Michael Barone is one of the greatest journalists and political scholars of our times. (Full disclosure: he’s also a family friend).
He also just made a very strong case for #Calexit.
That does not appear to be the intention of his recent Washington Examiner column. Barone was defending the Electoral College—by arguing that it prevented California from having too much power.
This election was historic in part because of California, writes Barone. “For the first time in the nation’s history the most populous state was a political outlier, voting at one extreme in the national political spectrum.”
He writes that California, as it becomes more liberal and Democratic, has become a political outlier, voting more and more differently than the rest of the country. And he points out that if California continues to become less like the country, we may see more splits where one candidate wins the popular vote by rolling up big margins like Hillary Clinton did in California, and another wins the Electoral College.
Barone also takes several shots at us. He compares the weeks it takes us to count votes with the way Brazil does it in five hours. (That’s unfair—given that we live in a country with local elections, while Brazil has national elections, and that we live in a state where we give people many different ways to vote, instead of limiting the franchise, as has become common in many other states.)
Barone warns that abolishing the Electoral College could allow California to “colonize” the rest of the country: “In a popular vote system, the voters of this geographically distant and culturally distinct state, whose contempt for heartland Christians resembles imperial London’s disdain for the “lesser breeds” it governed, could impose something like colonial rule over the rest of the nation.”
Such ideas may appeal in the rest of the U.S. But the notion that democratic discrimination against California voters – our votes are worth much less, both in the Electoral College and in the U.S. Senate – is OK because our views are out of step is outrageous. And it’s sure to create anti-federal resentment here. Look for #Calexit supporters to circulate it as an example of D.C. thinking that requires California to consider secession.
After all, if we’re so out of step, why should we be in the union in the first place?