re: #284 wheat-dogg

The Founding Fathers were trying to devise a form of government that would prevent such a thing from happening, as much as humanly possible, anyway. But they were rational men who assumed that the country’s voters would only be rational, educated men of means. Even then, their hope was probably misplaced. Humans seem predisposed to follow charismatic leaders blindly, especially if those leaders enable them to proceed with their own agendae. That’s what the GOP has in Trump. He doesn’t care what shit they do, as long as they let him do his own shit.

Even then, there was some outliers. New Jersey actually had something that vaguely looked like universal suffrage - there was a wealth/property requirement, but women and African Americans could vote until 1807 (when the Democractic-Republicans restricted voting to hurt Federalist turnout).

But i do agree, I think the belief was that voters and their representatives in government (and the electoral college) would be rational. But instead, it often turned into protecting the power of the status quo.