged to try to lead the rest of the world in the climate fight. The United States has never really done this. Our role as the single biggest producer of hydrocarbons has meant that our response to global warming has always been crippled by the political power of Big Oil. But that power has begun to slip. Once the biggest economic force on the planet, the oil industry is a shadow of its former self. (You could buy all the oil companies in America for less than the cost of Apple; Tesla is worth more than any other auto company on earth.) And so it’s possible that the hammerlock on policy exercised by this reckless industry will loosen if Trump is beaten.
But only if he’s beaten. Four more years will be enough to cement in place his anti-environmental policies and to make sure it’s too late to really change course. The world’s climate scientists declared in 2018 that if we had any chance of meeting sane climate targets, we had to cut emissions almost in half by 2030. That’s less than 10 years away. We’re at the last possible moment to turn the wheel of the supertanker that is our government. Captain Trump wants to steer us straight onto the rocks, mumbling all the while about hoaxes. If we let him do it, history won’t forgive us. Nor will the rest of the world.


thenation--2020-09-22--The New Look of ‘The Nation’

The New Look of ‘The Nation’

The Nation has made some changes .
When E.L. Godkin and his fellow editors put Volume 1 , Number 1 , of The Nation to bed in July 1865 , they noted , “ It has been a week singularly barren of exciting events.
” That is not a claim any of us would make today .
Change has been a constant in the magazine ’ s history—and one of the keys to our longevity .
In 1865 , Godkin sent John Richard Dennett on horseback to report on “ The South as It Is , ” a searing account @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , forcefully enough to still shock readers today , the recalcitrance , resentment , and deeply rooted racism that persisted after the close of the Civil War .
Nowadays Nation correspondents seldom travel on horseback .
But in the past year alone they ’ ve reported on wildfires in Australia ; the rise of Hindu nationalism in India ; climate catastrophe in Senegal and Alaska ; environmental activism in Canada , Europe , and the United States ; and the desperate plight of immigrants along our southern border .
Not to mention President @ @ @ @ @ @ @ distraction—and the dangerous administrative moves and personnel changes under all the noise .
And that was before the coronavirus , which saw us add photographers , artists , writers , and even an epidemiologist to our pages to help Nation readers make sense of the science—and the politics—of this pandemic .
Still , why change the way the magazine looks ?
Because our relationship to our readers and to the world we cover has changed .
From 1865 until some point in the last decade , The Nation functioned partly as a weekly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ break important stories , often agenda-setting stories , by award-winning writers .
But we do that now every day of the week , on TheNation.com .
News , particularly news that someone in power doesn ’ t want you to know—whether that ’ s our recent cover story on Bill Gates ’ s self-dealing or our new D.C. correspondent Ken Klippenstein ’ s exposé of the Border Patrol ’ s involvement in domestic counterinsurgency—remains an important part of The Nation ’ s mission .
So does paying attention to the people , places @ @ @ @ @ @ @ media treats with malign neglect .
But we ’ ve found that readers of our print magazine increasingly come to us for analysis , perspective , political argument , debate—and the kind of deep dive that , in the hands of a great reporter , can open minds and change the world .
Stories with impact .
Stories that stay with you .
And stories that you ’ ll want to spend time with .
