The curious decline and uncertain future of the Democratic Party

[TitanTiger 7,255]

This article is from January, but there was a part that piqued my interest regarding the disadvantages the Dems have structurally with their voting bloc.  And it's not because of gerrymandering:

Quote

In 2008, the Democratic base had been reborn. Obama’s victory that year would have looked foreign to Jackson and even Roosevelt. But as much as the Obama coalition was powered by young people, minorities, single women and educated urban dwellers, it also crucially included many blue collar whites. Union members helped him win Scranton, Pennsylvania, by 26 points (Clinton eked out a 3-point margin in 2016), and farmers helped him carry Iowa by 9 percentage points (Clinton lost it by 9).

Obama lost non-college educated whites by large margins in both 2008 and 2012, but they were still crucial to his victory. In fact, he actually won more raw votes from non-college educated whites — because they are so numerous — than from African-Americans, Latinos, or educated whites. They remain the single largest demographic voting bloc, even as their share declines slowly over time.

But Obama’s success obscured his party’s decomposition further down the ballot as the Democratic Party completed its metamorphosis from a working class white party based in the South to a multiethnic one based in cities.

...The day after the election, Democrats woke up to a party that had lost most rural areas of the country, leaving behind a map that today looks like an archipelago of blue cities swimming in an ocean of red.

Democrats’ wipe out in rural areas is politically deadly.

The party’s most obvious problem in 2016 was geographic: They got more votes across the country, but in the wrong places.

For the second time in 16 years, Democrats lost the Electoral College — and the presidency — even though they won the popular vote. And if you add up all 34 Senate races last year, Democrats won 6 million more votes, thanks largely to California and New York, while failing to retake control of the chamber. In 2012, they won 1 million more votes in the House and didn’t come close to winning it.

Democrats are quick blame Republican gerrymandering.

Obama’s former Attorney General Eric Holder recently launched a party-wide effort, backed by the outgoing president, focused on turning the tables on gerrymandering by winning back state legislatures ahead of 2020, when they will redraw congressional districts. The effort is crucial to Democrats’ ability to win back the House, since the party has only one chance to change the maps every 10 years.

But Democrats a have a deeper, structural problem beyond gerrymandering. Democrats lost the House in 2010 before Republicans had redrawn the maps.

The problem is quirky but its effects are profound: Electorally speaking, Democrats live in the wrong places.

America’s electoral system rewards the party whose voters are more spread out across the map and, for now, that means the GOP. Democrats are densely packed in major cities where they waste millions of votes winning inefficiently huge margins that can’t be effectively redistributed no matter which party is drawing the congressional districts.

In Pennsylvania, for example, Republicans control 13 of the state’s 18 congressional districts even though registered Democrats outnumber Republicans in the state by close to 1 million voters. Republican gerrymandering is responsible for much of that mismatch. But GOP mapmakers were aided by the fact that Democrats tend to be inefficiently concentrated in the state’s two major cities, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.

Jowie Chen, a professor at the University of Michigan, has run hundreds of computer simulations to compare real election results to hypothetical ones in non-gerrymandered districts. The results show Democrats’ unintentional self-gerrymandering is arguably a bigger handicap than the GOP’s intentional gerrymandering.

In 2014, for instance, Republicans won 247 House seats with the help of Republican-leaning districts gerrymandered after the 2010 census. According to Chen’s simulations, however, the GOP still would have won 245 seat if the election were run again in non-gerrymandered districts.

Gerrymandering can have a big impact on individual states, like in politically divided North Carolina, where snaking districts help Republicans control 10 of the state’s 13 congressional seats. But Democrats also play this game in states they control, offsetting Republican gerrymandering, according to Chen.

Of course Democrats don’t want non-gerrymandered districts — they want district maps doctored for their advantage. So the potential upside from retaking state legislatures is significant. But in the aggregate, their gerrymanders will never be quite as effective as their more rural opponents.

Cities aren’t the only problem. Far-flung Democratic clusters along old industrial canals or small towns where universities happen to have been built a century ago also lead to wasted votes.

In conservative North Florida, for example, Democrats have pockets of support in Gainesville, home of the University of Florida, and in the state capital, Tallahassee. Clinton won Alachua and Leon Counties, home to both of those cities, respectively, by a 25-point margin. But geographically isolated Democratic redoubts like these often get subsumed by their conservative surroundings in congressional or state Senate elections with broad geographic districts.

