Dave Helling: Electoral College victory will haunt Donald Trump’s presidency
President Donald Trump’s adviser Stephen Miller made the rounds of the talk shows Sunday, defending his boss, suggesting the legislative and judicial branches of government are nuisances to be overcome.
He also insisted voter fraud remains a rampant problem. “I’m prepared to go on any show, anywhere, anytime, and repeat it and say the president of the United States is correct 100 percent,” Miller said on ABC’s “This Week.”
Repeating it doesn’t make it true, of course. And Miller — like his boss — appears to confuse problems with voter registration, which are real, with actual voter fraud, which isn’t.
Miller quoted Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, whose understanding of math and law seems similarly strained.
As ABC host George Stephanopoulos helpfully pointed out to his guest, “you provided zero evidence that the president’s claim that he would have won … the popular vote if 3 million to 5 million illegal immigrants hadn’t voted.”
Why, months after the election, are Miller and Trump still complaining about the popular vote tally of the 2016 election? Wouldn’t a simple “all votes matter” statement suffice?
Part of the reason is Trump’s own ego, of course. Having hoped for — and claimed — a landslide, the president still struggles with the fact that he’s in the White House essentially on a technicality.
But something more interesting is at work, and Trump’s own behavior reveals it.
At least twice, according to published reports, Trump has asked Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to consider abandoning the Electoral College. McConnell, being a good Republican, rejected those requests.
Why would Trump want to eliminate electors? Perhaps because he senses the truth: Any system that installs a second-place finisher unavoidably delegitimizes the winner, creating an immediate and continuing political problem.
We don’t need to relitigate the Electoral College here. But we can study history: In 2001, President George W. Bush made virtually no references to his popular-vote loss to Al Gore the previous November. Instead, Bush legitimized himself through actions, not words.
Trump has no such patience. He’s a flurry of executive orders, statements, assertions.
In each case, the president and his team have made the same argument, claiming to know what the American people said in the election, or that everyone wanted him to prevail.
“You lost the election,” adviser Kellyanne Conway tweeted to Chelsea Clinton Feb. 3.
For most Americans, the first thought when hearing that is: Wait. Hillary Clinton got more votes.
Trump senses this. He knows most people don’t see elections as a civic lesson, but as a contest between two people. In a weird way, Trump’s Electoral College victory will haunt his presidency because every time he makes a decision, voters are reminded of how he won.
That’s why he wants to get rid of it. Failing that, though, he wants to delegitimize the popular vote itself. That explains the repeated false claims of voter fraud.
Oh, and voter fraud claims depress turnout in 2020. In the president’s world, that’s a win-win.
This story was originally published February 13, 2017 at 8:30 PM with the headline "Dave Helling: Electoral College victory will haunt Donald Trump’s presidency."