When we asked print readers what they wanted more of , their answers were clear : more investigative @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and more analysis from The Nation ’ s distinctive progressive perspective .
More great stories .
More strong arguments .
More fearless reporting .
With more time between issues to enjoy each print edition of The Nation .
So that ’ s what we ’ re going to deliver—twice a month , with 20 percent more pages in each issue ( four of those will be special 64-page double issues ) that offer even more room for vivid reporting , long-form analysis , and hard-hitting investigations .
Turn the page , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for our brilliant columnists , along with an expanded menu of compelling dispatches , debate , and data crucial to understanding the events we cover .
Where a picture is worth a thousand words , we ’ ll use the picture .
And where a graph or cartoon delivers information that words struggle to convey , we ’ ll save our words for where they ’ re needed .
In our expanded features section , for instance , which will allow for a greater variety of settings , subjects , voices , perspectives @ @ @ @ @ @ @ approach in every issue .
Or our expanded Books and Arts coverage , giving our critics more room to develop their arguments and our editors the chance to showcase a wider variety of writers and artifacts .
A word about looks .
The difference between redesign and redecoration is that while both change what you see in front of you , the former is driven by ideas .
There are a lot of adjectives we hope will come to mind when readers hold this new Nation in their hands : crisp , clean @ @ @ @ @ @ @ beautiful , intentional .
As editor , my focus is always on content—what we cover , how we cover it , and whether publishing a given article will inform , enlighten , or delight our readers .
Because at The Nation , we don ’ t take any reader—or any reader ’ s time—for granted .
Finally , we should talk about what we ’ ve lost these past few months .
First , of course , the people whose lives were cruelly cut short , including some who had been members of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ That these losses have fallen so unequally—on people of color , the poor , the incarcerated , the elderly , tearing gaping holes in our already fraying social fabric—has only added insult to grievous injury .
We have also sustained incalculable losses in our culture , our politics , and our daily experience of the world .
We began planning for this redesign long before a single case of Covid-19 had been diagnosed .
Yet after months of relying on our electronic devices not just for news or opinions but for work meetings @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and funerals , it is easier to see what ’ s missing .
Theater .
Live music .
Sharing the dark with others at the movies .
Sharing the light with others in museums , playgrounds , or buses .
The rich , fraught , undigitized assemblage of analog life .
We ’ ve had books but no live poetry readings .
We still have a presidential election of sorts going on now , but without campaign rallies and with an absolute prohibition—at least by the Democratic nominees—on pressing the flesh .
And @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the US Postal Service , we ’ ve had magazines .
Which , like vinyl records and film photography , have been consigned by many to the past .
We disagree .
We believe that print on paper , though as old as Gutenberg or his Chinese predecessors , is a medium with a future .
So in reimagining The Nation for the 21st century , we asked our creative director , Robert Best , for a magazine that is unabashedly “ in print , ” reveling in striking typography , uncluttered design @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of stillness and sustained attention .
Why publish on paper at all ?
Because of what only paper can give you : an analog experience in a digital age .
Read on !
And then let us know what you think .