Fluky as it may be, the inefficient distribution of Democratic voters makes it harder for Democrats to win no matter how congressional districts, state legislative districts, and even state boundaries are drawn. The mere existence of political boundaries at all is the problem.

“Because of the urbanization of the Democratic Party, any sort of geographic line-drawing is inherently going to value the rural party, and that’s the Republicans,” said Chen....

...Democrats’ distribution problem is not a fatal curse, but they’ll have to overcome the handicap and attract more voters in Republican-leaning areas.

https://www.nbcnews.com/specials/democrats-left-in-the-lurch

 

[Brad_ATX 3,902]

Interesting read and I'm not sure there's a lot that can be done other than moderating the message some in order to have a shot with rural voters (i.e. a Jones-esque candidate).  The unfortunate reality is that more jobs and opportunity are available in more densely populated areas, so it wouldn't make sense for those folks to just up and move.

[homersapien 3,294]

So, to summarize, Democrats are getting more votes and the votes they are getting come from more educated people.

I see this as more of a problem for the country than for the Democratic party.

[TitanTiger 7,255]

54 minutes ago, Brad_ATX said:

Interesting read and I'm not sure there's a lot that can be done other than moderating the message some in order to have a shot with rural voters (i.e. a Jones-esque candidate).  The unfortunate reality is that more jobs and opportunity are available in more densely populated areas, so it wouldn't make sense for those folks to just up and move.

I think moderating the message realistically is the only way to go.  You can't orient the entire party around the views of a fraction of it.  It's somewhat like countries with parliamentary setups even though we're realistically only a two-party system - you have to be willing to compromise on some things and build coalitions with folks who you have disagreements with on some issues.  And that might mean that you can't go all in on social issues in ways that only make voters in San Francisco, NYC, Seattle and Minneapolis happy.

Frankly there is a group of voters out there who on economic issues are more aligned with moderate Democrats.  Slightly left of center or even further than that.  But they see the Democratic Party as openly hostile to them on moral and social matters and completely controlled on those issues by a strident, vocal faction that has diametrically different views on marriage, family, sexual morality, raising children, parental responsibilities and so on.  So they don't join.  Better to be patronized and perhaps ignored, but more or less maintain the status quo than the alternative.

[TitanTiger 7,255]

4 minutes ago, homersapien said:

So, to summarize, Democrats are getting more votes and the votes they are getting come from more educated people.

I see this as more of a problem for the country than for the Democratic party.

You don't do summarization well if that's the takeaway you got.

[homersapien 3,294]

15 minutes ago, TitanTiger said:

You don't do summarization well if that's the takeaway you got.

How am I wrong?

[TitanTiger 7,255]

16 minutes ago, homersapien said:

How am I wrong?

You're not necessarily wrong on the facts (more votes from more educated people), it's just not the crux of their problems.  In summarizing, you utterly missed the point.

[homersapien 3,294]

4 minutes ago, TitanTiger said:

You're not necessarily wrong on the facts (more votes from more educated people), it's just not the crux of their problems.  In summarizing, you utterly missed the point.

So, what is the point?

Democratic positions on almost every issue reflect the majority opinion of the country as a whole.  The higher the education level, the more in agreement with progressive positions.

Republicans have taken advantage of our archaic electoral system to dupe enough people in the minority to vote against their own best interests while reinforcing the oligarchy that controls the country.  They did this by playing to the ethnic and religious fears of a fearful minority who are largely ignorant regarding science and economics. 

The result is our country has lost an enormous amount of respect and prestige world-wide.  It may very well mark the tipping point that marks the decline America - once considered the last great hope of mankind. 

That sounds like a problem with our political system to me, not a problem with the Democratic party.  Regardless, there will be a reckoning.

 

[homersapien 3,294]

54 minutes ago, TitanTiger said:

But they see the Democratic Party as openly hostile to them on moral and social matters and completely controlled on those issues by a strident, vocal faction that has diametrically different views on marriage, family, sexual morality, raising children, parental responsibilities and so on. 

You exaggerate Democratic positions on these issues.

The Democratic party's positions on "moral and social" matters pretty much reflect the majority positions of the country.

Democrats are far more willing to compromise on any position than are Republicans.

 http://news.gallup.com/poll/144359/democrats-republicans-differ-views-compromise.aspx

Edited December 29, 2017 by homersapien

[TitanTiger 7,255]

Just now, homersapien said:

So, what is the point?

