The 2024 presidential election is tomorrow. Some observations on indirect democracy and constitutional intent.

 Yes, tomorrow the country holds the 2024 presidential election.  You may have read otherwise, but that would be from those who are either not paying attention, or refusing to comment on the Emperor's rather unusual fashion statement.  Tomorrow, the country will vote on those who will decide what to do in 2024.  If enough Trumpists are elected to enough positions, then whatever happens in two years will be unimportant.  A Biden/whoever victory won't be certified, but a Trump victory will be certified.  It will be heads-I-win, tails-you-lose.  So let us consider, if briefly, the concept of indirect democracy.

Recall that the president was originally conceived to be a position elected, not through the crazy vote aggregation scheme that we call "the electoral college," but by a group of electors called, "the electoral college," who were to be selected by the states.  You were to vote at the state level, and those state officials would choose those who would select the president.  In some twisted, crazy way, that's almost what is happening, with a couple of obvious problems.  First, there is a two-year disconnect, which creates a procedural problem, although even that is not necessarily an inherent problem if you accept the premise of the founders.  The bigger problem, really, is the core dishonesty of what is happening.  If everyone just knew and accepted that presidents were not elected, even through the wacky math of the electoral college, but selected by either state legislatures, or the House in its one-vote-per-state rule, or whatever, then everyone could participate in democracy appropriately.  Act accordingly.

The big problem is the charade.  It's not so much the idea that Secretaries of State, state legislatures, the House and other assorted and discombobulated bodies will, in their haphazard way, fuck with the electoral process, although the haphazard fucking-with is, itself, problematic.  Rather, tomorrow we pretend that it is a midterm election.  Midterm elections are subject to the mathematical processes of surge-and-decline, and all that.  In two years, people will act as though the presidential election is happening, rather than has happened two years earlier (i.e. tomorrow).  That charade prevents people from behaving rationally according to reality.

Also, stupidity prevents people from behaving rationally according to reality, but one problem at a time.  This one, in principle, would be solvable.  Yet many problems are solvable in principle.  Instead, though, we carry on our merry way pretending this is a midterm.  It isn't.  This is the big kahuna.

Arcana, "Gone Tomorrow," from Arc of Testimony.