This article appears in the October 5/12, 2020 issue.
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The Nation has made some changes. When E.L. Godkin and his fellow editors put Volume 1, Number 1, of The Nation to bed in July 1865, they noted, “It has been a week singularly barren of exciting events.” That is not a claim any of us would make today.
Change has been a constant in the magazine’s history—and one of the keys to our longevity. In 1865, Godkin sent John Richard Dennett on horseback to report on “The South as It Is,” a searing account of defeat and devastation that also conveys, forcefully enough to still shock readers today, the recalcitrance, resentment, and deeply rooted racism that persisted after the close of the Civil War.
Nowadays Nation correspondents seldom travel on horseback. But in the past year alone they’ve reported on wildfires in Australia; the rise of Hindu nationalism in India; climate catastrophe in Senegal and Alaska; environmental activism in Canada, Europe, and the United States; and the desperate plight of immigrants along our southern border. Not to mention President Donald Trump’s weapons of mass distraction—and the dangerous administrative moves and personnel changes under all the noise. And that was before the coronavirus, which saw us add photographers, artists, writers, and even an epidemiologist to our pages to help Nation readers make sense of the science—and the politics—of this pandemic.
Still, why change the way the magazine looks? Because our relationship to our readers and to the world we cover has changed. From 1865 until some point in the last decade, The Nation functioned partly as a weekly news magazine—and looked it. We still break important stories, often agenda-setting stories, by award-winning writers. But we do that now every day of the week, on TheNation.com. Related Article Milton Glaser, 1929–2020 Victor Navasky
News, particularly news that someone in power doesn’t want you to know—whether that’s our recent cover story on Bill Gates’s self-dealing or our new D.C. correspondent Ken Klippenstein’s exposé of the Border Patrol’s involvement in domestic counterinsurgency—remains an important part of The Nation’s mission. So does paying attention to the people, places, movements, and machinations the mainstream media treats with malign neglect. But we’ve found that readers of our print magazine increasingly come to us for analysis, perspective, political argument, debate—and the kind of deep dive that, in the hands of a great reporter, can open minds and change the world. Stories with impact. Stories that stay with you. And stories that you’ll want to spend time with. Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann
When we asked print readers what they wanted more of, their answers were clear: more investigative journalism, more political news unavailable elsewhere, and more analysis from The Nation’s distinctive progressive perspective. More great stories. More strong arguments. More fearless reporting. With more time between issues to enjoy each print edition of The Nation.
So that’s what we’re going to deliver—twice a month, with 20 percent more pages in each issue (four of those will be special 64-page double issues) that offer even more room for vivid reporting, long-form analysis, and hard-hitting investigations. Current Issue View our current issue
Turn the page, and you’ll find the same showcase for our brilliant columnists, along with an expanded menu of compelling dispatches, debate, and data crucial to understanding the events we cover. Where a picture is worth a thousand words, we’ll use the picture. And where a graph or cartoon delivers information that words struggle to convey, we’ll save our words for where they’re needed.
In our expanded features section, for instance, which will allow for a greater variety of settings, subjects, voices, perspectives, article lengths, and angles of approach in every issue. Or our expanded Books and Arts coverage, giving our critics more room to develop their arguments and our editors the chance to showcase a wider variety of writers and artifacts.
A word about looks. The difference between redesign and redecoration is that while both change what you see in front of you, the former is driven by ideas. There are a lot of adjectives we hope will come to mind when readers hold this new Nation in their hands: crisp, clean, intelligent, modern, engaging, beautiful, intentional. As editor, my focus is always on content—what we cover, how we cover it, and whether publishing a given article will inform, enlighten, or delight our readers. Because at The Nation, we don’t take any reader—or any reader’s time—for granted. Related Article ‘The Nation’ Names Kaveh Akbar Poetry Editor Press Room
Finally, we should talk about what we’ve lost these past few months. First, of course, the people whose lives were cruelly cut short, including some who had been members of the Nation family for many years. That these losses have fallen so unequally—on people of color, the poor, the incarcerated, the elderly, tearing gaping holes in our already fraying social fabric—has only added insult to grievous injury. We have also sustained incalculable losses in our culture, our politics, and our daily experience of the world. We began planning for this redesign long before a single case of Covid-19 had been diagnosed. Yet after months of relying on our electronic devices not just for news or opinions but for work meetings, family gatherings, and even weddings and funerals, it is easier to see what’s missing. Theater. Live music. Sharing the dark with others at the movies. Sharing the light with others in museums, playgrounds, or buses. The rich, fraught, undigitized assemblage of analog life.
We’ve had books but no live poetry readings. We still have a presidential election of sorts going on now, but without campaign rallies and with an absolute prohibition—at least by the Democratic nominees—on pressing the flesh. And thanks to the men and women of the US Postal Service, we’ve had magazines. Which, like vinyl records and film photography, have been consigned by many to the past.
We disagree. We believe that print on paper, though as old as Gutenberg or his Chinese predecessors, is a medium with a future. So in reimagining The Nation for the 21st century, we asked our creative director, Robert Best, for a magazine that is unabashedly “in print,” reveling in striking typography, uncluttered design, powerful language, and the invocation of stillness and sustained attention.
Why publish on paper at all? Because of what only paper can give you: an analog experience in a digital age. Read on! And then let us know what you think.