Democratic positions on almost every issue reflect the majority opinion of the country as a whole.  The higher the education level, the more in agreement with progressive positions.

Republicans have taken advantage of our archaic electoral system to dupe enough people in the minority to vote against their own best interests while reinforcing the oligarchy that controls the country. 

The point is, even without the hated electoral college, the problem still exists.  And it's not because our system is archaic, it's because it's a representative republic, not a direct democracy, and it is a United States, not just one big plot of land under a federal system of government.  It was designed to make sure that all areas of the country were represented and that more populous areas couldn't railroad those in rural ones.  It meant that various views needed to have more broad-based appeal from all over rather than an inordinate amount of support in a handful of places.  It was designed to force changes to be more incremental rather than sudden.

So the solutions aren't to dismantle all the ways that our Constitution says our government works and how people are elected, but to reexamine a party's views and realize you can't only cater to NYC, Chicago, Boston, LA, SF, Seattle and the like.  You actually have to work with people who see things differently than you.  

Both parties are guilty of digging in their heels on things that their extreme wings holler about, but the Democrats are doing so from a position of concentrating all of their base in a few isolated areas and they are increasingly out of touch with anyone who doesn't belong to their primarily urban demographic coalition.

 

Just now, homersapien said:

They did this by playing to the ethnic and religious fears of a fearful minority who are largely ignorant regarding science and economics.

Not everyone who can't join the Democrats is the caricature that runs in your head.

 

Just now, homersapien said:

The result is our country has lost an enormous amount of respect and prestige world-wide.  It may very well mark the tipping point that marks the decline America - once considered the last great hope of mankind. 

That sounds like a problem with our political system to me, not a problem with the Democratic party.  Regardless, there will be a reckoning.

You're welcome to think that, but it won't solve your problems.

[homersapien 3,294]

7 minutes ago, TitanTiger said:

The point is, even without the hated electoral college, the problem still exists.  And it's not because our system is archaic, it's because it's a representative republic, not a direct democracy, and it is a United States, not just one big plot of land under a federal system of government.  It was designed to make sure that all areas of the country were represented and that more populous areas couldn't railroad those in rural ones.  It meant that various views needed to have more broad-based appeal from all over rather than an inordinate amount of support in a handful of places.  It was designed to force changes to be more incremental rather than sudden.

Let's get our history right.

Actually, it was designed to provide disproportionate power to sparsely populated slave states for the specific purpose of protecting slavery.

Your interpretation reminds me of the "states rights" excuse for the civil war.

 

[homersapien 3,294]

11 minutes ago, TitanTiger said:

Not everyone who can't join the Democrats is the caricature that runs in your head.

Sorry, you'll need to restate that for me.

[TitanTiger 7,255]

4 minutes ago, homersapien said:

You exaggerate Democratic positions on these issues.

The Democratic party's positions on "moral and social" matters pretty much reflect the majority positions of the country.

Democrats are far more willing to compromise on any position than are Republicans.

 http://news.gallup.com/poll/144359/democrats-republicans-differ-views-compromise.aspx

That sounds good until you get into specifics.  Then the willingness to compromise diffuses like a fart in a hurricane.  When the party that is willing to compromise tries to force the friggin' Little Sisters of the Poor to facilitate something that violates their clearly and sincerely held conscience and religious beliefs, that's not compromise.  There were myriad solutions to this little quandry that could have removed the group from the equation altogether.  The SCOTUS arguments even touched on that in comments from the various justices.  The government flatly admitted there were ways of doing this that would have satisfied the Sisters' religious conscience (in other words, a less restrictive compromise), they just didnt think of it, or just didn't pursue it:

Quote

 

Second, the Supreme Court provided a roadmap for an excellent resolution to the case — by outlining the accommodation it suggested, the Little Sisters endorsed, and the government reluctantly agreed to:

Following oral argument, the Court requested supplemental briefing from the parties addressing “whether contraceptive coverage could be provided to petitioners’ employees, through petitioners’ insurance companies, without any such notice from petitioners.” Post, p. ___. Both petitioners and the Government now confirm that such an option is feasible. Petitioners have clarified that their religious exercise is not infringed where they “need to do nothing more than contract for a plan that does not include coverage for some or all forms of contraception,” even if their employees receive cost-free contraceptive coverage from the same insurance company. Supplemental Brief for Petitioners 4. The Government has confirmed that the challenged procedures “for employers with insured plans could be modified to operate in the manner posited in the Court’s order while still ensuring that the affected women receive contraceptive coverage seamlessly, together with the rest of their health coverage.”

