Alexander Hamilton probably wanted Hillary Clinton to win.

In response to my complaints that Hillary won the popular vote even while losing the Electoral College, my friends who are (ahem) perhaps more faithful to the Constitution as written point out — correctly — that the Constitution has a number of “countermajoritarian” features, that the American government was designed as a republic instead of a straight democracy in order to ensure the majority couldn’t tyrannize the minority.

In fact, they say, the Electoral College is an important one of these countermajoritarian features because it gives individual states more of a role in selecting the executive, instead of leaving it a straight-up popularity contest.

There’s pretty strong evidence, though, the Founders didn’t intend the popular vote losers to regularly win office. One feature of the old — failed — Articles of Confederation  is required a supermajority (nine of the 13 states) to pass legislation. Which meant a single state, or a small minority of states, could muck things up.

That requirement appears nowhere in the Constitution. And the authors of that Constitution resisted calls to give each state the exact same representation in Congress because they thought such a move would be too countermajoritarian. Here’s Alexander Hamilton, writing in Federalist No. 22:

Every idea of proportion and every rule of fair representation conspire to condemn a principle, which gives to Rhode Island an equal weight in the scale of power with Massachusetts, or Connecticut, or New York; and to Deleware an equal voice in the national deliberations with Pennsylvania, or Virginia, or North Carolina. Its operation contradicts the fundamental maxim of republican government, which requires that the sense of the majority should prevail. Sophistry may reply, that sovereigns are equal, and that a majority of the votes of the States will be a majority of confederated America. But this kind of logical legerdemain will never counteract the plain suggestions of justice and common-sense. It may happen that this majority of States is a small minority of the people of America; and two thirds of the people of America could not long be persuaded, upon the credit of artificial distinctions and syllogistic subtleties, to submit their interests to the management and disposal of one third. The larger States would after a while revolt from the idea of receiving the law from the smaller.

Which, ahem:

This election was not precisely what Hamilton was writing about. But jeepers, it’s kind of on point, no? The Founders were countermajoritarian, perhaps, but not that countermajoritarian. In fact, they saw some danger to the republic in such features.

Similarly, James Madison wrote in Federalist 58, warning against a requirement that Congress need a quorum to pass laws — saying it gave the minority too much power over the majority. And at the end of the day, the majority is supposed to win, right?

Why wouldn’t we apply this logic to the presidential election?

In all cases where justice or the general good might require new laws to be passed, or active measures to be pursued, the fundamental principle of free government would be reversed. It would be no longer the majority that would rule: the power would be transferred to the minority. Were the defensive privilege limited to particular cases, an interested minority might take advantage of it to screen themselves from equitable sacrifices to the general weal, or, in particular emergencies, to extort unreasonable indulgences.

You may point out that Hillary, while winning a greater number of popular votes, did not win a majority. I say fine! Let’s dump Gary Johnson and Jill Stein from the ballot and have a runoff election!

Or there are other answers. “Countermajoritarian” features have their place in our governance, but it’s a limited place. If a minority of voters can routinely win the presidential election, trouble is probably stewing. I’ll get in trouble with my conservative friends for saying this, but the Constitution, as it currently works, is clearly defective. Let’s fix it.

Filmstruck Queue: "Hard Eight" by Paul Thomas Anderson

Three thoughts about "Hard Eight" just as soon as I have a quickie wedding in Reno....

1. This is P.T. Anderson's first feature — he'd go on to really break through in the mainstream with his next, "Boogie Nights" and "Magnolia" after that — and it's a little different from the sprawling ensemble-driven pieces that made his name. This movie focuses mostly on a single character, Philip Baker Hall's Sydney, and his relationship with a young, dumb ne'er do well played by John C. Reilly. It's a great role for Hall: Sydney is a cipher until the movie's final moments, when the reasons for his paternal care of Reilly become suddenly clear in a burst of violence. And the circles under Hall's eyes? Man, they deserved an Oscar acting nomination on their own.