thenation--2020-09-22--Decoding a Homeland Security Leak

Decoding a Homeland Security Leak

As the presidential election draws near , so does the fear of political violence—and not just among progressives .
A concerned law enforcement source provided The Nation with the following Department of Homeland Security intelligence assessment , which deems white supremacists the principal threat to safe elections in 2020 .
❶ “ Office of Intelligence and Analysis ” I & A is one of the array of government organizations that make up the intelligence community , a consortium of elite spy agencies including the CIA and National Security Agency .
As a subagency in the DHS , I & A @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Threats to the 2020 Election Season ” President Trump has repeatedly and falsely alleged massive voter fraud in the 2016 election , and he continues to do so ahead of the 2020 election .
The Transition Integrity Project , a bipartisan election monitoring group , recently conducted a series of “ war games ” simulating the 2020 election .
The exercises anticipated possible street violence , especially in the event of a contested outcome .
“ The potential for violent conflict is high , ” the organization concluded .
❸ “ FOUO ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ only , ” it is a security designation for sensitive but unclassified information .
It is intended to keep documents from public disclosure .
❹ “ violent actors have exploited ” According to an FBI report obtained by The Nation in June , far-right extremists sought to provoke unrest at protests by violently targeting both civilians and law enforcement .
❺ “ white supremacist extremists ” In recent years , the majority of extremist-related murders in the United States have been carried out by white supremacists .
While the FBI recently elevated “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ national threat priority , the Trump administration has reportedly been reluctant to go after them .
❻ “ pose the greatest threat of lethal violence ” I & A identifies white supremacists as the leading threat to election security—above even foreign terrorist groups like ISIS .

This article appears in the October 5/12, 2020 issue.
As the presidential election draws near, so does the fear of political violence—and not just among progressives. A concerned law enforcement source provided The Nation with the following Department of Homeland Security intelligence assessment, which deems white supremacists the principal threat to safe elections in 2020.
❶ “Office of Intelligence and Analysis” I&A is one of the array of government organizations that make up the intelligence community, a consortium of elite spy agencies including the CIA and National Security Agency. As a subagency in the DHS, I&A monitors domestic terrorism threats.
❷ “Threats to the 2020 Election Season” President Trump has repeatedly and falsely alleged massive voter fraud in the 2016 election, and he continues to do so ahead of the 2020 election. The Transition Integrity Project, a bipartisan election monitoring group, recently conducted a series of “war games” simulating the 2020 election. The exercises anticipated possible street violence, especially in the event of a contested outcome. “The potential for violent conflict is high,” the organization concluded.
❸ “FOUO” An abbreviation of “for official use only,” it is a security designation for sensitive but unclassified information. It is intended to keep documents from public disclosure. Free and Fair? Is Trump Planning a Coup d’État? Sasha Abramsky
❹ “violent actors have exploited” According to an FBI report obtained by The Nation in June, far-right extremists sought to provoke unrest at protests by violently targeting both civilians and law enforcement.
❺ “white supremacist extremists” In recent years, the majority of extremist-related murders in the United States have been carried out by white supremacists. While the FBI recently elevated “racially motivated violent extremists” to a national threat priority, the Trump administration has reportedly been reluctant to go after them.
❻ “pose the greatest threat of lethal violence” I&A identifies white supremacists as the leading threat to election security—above even foreign terrorist groups like ISIS.


thenation--2020-09-22--A Collective Art Project to Support Your Local Post Office

Postcards for Democracy is a collective art project to support the 225-year-old United States Postal Service and the right to @ @ @ @ @ the threat to our beloved ( yet neglected ) Postal Service—at a time that could @ @ @ @ @ of us have joined forces for this artful demonstration .
The aim of this campaign @ @ @ @ @ people as possible to support the USPS ( at this critical time ) , our @ @ @ @ @ democracy as a whole via the power of art .
We ’ re asking you @ @ @ @ @ make your own postcard , and mail it to 8760 W Sunset Boulevard , West @ @ @ @ @ The postcards will then become part of a collective art piece presented in both a @ @ @ @ @ space—art directed by the two of us .
To join this collective art demonstration , @ @ @ @ @ postcardsfordemocracy .

This article appears in the October 5/12, 2020 issue.
Postcards for Democracy is a collective art project to support the 225-year-old United States Postal Service and the right to vote. In light of the threat to our beloved (yet neglected) Postal Service—at a time that could jeopardize our democracy— the two of us have joined forces for this artful demonstration. The aim of this campaign is to encourage as many people as possible to support the USPS (at this critical time), our right to vote, and democracy as a whole via the power of art. We’re asking you to buy USPS stamps, make your own postcard, and mail it to 8760 W Sunset Boulevard, West Hollywood, CA 90069. The postcards will then become part of a collective art piece presented in both a physical gallery and a virtual space—art directed by the two of us. To join this collective art demonstration, go to postartfordemocracy.com or #postcardsfordemocracy.