Putting this in plain language, the Court suggested an accommodation that was far more respectful of the Little Sisters’ religious liberty than the challenged Obamacare regulations, and the government will now have extreme difficulty credibly arguing in lower courts that the Supreme Court’s own suggested compromise should be set aside.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/435446/little-sisters-poor-just-beat-obama-administration-supreme-court

 

 

Quote

 

...Aware that its reasons for saying “no” are weak, the government then admits — on page 14! — that the real answer is “yes” — the accommodation “could be modified to operate in the manner posited in the Court’s order.” Although the insurer’s duty to provide contraception coverage “currently arises” only when the employer files a written notice of its objection, the government admits that it could impose “the same legal obligations” without any written notice. This is a clear admission that the government has a less restrictive alternative, which is fatal under the strict scrutiny required by RFRA....

...On a highly polarized issue, the Supreme Court deserves credit for seeking a solution that protects the rights of religious parties under RFRA while still accomplishing the government’s goal of free access to contraception. The Little Sisters have always said they simply want to be left alone to carry out their good works without violating their religious beliefs. Their supplemental brief proves the point, showing that there is no inherent conflict between their religious beliefs and the government’s goals. The government’s brief seems to acknowledge the handwriting on the wall. Because it can use a less restrictive means to accomplish its interests, it must.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2016/04/13/more-from-michael-mcconnell-on-the-supplementary-briefing-in-zubik-v-burwell/?utm_term=.f7c5fd5e6d4f

 

This is but one example among many when it comes to a handful of key social issues.  Even the slightest attempts at accomodation and letting each side keep its conscience and access rights intact are seen as some sort of full frontal assault on life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and comparisons to segregated bathrooms and lunch counters and The Handmaid's Tale suddenly abound.  

Don't kid yourself.  Democrats might be more willing to compromise theoretically.  They might be more willing to compromise on some tax issues or economic issues.  But there are still plenty of issues that they will brook no dissent without castigating anyone who asks for an accommodation as modern day bigots.

[homersapien 3,294]

12 minutes ago, TitanTiger said:

You're welcome to think that, but it won't solve your problems.

Not just what I think. It's what the rest of the world thinks. 

https://www.vox.com/conversations/2017/7/3/15885540/america-donald-trump-obama-global-opinion-pew-russia-israel

And to be honest, I don't have many problems personally.  I don't have kids so I don't have to worry that much about the future of others either.   

[TitanTiger 7,255]

3 minutes ago, homersapien said:

Let's get our history right.

Actually, it was designed to provide disproportionate power to sparsely populated slave states for the specific purpose of protecting slavery.

That was some of the motivation, yes.  But you could have taken the slavery issue out of it and many of the same compromises and decisions still would have been made - limited powers of the federal gov't and the rest delegated to the states, specifically enumerated rights via the Bill of Rights, a bi-cameral legislature (allowing for representation proportionally by population equally by state) and separation of powers.  Perhaps the electoral college wouldn't have been come up with (maybe it would have anyway), but the structural issues this article points out from Democrats concentrating themselves too much into small urban islands across the country would still exist even with it gone.

 

3 minutes ago, homersapien said:

Your interpretation reminds me of the "states rights" excuse for the civil war.

This is one of the reasons you get less respect around here than you otherwise deserve.  Making not-so-thinly veiled associations of your opponent in argument with slavery apologists is a great way to derail or shut conversation down, not so much at furthering it.

[TitanTiger 7,255]

2 minutes ago, homersapien said:

Not just what I think. It's what the rest of the world thinks. 

https://www.vox.com/conversations/2017/7/3/15885540/america-donald-trump-obama-global-opinion-pew-russia-israel

And to be honest, I don't have many problems personally.  I don't have kids so I don't have to worry that much about the future of others either.   

I was replying to your last remark:

"That sounds like a problem with our political system to me, not a problem with the Democratic party."

So long as you fail to address actual the ways to fix this and focus solely on changes to our Constitutionally mandated political structure, your problems will persist.

[homersapien 3,294]

31 minutes ago, TitanTiger said:

This is one of the reasons you get less respect around here than you otherwise deserve.  Making not-so-thinly veiled associations of your opponent in argument with slavery apologists is a great way to derail or shut conversation down, not so much at furthering it.

I'm sorry that you took personal offense at that, but it's still accurate.  I was not trying to suggest you personally support slavery.  

