The system is rigged

The media are full of postmortems about what Trump did right and what Hillary did wrong.

How her voters weren't motivated and didn't show up but his were and did.

How she lost and he won.

But all these postmortems mask the simple truth that, so far as we can tell at this point, Hillary Clinton won the election.

Her voters showed up in greater numbers than his, hers were motivated as well as or better than his, and she and her team ran with a winning strategy that got her the stamp of approval from significantly more voters than his.

Donald Trump is not President Elect because she did anything wrong or he did anything right.

Donald Trump lost the election, and is President Elect only because our presidents are selected according to an expressly anti-democratic and anti-national 18th Century process that has twice in 20 years stolen the presidency from a Democrat who won the election, and given it both times to a Republican.

The postmortems should overwhelmingly be about that astonishing fact, that twice in two decades the Electoral College system stole the election from the Democratic candidate with the suffrage of the people and gave the presidency to a Republican loser.

They should be focusing on the colossal irony that though the GOP are the ones forever yelling about it the system really is rigged, but in their favor, to steal presidential elections from the actual majority of voters thanks to both the de facto gerrymandering that concentrates blue votes in blue states and the assignment of disproportionate weight in the EC to votes cast in red states.

Why are the postmortems not doing that?

Because everybody knows the only defense of the EC is just as idiotic as any other form of pro-GOP propaganda addressed to the great mass of American blockheads, that the anti-democratic weighting in the EC is valuable just because it throttles the influence of voters in populous states containing America's bigger cities.

That is a good thing, the argument goes, because those voters favor "urban interests," and it would be a tragedy for America for those interests to prevail just as far and as often as the actual majority of all American voters would want them too.

And the unmentioned concentration of blue voters who are personally concerned with those "urban interests" in a few blue states just makes it all the easier to diminish the impact of those votes.

Whether we take that plea as a racist dog-whistle or just an appeal to the party interests of the GOP, either way it's an outright and undisguised demand for a system that undervalues Democratic voters and overvalues GOP voters, and thus once in a while actually steals the office from the election's Democratic winner in order to hand the presidency to a GOP loser.

A loser like GW Bush.

Remember how well that worked out?

And a loser like Donald Trump.

And everybody knows that even if we shine as much light on this as we can and the whole country can't help seeing it, we won't be able to remedy the problem.

The Republicans will just frankly and openly say they have to save America, even from itself, and even at that cost.

And the Article V amendment process, in which all states are equal so that the 585 thousand red state voters of Wyoming have exactly as much to say about amending the constitution as the 39 million blue state voters of California and the Republican Party is thus even more fantastically privileged, will absolutely ensure the EC is never done away with, so long as it rigs presidential selection in the GOP's favor.

38 states out of the 50 would have to agree, and there are not nearly that many blue states.

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.

Come to that, in the senate, the 585 thousand red state voters of Wyoming have exactly as much to say about anything as the 39 million blue state voters of California, and the Republican Party is again fantastically privileged.

And notice that really annoying last clause of Article V that says "no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate."

That clause could be deleted by the normal Article V process, without the consent of any particular state, since the deletion would not deprive any state of its equal representation in the senate.

And then after that an amendment could be passed in the usual manner, again without the consent of any particular state, to make representation in the senate proportional to population.

But that, too, will never happen.

So, hey, is the system rigged?

Wow.

You bet it is.

No wonder Republicans and the entire conservative movement just loooooove that old time US Constitution.