It is poor character that causes one to blame the rules when the game doesn’t go as one had hoped. It is a sign of imprudence to try to change the rules after every undesirable outcome.
Expect these vices to be on display Wednesday morning, particularly if Democrats fail to take the Senate, or if they fall short of the tidal-wave House pickups they have been expecting all year. The Left has been deploying such arguments (or excuses for failure) since the 2016 election didn’t go its way.
Expect to hear inane arguments about the illegitimacy of whatever power the GOP holds after the election: Trump is only in the White House because of the Electoral College is an obvious one. Reporters will gripe if Democrats’ percentage of the House is lower than their share of the “popular vote” for Congress — a made-up number. Last election, reputable outlets even entertained the farcical counting of the “popular vote” for the U.S. Senate — even more ridiculous considering two Democrats were running against each other in California.
Some of their complaints will amount to lamenting that not every Senate seat is up every two years. In other words, they will complain about the rules of the political competition, even though the rules have been in place for decades or centuries.
Abolishing the Senate has become an avant-garde cause in some corners of the journalistic commentariat as well. After failing to torpedo the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, the call went up for the next Democratic president to pack the court by adding a 10th and 11th justice. The alternative argument was to abolish the Court altogether.
Uprooting a 250-year-old system because it doesn’t advance your preferred policies at this particular moment is a radical idea. But even the Left and the Democrats should be wary of a government system where the rules keep changing. A system with rules that are easily tossed is a system without rules.
Thankfully, most of the changes Democrats want would require a constitutional amendment. Get two-thirds of both chambers and three-fourths of all states, and you can abolish the Electoral College. Heck, they could even give three Senate seats to the big states, if somehow they convinced enough small states to go along with it.
Even if they could change the way our elections work, that doesn’t mean they should. Aside from the costs of ever-changing rules would be the uncertainty and unforeseen risks of supplanting our road-tested system with a brand new one dreamed up in a few explainer pieces.
This isn’t to say none of the Democrats’ complaints have value, or that there’s no room for updating and reforming our politics. Gerrymandering really is ugly, resulting in congressional districts that have no cultural or geographical unity drawn by people with a direct stake in the lines. States should try to do what Iowa has done with a rules-based, nonpartisan redistricting process.
But Democratic complaints in recent years have been nakedly self-serving, seeking excuses for losing.
Tuesday should be a good Election Day for Democrats. They are likely to take the House and not lose as many Senate seats as the map would have suggested. The question for Wednesday morning: Can Democrats accept victory, or will they once again demand the rules be bent to help them?
[Also read: How will we determine whether Republicans or Democrats won the midterm elections?]