This crap about our system providing weight to small rural states as some sort of adjustment for "fairness" is just that, crap.   It's attaching what sounds like a noble cause (i.e.: states rights) when it was really about slavery.  That's just fact.

If saying so provides me with "less respect" than I otherwise deserve, so be it.  

Edited December 29, 2017 by homersapien

[homersapien 3,294]

5 minutes ago, TitanTiger said:

I was replying to your last remark:

"That sounds like a problem with our political system to me, not a problem with the Democratic party."

So long as you fail to address actual the ways to fix this and focus solely on changes to our Constitutionally mandated political structure, your problems will persist.

I am not focusing solely on changing our constitutionally mandated political structure.

I put my faith in education and the revelation of scientific and economic reality with time, even if the rest of the world passes is by in the meantime.

You can't fool all the people all the time.

[TitanTiger 7,255]

Just now, homersapien said:

I'm sorry that you took personal offense at that, but it's still accurate.  I was not trying to suggest you personally support slavery.

This crap about our system providing weight to small rural states as some sort of adjustment for "fairness" is just that, crap.   It's attaching what sounds like a noble cause (i.e.: states rights) when it was really about slavery.  That's just fact.

If saying so makes me less popular than I otherwise deserve, so be it.

It simply wasn't the only reason such a system of government came about (balancing representation using population as well as equal vote per state).  Was it part of the motivation for some?  Sure.  But it wasn't the only consideration.  There was tension between cities and rural communities and their concerns even without the slavery issue in the mix.  Folks living out in the Western frontiers of Pennsylvania, Maryland or New York often had very different views and challenges they wanted addressed vs city-dwelling merchants living on the eastern seaboard cities of NYC, Boston or Baltimore.  To act like these concerns and their resulting compromises was just about slavery is major exaggeration and ignorance of the dynamics of the time.

[4AUsince62 10]

24 minutes ago, homersapien said:

Let's get our history right.

Actually, it was designed to provide disproportionate power to sparsely populated slave states for the specific purpose of protecting slavery.

Your interpretation reminds me of the "states rights" excuse for the civil war.

 

https://www.factcheck.org/2008/02/the-reason-for-the-electoral-college/

[homersapien 3,294]

20 minutes ago, TitanTiger said:

That sounds good until you get into specifics.  Then the willingness to compromise diffuses like a fart in a hurricane.  When the party that is willing to compromise tries to force the friggin' Little Sisters of the Poor to facilitate something that violates their clearly and sincerely held conscience and religious beliefs, that's not compromise.  There were myriad solutions to this little quandry that could have removed the group from the equation altogether.  The SCOTUS arguments even touched on that in comments from the various justices.  The government flatly admitted there were ways of doing this that would have satisfied the Sisters' religious conscience (in other words, a less restrictive compromise), they just didnt think of it, or just didn't pursue it:

That's just BS.  The government was very willing to compromise. Ironically, it was actually The Little Sisters of the Poor who refused to compromise by refusing to even fill out the paperwork which allowed for their exemption:

 

"The Affordable Care Act requires all U.S. insurance plans to cover 20 varieties of FDA-approved contraceptives at no cost to patients. This affects employers at both for-profit and non-profit organizations, because they have to provide coverage for contraception in their insurance plans. Immediately following the passage of the law in 2010, a number of organizations objected, saying that some of the approved forms of contraception are the equivalent of abortifacients, or drugs that cause abortion. If they refused to provide the coverage, they would face heavy fines.

So, the government set about making exceptions. Explicitly religious organizations—churches, synagogues—are exempt from this requirement. After the Supreme Court’s decision in Hobby Lobby this summer, an accommodation was created for closely held, for-profit businesses that have a religious objection—they can fill out a form and submit it to the government, which prompts a third-party organization to provide the coverage instead.

This kind of accommodation is also available to religious non-profit organizations, which includes the seven plaintiffs in these cases: the Little Sisters of the Poor; a pro-life organization called Priests for Life; representatives of several Roman Catholic organizations; and Geneva College, Southern Nazarene University, and East Texas Baptist University. But these organizations say this is insufficient for a number of technical reasons, the most important being that they believe filling out the form still amounts to complicity in providing people with contraception."

