It seems to me that there are two things going on in this kind of U.S. ruling class electoral politics. Since 1945 there has been a shift from purely regional-geographic politics to demographic-marketing. The Electoral College system represents the old necessity to concentrate on regional geography in electoral politics and tends to work against the demographic marketing that most "sophisticated" big capitalists seem to prefer when running their companies or producing propaganda.
The existence of the electoral college is probably not a matter of open choice anymore. The owners of our society probably prefer to sell their politicians to the rest of us in the same way they sell their video games and hair products. The electoral college exists and continues to exist probably as much because of path dependence and the conservatism of our constitution as because the rulers think it is in their interests to continue it.
But nothing of the game of the selling of the president or the regionalism of U.S. elections helps us to understand anything, in itself.
Concentrating on this kind of ruling class game playing is mistaking gossip for history; it is like expecting to learn something deep about human psychology by watching television shows and reading gossip columns about Paris Hilton and that Spears sisters. I understand the fascination with stuff like this because I will read anything at all about Barbara Stanwyck or Bob Dylan or Joss Whedon. But I don't mistake it for anything but gossip. I don't expect the psychological depth of "Anna Karenina" or even the sociological critique implicit in "The Wire", from reading celebrity bios or internet gossip. That is what paying attention to Rove's ravings and Electoral College politics amounts to, a higher level of celebrity gossip and chess playing.
The _process_ of our national elections is largely meaningless and one reason it is reinforced is that it is that its meaninglessness has become something of a preference. It is meant to be a sort of propaganda of the deed, a demonstration of civic patriotism without very much content. The battle within and between our elite managers-communicators and various ruling class sectors goes on elsewhere, but rarely has much to do with national elections.
Also the significance of U.S. geographic-regionalism, and to some extent the regionalism of the U.S. rulers and owners is relevant to the understanding of the U.S. ruling class, but the electoral system of the Electoral College is irrelevant to any understanding of U.S. ruling class, ownership, and governance regionalism. The electoral system may reinforce regionalism, but it in no way helps us to understand it.
There is something interesting, that should be considered. In as much as regionalism (and to a lesser degree "localism") is electorally important in the U.S. it gets in the way of a single "market" for elected officials. There are conservative results of regionalism that are not completely "bad" from a socialist and/or libertarian point of view or from the point of view of radical organizing. Political and cultural regionalism and localism often works against the marketing of politicians because the marketeers can only divide people into the usual demographic groups but have to pay attention to slightly different cultural resonances that cuts across the angularity of their empty marketing slogans.
In general I look at the fascination with both electoralism and marketing demographics as a dangerous thing for the mind. In the end if you take the game too seriously, you are buying into the state system on one hand, and modern marketing on the other. One of the goals of radical movement is to create a political movement that can help make the marketing techniques behind demographic considerations irrelevant. The Electoral College is anti-democratic but far more anti-democratic are the marketing techniques that are the actual motive for the kind of demographic "reasoning" performed by extremely venal and deliberately stupid people like Rove.
n.b. On Rove's Obvious Stupidity and Ignorance: Notice I wrote "deliberately stupid" when referring to Rove. I mean by this the following: Certain kinds of ideology and indoctrination makes people less able to see the world as it is, and less able to understand the social phenomena they are living. If this ideology is generally accepted and the person is adept in its uses and manipulating its _technic_ then the person will be recognized as "intelligent" and even a genius by all. Socrates called such people "empty" and "unknowing", those who manipulate a _technic_ that blinds them to the phenomena of the real. I have often called Rove stupid and banal. And so he is in Socrates sense that I am trying to explain here. If a person is the best concentration camp commandant who ever lived and is a "genius" at the _technic_ of running a concentration camp, we would not honor him, we would despise him. Furthermore our concentration camp commandant's expertise would only be at the service of a higher level of stupidity, prejudice and venality. It is the same with Rove. Pay attention to him if you must, in order to know the enemy and understand how to subvert him, but buying into what he is saying is buying into the assumptions of our ruling class. I think that when people pay attention to Rove and his like they are actually buying into a way of thinking that does not help them to become more intelligent, though it may help them to become better intellectuals.
Jerry
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