First, The Facts

Since Hillary Clinton’s surprise loss last week to political neophyte Donald Trump, Democrats across the country have called for an end to the Electoral College. They are angry because Clinton won the popular vote, but because Trump won the right mix of states, he won the Electoral College vote, which makes him the president-elect.

Of course, this win is not yet set in stone, as the electors do not meet until December 19. However, according to local Portland, Oregon, news outlet KOIN 6, faithless electors have never changed the outcome of a presidential election in the 227-year history of the United States government. But then again, the Electoral College has never been faced with such an unconventional election season as the 2016 presidential race.

But now that Donald Trump has more than enough electors to get him into the White House, prominent Democrats, Clinton supporters, and Clinton surrogates are calling for an end to the controversial practice.

Image by Nati Harnik/AP Images]

Retiring Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA), who inflamed tensions and angered Berniecrats at the Nevada state Democratic Convention in May, has been the loudest critic of the Electoral College in recent days. On Tuesday, she filed what the Los Angeles Times calls a “long shot bill” to get rid of the Electoral College System after her friend, Hillary Clinton, won the popular vote but lost the election on November 8.

It’s uncommon but not unheard of for a presidential candidate to lose the popular vote while winning the Electoral College. Again, the Los Angeles Times lays out the fact that only three other times in U.S. history has a candidate lost the popular vote while winning the Electoral College vote. Those election years were 1876, 1888, and in 2000, when former Vice President Al Gore lost a bitter battle against George W. Bush.

A map published by ProCon.org shows the electoral map from the 1992 election. Bill Clinton won with only 43 percent of the vote in a three-way race between himself, incumbent George H.W. Bush, and tech mogul H. Ross Perot of the Reform Party. Perot generated 19 percent of the popular vote, while Bush only managed to get just over 37 percent.

Please RT in solidarity. The Democratic Party is not in control of itself anymore. It must be dismantled, not covered in touch-up paint. pic.twitter.com/kNcntXM6TD — dan rolle (@danrolle) November 15, 2016

The Commentary

Back in June, the formerly reliable statistical predictor 538.com announced that Hillary Clinton was winning the nomination because more Democrats were voting for her. It supposedly had nothing to do at all with the massive support she had from the superdelegates that had been locked in for her before she had announced her run. It supposedly had nothing to do with widespread voter suppression wherein Democrats had their registrations changed or eliminated across the country.

This is the same organization that predicted Clinton had a 71 percent chance of winning the presidential race and insisted that Bernie would have lost the nomination anyway because more people voted for Clinton during the primaries. What the pundits failed to see (or blatantly ignored) was how angry the American people are, and how badly we want to see real change, not fluffy platitudes.

Now, because Clinton lost to Trump, Boxer and other pundits and Democratic leaders want to put an end to the Electoral College.

Boxer is the same person who admonished Bernie Sanders delegates to stop booing and vote for Clinton, who mocked those very same delegates for being on fire for Bernie. The arrogance and irony are not lost on me or my fellow Berniecrats.

Imagine @BernieSanders as Minority Leader and @ninaturner running the DNC. People would trust the party again. Or lose with Schumer +Dean. pic.twitter.com/aRPOWIuxI6 — Pat the Berner (@SilERabbit) November 16, 2016

Where were they when Bernie Sanders and his supporters were calling for the Democrats to change or abolish the superdelegates? Where were they when we called them out for doing nothing about vote tampering in Chicago? Where were they when we pointed out that although Bernie won Washington state in a landslide, most of the superdelegates pledged their votes to Clinton? Where were they?

They were telling Bernie supporters to suck it up and deal with it. They were telling us they didn’t need our support during the general election. They were mocking us as crybabies for calling out the Democrats’ collusion with the mainstream media and political corruption.

Now, those very same people are crying themselves, declaring that Trump is not their president.

It is time for the Democrats to take a long, hard look in the mirror, for if they support ending the Electoral College, they should be just as outraged by the superdelegate system. However, it seems as though they are not. And they are only angry because their candidate did not win.

This year, Democrats had appointed superdelegates who weren’t even elected officials. The idea of the superdelegates is that they are more qualified than the average American to make political decisions is flat-out incorrect. And it is glaringly obvious now in the wake of the election of the most unqualified, most despised man in modern U.S. history.

PCCC: Democrats will continue losing elections unless they aggressively take on corporate power https://t.co/CcfO1hcDTA — BoldProgressives.org (@BoldProgressive) November 16, 2016

Ultimately, the problem is not the Electoral College itself. It is the undemocratic process that the Democrats use to nominate their candidates. While Bernie claimed victory in July after getting some concessions from the party leadership regarding the superdelegates, it is but a band-aid on a broken system that must be completely abolished and rebuilt. Unlike the Electoral College, which would take a Constitutional Amendment to change, the Democratic Party could completely reform its nomination process.

So instead of complaining about Trump, Democrats (and progressives) must find ways to create a more inclusive, democratic process for nominating candidates that can connect with the American public, generate excitement, and win elections. And if the Democrats would stop promoting the same, tired establishment politicians, they could rise like a Phoenix from the ashes to defeat Trump in 2020. But that is only if they start listening to the American public and stop doubling down on failed policies and ideology.

[Featured Image by Paul Sancya/AP Images]