- The Washington Times - Monday, November 27, 2017

A recent article by the Wall Street Journal had MSNBC’s Joy Reid declaring rural Americans “the core threat to our democracy” over the weekend.

The host of “AM Joy” followed up her recent claim that the National Rifle Association seeks to create a landscape littered with murderous “warlords” with a new prediction over Thanksgiving: Rural voters will become de facto tyrants by 2040.

“This is the core threat to our democracy,” Ms. Reid tweeted Saturday night in response to a Journal piece titled “The Varied — and Global — Threats Confronting Democracy.”

One element of writer Gerald F. Seib’s piece mentioned that 70 percent of Americans are expected to live in the 15 largest states by 2040. That reality, if it came to fruition, would create a scenario where “the remaining 30 percent of Americans will have 70 senators representing them.”

“The rural minority — the people [author] @JYSexton just wrote a long thread about — have and will continue to have disproportionate power over the urban majority,” Ms. Reid continued.

She then told readers that “the abolition of the Electoral College” would help stave off the “core threat” posed by rural voters.

The Blaze noted on Monday that Ms. Reid’s fears run counter to those of the Founding Fathers, who feared heavily populated states would wield too much political power without the Electoral College.

“As of the 1790 census, 74 percent of America’s population lived in the seven largest states, which means that America’s population has always been concentrated in larger states, since the time of its founding,” wrote the conservative website’s Sara Gonzales. “Reid is not objecting to a threat to American constitutional democracy. She’s objecting to a central feature of American constitutional democracy — a central feature that has been present since the founding of the country.”

• Douglas Ernst can be reached at dernst@washingtontimes.com.

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