re: "Fareed Zakaria knows the problem with the United States"

Jeff Goldstein at Protein Wisdom ("Because not just anybody can summarize the news.") is clearly losing patience with Mr. Zakaria.

Money quote(s):

"It’s the Constitution. Which is old and hasn’t been usefully updated for the 21st century — something we should be doing through social media, starting with archaic and useless institutions like the electoral college, or Senate representation (because clearly it’s unfair that California have 2 senators and Wisconsin have 2 senators when California is bigger).

When Ezra Klein floated this idea a month or so back I suggested that the left was working on its messaging for just such a push to destroy the republic and replace it with a pure democracy, where the mob, which the left will run through large urban centers, will vote themselves your money and the Democrats their power. Less populated states will have to bend to the will of more populated states — and politicians could save themselves time and effort by having to pander only to the large urban centers, ignoring in some cases entire areas of the country."

This would require a Constitutional amendment; and the amendment process is rigged, deliberately so, to make this development unlikely at best.

Not impossible, mind you, just unlikely. The less populated states, and their representative, would have to vote themselves into irrelevence.

"The founders and framers saw what would happen. The only direct elections they advocated were for those in the House. They did this to protect against populism and, ultimately, majority tyranny — while keeping power vested in the separate states."