2. There's a cameo here, all of two or three minutes, by Philip Seymour Hoffman before he was Philip Seymour Hoffman.  One hand, there's no reason to expect future stardom here: Hoffman's got long, stringy hair and a chubby body, and not all of that is character development. But the manic energy — tinged, ultimately with regret — that Hoffman brings to this part of a redneck hotshot at the craps table proves the old adage about there being no small parts.

3. I'm now convinced that every movie with John C. Reilly should feature a short monologue about his martial arts skills. Between his part in this movie and "Boogie Nights," it's kind of easy to see why Reilly — who once seemed to rival Hoffman as one of his generation's leading dramatic film character actors — took a left turn into comedy.

Bonus: Now we know why Samuel L. Jackson shaves his head these days. Oof, that hairline.

Filmstruck Queue: "Paths of Glory," directed by Stanley Kubrick

Three thoughts about "Paths of Glory" just as soon as I'm shot for cowardice in the face of the enemy:

1. This in one of Stanley Kubrick's early movies, and you can draw a straight line from this picture to "Full Metal Jacket" in its anti-war themes. More than that, this is an anti-authoritarian movie: A picture about how the elites sacrifice the lives of real people, how they dance in their palaces and feast on sumptuous foods while ordinary footsoldiers are quite literally forced to give their lives for the errors of those elites. There is no happy ending here, only the relentless logic of an awful story that ends up exactly where it must once the wheels are set in motion.

2. Kirk Douglas is one of he best movie stars we've ever had. He's beautiful — check him out shirtless in his opening scene, all 1950s Charles Atlas virility — and he's fierce. When he denounces a commanding general in the climactic scene — "And you can go to hell before I apologize to you now or ever again!" — his hair flies askew and his eyes are filled with rage, and you want to stand up and cheer. They truly don't make them like this any more. 

3. All these French soldiers sound like they're from Queens. 

Bonus thought: If you like old or independent movies, the new Filmstruck service— which combines the forces of Turner Classic Movies and the Criterion Collection — is the bomb. Totally worth it.

Liberals: We're overthinking this. Hillary didn't lose. This is what it should mean.

Interesting:

Nate Cohn of the New York Times estimates that when every vote is tallied, some 63.4 million Americans will have voted for Clinton and 61.2 million for Trump. That means Clinton will have turned out more supporters than any presidential candidate in history except for Obama in 2008 and 2012. And as David Wasserman of Cook Political Report notes, the total vote count—including third party votes—has already crossed 127 million, and will “easily beat” the 129 million total from 2012. The idea that voters stayed home in 2016 because they hated Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton is a myth.

We already know the Electoral College can produce undemocratic results, but what we don't know is why — aside from how it serves entrenched interests — it benefits the American people to have their preference for national executive overturned because of archaic rules designed, in part, to protect the institution of slavery. 

A form of choosing the national leader that — as has happened in this election — gives greater weight to the preferences of whites over the preferences of the overall body of voters might plausibly be said to be White Supremacy. When that form was created by men trying to ensure slavery wasn't overturned, the argument grows stronger yet. Throw in the number of black votes that might've gone missing due to the gutting of the Voting Rights Act, and the conclusion becomes more difficult yet to avoid.

I know, I know, this is a republic, not a democracy. But this isn't like the Senate, where the structure can be said to "cool" fiery, short-term passions. There's simply no good reason for producing a result most voters said they didn't want. That we've entered an era where the system repeatedly produces that outcome doesn't mean that Democrats have the wrong message for America. It means they have the wrong message for, I guess, Florida. The Florida panhandle, if you want to get specific. And that's not the same thing.

It also means the system is delegitimizing itself.

Perhaps instead of battling each other over whether liberals need to reexamine their principles, what we need to really do is work hard and persistently for fair elections that really represent the preferences of most voters. Such a system won't always produce wins for Democrats. But it would probably produce wins for Democrats when Democrats win. That's not too much to ask.

Netflix Queue*: "The Conversation," starring Gene Hackman

Three thoughts about "The Conversation" just as soon as I rip my apartment apart in a fruitless search for the wiretap....

