Warren didn’t provide details on how, exactly, she would get rid of that system. In fact, it’s probably not touchable any time soon. Changing it — either by amending the Constitution, or via a state-by-state workaround that some are promoting — would require the acquiescence of those rural small-staters who so indignantly insist that their votes should count for more than the votes of urban dwellers, because … well, because.

What should be a mostly geographic debate has become a hotly partisan one, because geography so affects our politics. Democrats today tend to cluster in big urban centers while Republicans tend to spread out over less-populated rural areas. You can debate the qualities of either lifestyle, but what’s undebatable is that the Electoral College tends to help the latter.

It’s no coincidence, then, that both the modern presidents who have gotten into office with Electoral College asterisks have been Republicans. To find the last Republican president who initially got into office by actually getting more votes than the Democrat, you have to reach three decades back to George H.W. Bush, in 1988.