I don't really see the problem here. If the government has cut all the staff needed to respond effectively to a pandemic threat, causing the pandemic to be far, far worse than it would have been otherwise, this is just a case of the voting public getting exactly what they voted for. As a wise Frenchman once wrote, "every nation gets the government it deserves". This should be a lesson to voters in every democratic country about the dangers of electing incompetents to run your nation's government.
Roughly half the country absolutely did vote for this President. Moreover, while the Electoral College system does give an edge to certain places, no one has ever made it a political issue to get this changed, so that means the majority is OK with the system remaining as-is. They've had well over 200 years to change it now...
> Moreover, while the Electoral College system does give an edge to certain places, no one has ever made it a political issue to get this changed,
Yes, they have, see the National Popular Vote movement. Also, it's not just the electoral college, it's also the Senate which is actually a bigger problem, and exacerbates the EC problem, and whose antidemocratic character is actually the one thing the Constitution prohibits altering permanently (the slave trade had a similar, but temporary, protection.)
Of course all the EC is protected against popular change by change mechanisms which distort power in the same direction as the distortion in the EC and Senate do.
> so that means the majority is OK with the system
No, what the actual failure to implement a change despite a substantial movement directed at it means is that the minority which is advantaged by the system and which has a veto over change because it's also advantaged by the mechanism which is necessary to use to change the system is okay with it.
> They've had well over 200 years to change it now...
No. They haven't; other people (facing similar barriers) may have, but even if failure to overcome those institutional barriers implied acceptance, the failure of people in the past wouldn't imply acceptance of the present majority.
> Roughly half the country absolutely did vote for this
I get that approximation is subjective, but I'm not sure 19% is what most (or even “roughly half”, even by your apparent standard, of) people would consider “roughly half”.
Roughly half of voters voted for this. Non-voters do not count in a democratic system. I'm not counting "people", I'm counting voters. Non-voters are quite simply irrelevant. If you don't make your voice heard, then you're implicitly allowing others to speak for you.
Substantially less than half the voters voted for it, while more than half voted for one specific alternative.
> Non-voters do not count in a democratic system.
They certainly count as part of the country. And, to the extent that they are nonvoters because they are systematically excluded rather than than voluntarily abstaining, the system isn't democratic to start with.
But, that aside, in any case, in a democratic system, an option with minority support in the electorate doesn't get selected over one supported by the majority, so I'm not sure why you are raising what happens in a democratic system to defend your argument, since it instead defeats it.