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/11/the-little-sisters-of-the-poor-are-headed-to-the-supreme-court/414729/

 

 

[homersapien 3,294]

5 minutes ago, TitanTiger said:

It simply wasn't the only reason such a system of government came about (balancing representation using population as well as equal vote per state).  Was it part of the motivation for some?  Sure.  But it wasn't the only consideration.  There was tension between cities and rural communities and their concerns even without the slavery issue in the mix.  Folks living out in the Western frontiers of Pennsylvania, Maryland or New York often had very different views and challenges they wanted addressed vs city-dwelling merchants living on the eastern seaboard cities of NYC, Boston or Baltimore.  To act like these concerns and their resulting compromises was just about slavery is major exaggeration and ignorance of the dynamics of the time.

No it's not.   Slavery was the controlling factor.  It's no exaggeration to recognize that.

And who is to say that people living in rural areas have particular values worth protecting that city dwellers don't?

That's nothing more than a self-justification claim made by rural people, not one with any inherent empirical basis.

 

[homersapien 3,294]

13 minutes ago, 4AUsince62 said:

https://www.factcheck.org/2008/02/the-reason-for-the-electoral-college/

That's a very good argument for it being archaic.

As far as the founders not trusting democracy, look what the electoral college did for us in 2016.

 

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/electoral-college-has-been-divisive-day-one-180961171/

The story of the Electoral College is also one of slavery—an institution central to the founding of American democracy. The bulk of the new nation’s citizenry resided in cities like Philadelphia and Boston in the North, leaving the South sparsely populated by farmers, plantation owners, other landholders, and, of course, enslaved laborers. This disparity in the population distribution became a core element of the legislative branch, and in turn, the Electoral College.

″[Southerners] wanted slaves to count the same as anyone else, and some northerners thought slaves shouldn’t be counted at all because they were treated as property rather than as people,” says author Michael Klarman, a professor at Harvard Law School. In his recently released book, The Framers’ Coup, Klarman discusses how each framer’s interests came into play while creating the document that would one day rule the country.

“One of two biggest divisions at the Philadelphia convention was over how slaves would count in purposes of apportioning the House of Representatives,” he explains. The issue vexed and divided the founders, presenting what James Madison, a slave owner, called a “difficulty…of a serious nature.”

 

Edited December 29, 2017 by homersapien

[TitanTiger 7,255]

15 minutes ago, homersapien said:

That's just BS.  The government was very willing to compromise. Ironically, it was actually The Little Sisters of the Poor who refused to compromise by refusing to even fill out the paperwork which allowed for their exemption:

 

"The Affordable Care Act requires all U.S. insurance plans to cover 20 varieties of FDA-approved contraceptives at no cost to patients. This affects employers at both for-profit and non-profit organizations, because they have to provide coverage for contraception in their insurance plans. Immediately following the passage of the law in 2010, a number of organizations objected, saying that some of the approved forms of contraception are the equivalent of abortifacients, or drugs that cause abortion. If they refused to provide the coverage, they would face heavy fines.

So, the government set about making exceptions. Explicitly religious organizations—churches, synagogues—are exempt from this requirement. After the Supreme Court’s decision in Hobby Lobby this summer, an accommodation was created for closely held, for-profit businesses that have a religious objection—they can fill out a form and submit it to the government, which prompts a third-party organization to provide the coverage instead.

This kind of accommodation is also available to religious non-profit organizations, which includes the seven plaintiffs in these cases: the Little Sisters of the Poor; a pro-life organization called Priests for Life; representatives of several Roman Catholic organizations; and Geneva College, Southern Nazarene University, and East Texas Baptist University. But these organizations say this is insufficient for a number of technical reasons, the most important being that they believe filling out the form still amounts to complicity in providing people with contraception."

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/11/the-little-sisters-of-the-poor-are-headed-to-the-supreme-court/414729/

Because filling out that paperwork was mandated in such a way that it still violated their beliefs.  And regardless of what you or The Atlantic thinks, the SCOTUS disagreed that the government pursued the "least restrictive means" to the problem, and ironically, the government agreed.

[4AUsince62 10]

12 minutes ago, homersapien said:

That's a very good argument for it being archaic.

As far as the founders not trusting democracy, look what the electoral college did for us.

It was designed to prevent a select few super-cities with massive populations controlling the election and country. If that were the case all one would have to do is promise those cities whatever they wanted and ignore the rest of the country. If you’re comfortable with 5 cities in America dictating the future of the country I guess it would be great to be done away with. It’s easy to support something that follows your view. It’s the constitutional rights of those you disagree with that most have a problem with. The simplest solution is deliver a better message. “If you build it, they will come.”