The smoke had barely cleared from the Democratic gubernatorial triumphs in Virginia and New Jersey when the New York Times issued an editorial demanding a change in the way we elect the president. It is worried that in 2020 the states, in their sovereign wisdom, may yet again choose Donald Trump for president. So it wants to bring urgently into effect the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.

That compact is one of our favorite topics, even if were against it. The scheme is calculated to get around the electoral college, which is part of our system, established in Article II of the Constitution, of having states appoint electors to choose the president. The Times calls the electoral college a 200-year-old constitutional anachronism designed in part to appease slaveholders and ratified when no one but white male landowners could vote.

On that logic, why not throw out, say, other famous features of the Constitution, like, say, the Bill of Rights or separated powers? They were, after all, also set up by white male landowners. The Times, in any event, knows that ending the electoral college through a constitutional amendment is a non-starter. The last such effort, proposed at 1977 by President Carter, went nowhere.

That was thanks, in part, to the New York Times, which editorializing against ending the electoral college. The Gray Lady liked some of Mr. Carters proposed reforms (such as a provision to force taxpayers to fund House and Senate campaigns, even ones mounted by racists and communists). It called the abolition of the electoral college the Carter reform with the least intrinsic merit and warned it would bring more dangers than it solved.

Thats the opposite of what the current dervish of a newspaper wants. The Gray Lady has plumped for the popular vote in recent years, but has rarely been in such an all-fired hurry as she is now for this interstate compact. States that join the compact commit their electors to vote for the winner of the popular vote. The idea is that once the measure is ratified by states accounting for 270 electoral votes and approved by Congress, national popular vote goes into practical effect.

And without a constitutional amendment. That would mean that, say, in 2004 New York electors would have had to vote for President George W. Bush though New Yorkers themselves actually preferred John Kerry  by 16 points. At least in theory thats what it would mean. Were fain to note that the existence of the popular vote compact would change the way candidates campaign, widening their wooing of voters; so its hard to say for certain what the effects would be.

In any event, what we find so amazing about the Times twirling on this issue is that it comes at a time when the Left is demonizing the populist movement. One would think that a Left that is wary of populism  the so-called ideology of Donald Trump, Nigel Farage, and, say, Sarah Palin  would prefer a more republican (with a lowercase r) form of government. It seems, instead, that situational ethics are the order of the day.

At the moment, ten states have ratified the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. They include New York, California, and New Jersey (the latter on Tuesday made short work of the GOP). Not, though, Virginia (where yesterday the Democrat won as governor) or Ohio. Nor a single state in the famed Blue Wall that a year ago delivered the presidency to Mr. Trump. So the Times has its work cut out for it, though it may change its principles yet again.