1: Francis Ford Coppola sandwiched this movie between "The Godfather" and "The Godfather Part II." That's an astonishing run of movie artistry. And it's a reminder that Hollywood used to make movies for, you know, adults: There's some sex here, but it's not fun. There are no explosions, on-screen at least. It's about the quietest thriller you'll ever see. If you're not a cinephile, and if you're relatively young, it's possible you haven't heard of it. Go ahead. Give it a try.

2: The movie is well-known for its contemplation of the surveillance society that Americans were only then becoming dimly aware that we lived in. (Spying? That stuff's for Russians!) On second viewing — I last saw it about 15 years ago — what strikes me is how much the movie is about perception, and how having the different pieces of a puzzle very much affects what you think the puzzle might look like when whole. If I were to create a mini movie marathon, I'd package it together with "Rashomon" and Christopher Nolan's "Memento."

3: The score, featuring piano compositions by David Shire, is simply gorgeous. Here's Soundtrack.net summing it up beautifully: "As Harry Caul is a stoic, taciturn character, Coppola understood that much of his underlying repression and sadness fell into the hands of the music. What the film ends up with, and it works like gangbusters, is a central character who refuses to say much of anything about his own personal life, but a score that tells you everything anyway."

Bonus thought: Two days after Donald Trump was elected president, darn tootin' I was in the mood for a paranoid thriller.

Bonus Bonus: Tie for funniest unintentionally funny scene: Gene Hackman being followed by a mime. Gene Hackman pretending to play the saxaphone.

* Ok, actually Amazon Prime this time.

I'm not cutting off my pro-Trump friends

Here and there on Facebook, I've seen a few of my friends declare they no longer wish the friendship of Trump supporters — and vowing to cut them out of their social media lives entirely.

I'm not going to do that.

To cut ourselves off from people who have made what we think was a grievous error in their vote is to give up on persuading them, to give up on understanding why they voted, to give up on understanding them in any but the most cartoonish stereotypes.

As a matter of idealism, cutting off your pro-Trump friends is to give up on democracy. As a matter of tactics, cutting off your pro-Trump friends is to give up on ever again winning in a democratic process.

And as a long-term issues, confining ourselves to echo chambers is part of our national problem.

Don't get me wrong: I expect a Trumpian presidency is a disaster, particularly for people of color. And in total honesty: My own relationships have been tested by this campaign season. There's probably some damage yet to make itself apparent.

But people are more than the sum of their votes. We are more than the sum of our votes. Let's maybe take a deep breath before we sunder too many relationships.

Here's how we remake American government.

Note: This was more or less written prior to the election — a time when I thought the campaign would end with Democrats having some power to create change. That ain't gonna happen for a couple of years. Still, for the sake of conversation....

Something’s gotta change.

That much is clear after an election that was one of the most divisive ever — one that left many of us feeling, as Alec Baldwin said on SNL, “gross.” Our governance and our politics have failed us. It is within our power to fix it.

These fixes aren’t marginal. So let’s admit up front that radical changes could have radical, unexpected consequences. But let’s also admit that a system that put Donald Trump in charge of nukes is a system that deserves radical reconsidering, at the very least.

Seven ideas to fix it all:

• Scrap the presidential system, replace it with a parliament. I suspect a lot of frustration in the land right now is that nobody really has the power to get things done. Dems get frustrated because President Obama was limited in carrying out his agenda by a Republican Congress; Republicans are frustrated that Congress was limited in carrying out its agenda by a Democratic President. Everybody has a little power, but not enough to actually make proactive changes. That’s frustrating for everybody.

You’ll notice, too, not many thriving democracies have duplicated the American system over the years, even though we’re the oldest democracy. So. Let’s build a parliament. Two houses: Congress and the Senate. The Congress would be voted in like it is now — from districts in each state. The majority party (or coalition) in Congress would then appoint the executive from within its own ranks. One big benefit? It greatly reduces the likelihood that somebody like Donald Trump, with zero record of public service, could come so close to running the show. But the structure would put Congress and the executive — we could still call him or her “president” in order to — in the hands of the same party. That party would then be held accountable by voters for how it implemented its agenda.

