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NY Times: We’re Losing So Let’s Cancel the Midterm Elections

Posted By Daniel Greenfield On November 3, 2014 @ 9:45 am In The Point | 26 Comments

Comrades, your proposal intrigues me

I wouldn’t be too surprised if this idea picks up steam. Minority turnout is much lower in midterm elections. The more reliable Dem bases often stay home.

The Dems just try to do away with whatever obstacles get in their way. If they can’t turn out voters for the midterms, just cancel them.

By Tuesday night about 90 million Americans will have cast ballots in an election that’s almost certain to create greater partisan divisions, increase gridlock and render governance of our complex nation even more difficult.

Let’s translate that from liberal to English. “We’re going to lose”.

Ninety million sounds like a lot, but that means that less than 40 percent of the electorate will bother to vote, even though candidates, advocacy groups and shadowy “super PACs” will have spent more than $1 billion to air more than two million ads to influence the election.

We spent a ton of money… but Republican turnout will still beat ours.

There was a time when midterm elections made sense — at our nation’s founding, the Constitution represented a new form of republican government

Liberals preface every radical change with an absurd claim that it made sense once, but now modernity has overtaken it.

Sure a Supreme Court made sense at our nation’s founding, but now we have computers.

Maybe Trial by Jury made sense a few hundred years ago, but now we have Twitter.

Elections made sense long ago, but today we all watch the Daily Show.

But especially at a time when Americans’ confidence in the ability of their government to address pressing concerns is at a record low, two-year House terms no longer make any sense. We should get rid of federal midterm elections entirely.

Timmy, that’s what they call a non-sequitur.

Americans have no confidence in government. Let’s extend the terms of government officials so they can’t be removed.

Moreover, Twitter, ubiquitous video cameras, 24-hour cable news and a host of other technologies provide a level of hyper-accountability the framers could not possibly have imagined.

Twitter, video cameras, cable news! Who needs elections anyway?

In the modern age, we do not need an election every two years to communicate voters’ desires to their elected officials.

We don’t need an election to communicate voter desires. We need an election to throw the bums out. Surely you good liberal gentlemen understand that. Some things you just can’t do through Twitter, cable news and video cameras.

The main impact of the midterm election in the modern era has been to weaken the president, the only government official (other than the powerless vice president) elected by the entire nation.

Which would be really awesome, like the filibuster, if he were a Republican. But since he’s a Democrat, he now embodies the national will… even though everyone hates him.

The realities of the modern election cycle are that we spend almost two years selecting a president with a well-developed agenda, but then, less than two years after the inauguration, the midterm election cripples that same president’s ability to advance that agenda.

It’s almost like the system was designed to prevent an imperial presidency. What do we call that again? Checks and balances?

Another quirk is that, during midterm elections, the electorate has been whiter, wealthier, older and more educated than during presidential elections.

Finally we come to the real issue. Those midterm voters are just too damn white.

There’s an obvious, simple fix, though.

I love simple obvious fixes. Especially when they are illegal, unnecessary and nakedly partisan attempts to rewrite the system.

The government should, through a constitutional amendment, extend the term of House members to four years and adjust the term of senators to either four or eight years, so that all elected federal officials would be chosen during presidential election years.

This simple obvious fix doesn’t go far enough for me. Can’t we just appoint them for life? Maybe by a diverse committee of community groups, newspaper editors and unions? Surely this would be a much fairer system?

And then we can abolish the Bill of Rights in another simple, obvious fix.


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