(One other item that’s important to note here. I was going to suggest a requirement for a pause on legislative branch investigations while the executive is in office. But only some investigations — anything involving items that transpired before the executive took office — and the pause would only last until the executive left office. We don’t need Hillary haunted by a thousand more Benghazi investigations, for example. Investigations would be reserved for actions taken by the executive and his/her representatives after they’d taken office. That leaves current accountability in place while reducing a lot of petty harassment that goes on with these things. I’m not sure this requirement is needed, though, in a parliamentary setup: One party is unlikely to harass its own executive with unnecessary investigations.)

On a related note:

• Scrap the Electoral College. Or make the electoral vote apportionment in each state equal to the popular vote: The college is a relic of pre-Civil War times when the “nation” was more like a confederation — more like the European Union, say, than France. Twice in 16 years, now, the popular vote has been overridden by the Electoral College. I’m not sure the system can withstand it happening again anytime soon.

• But what about checks and balances? You’re right: We don’t want crude majoritarianism to reign. How to put the brakes on a runaway majority? And how to incorporate a form of strong-states federalism that our conservative brethren will no doubt clamor for?

That’s why we have the Senate. But let’s go back to populating the Senate the old-fashioned way: Appointed by their respective state governments to represent state interests. But the Senate won’t be a co-equal of the House of Representatives, as it is now. What we’re aiming for is a House of Commons-House of Lords situation, where the House of Commons does the real work of passing bills and the House of Lords has limited powers to slow or halt legislation it doesn’t like. Let’s work out the details later — my initial, throw-it-out there proposal is that the Senate would require votes representing two-thirds of the states in order to block House legislation.

Federalists: If you want an additional role in this process, let’s talk about giving the states a role in directly proposing or scotching legislation. Again, they’d have to meet a high bar — with agreement from the majority of legislatures in two-thirds of states. We can tinker with this; let’s keep talking.

And, oh yeah: We’d still have a Bill of Rights in our new Constitution.

• Won’t gerrymandering ensure a permanent majority for one party? Not if our new Constitution requires House districts to be drawn the way they do in California now, with an independent commission drawing boundaries according to populations and community interests instead of with the intent of protecting “safe” seats for either party. The result of that reform is that more California seats are competitive than was the case under the old system.

Not only is this good in small-d democratic terms, it also has a side benefit in reducing polarization: A Republican who has no fear of running against a legitimate Democratic opponent is a Republican with incentives to run as far right as possible, in order to stave off primary opposition. Competitive races would require candidates who operate closer to the center.

• As long as we’re at it, let’s require that House candidates campaign entirely using public funds. There are two big problems with today’s money-driven politics. First, it gets our representatives in the mindset that they’re representing the money and not the constituents. Second, our representatives spend godawful amounts of time raising money for their next campaign. So. Get them out of the business.

Note to conservatives who weep about the death of the First Amendment here: Spend all the money you want advocating for the candidate you desire. But the candidate won’t be able to receive your donations to spend at their own discretion, nor would they be allowed to coordinate with you or political action committees. This leaves money more influential in the process than I’d like, but it’s probably impossible to get money out of politics entirely. So. Let’s at least insulate our elected officials from it.

• One more House reform: Ranked-choice voting required in all House races. This could allow for the emergence of third parties that might more properly represent the range of American politics than just the A-to-B spectrum of Democrats and Republicans.

• Finally, term limits for Supreme Court justices. If such limits existed, I have to believe that Donald Trump’s support in this election might’ve slipped somewhat. As it was, there were too many people who weren't ready to let Hillary Clinton have possible control over the court for  generation. And frankly, this isn’t a bad idea: Merrick Garland excepted, the parties have been appointing younger, less-experienced jurists to the court in order to maximize their chances of serving 30 years, maybe more.

So. Limit justices to a single, 18-year term. Rotate the seats so that one comes up for approval every two years. And let the nominations come, as they do in some states, from independent panels, with the president picking the candidate from (say) three finalists, subject to approval from the House.

Yeah, this is all kind of crazy. It’s a dramatic reimagining of our governance. But drama is too much of our political lives these days. These six steps might help reduce that drama.