Democrats rode their midterm wave straight into a pile of new statehouses, and the party’s victory lap is already turning into a power grab.
Their media cheerleaders swear it’s all about making every vote count.
And Jonathan Turley, who once agreed with them, just explained why he switched sides.
A Longtime Electoral College Skeptic Just Changed His Mind
Jonathan Turley never counted himself a fan of the Electoral College. The George Washington University law professor used to complain that the system let candidates capture the White House while losing the popular vote, and he admits the 2000 and 2016 results still bother him.
So nobody can accuse him of carrying water for the Framers out of habit.
But in a new column for Fox News, Turley told readers he can’t stomach where the Left wants to take the country after its big night at the polls. He opened with a line that didn’t leave much room for interpretation: “After the midterm elections, the Democrats are moving in for the kill.”
Then he owned his own reversal.
“Ten years ago, I would have applauded this effort. Now I am deeply concerned,” Turley wrote.
What changed his mind wasn’t the arithmetic of a popular vote. It was the crowd pushing it, and the long list of other demolition projects riding along in the same truck.
Five Freshly Flipped States Now Hold the Trigger
The scheme carries a sleepy name that sounds like a zoning ordinance: the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. Every state that signs it promises to hand all of its electors to whoever wins the nationwide vote, even when that state’s own citizens picked the other candidate.
Eighteen states and Washington, DC have already joined. Virginia climbed aboard in April 2026, pushing the total to 222 electoral votes. The compact switches on at 270, which left its backers 48 votes short.
Then the midterm results rolled in.
Democrats captured the governor’s office and both legislative chambers in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, and Arizona. Those five states carry 61 electoral votes between them. Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Nevada alone add up to 50, which clears the bar with room to spare. Throw in Arizona and the compact jumps to 283.
And the new majorities aren’t pretending to be shy about it. Michigan state Representative Carrie Rheingans told the New York Times, “The time is right.”
Here’s the funny part. Michigan Democrats held full control of Lansing in 2023 and 2024 and never got the compact across the finish line. Nevada’s Democrat governor vetoed it back in 2019 because it would shrink his own state’s voice in picking a President.
Nothing about the Constitution changed since then. The only thing that changed is that Democrats now smell a clear path to the White House in 2028 and a chance to keep it.
Turley called out the legal sleight of hand. He pointed out that the Supreme Court has described the constitutional design as a “finely wrought” system meant to keep power from piling up in one place, and he argued the compact exists precisely to sidestep the Article V amendment process its supporters know they’d lose.
But Democrats won’t need to win that argument in Congress anytime soon. Some legal scholars say an interstate compact of this kind needs congressional consent, and Democrats will hold both chambers in the new Congress.
Small States Would Become Spectators in Their Own Elections
The Framers built the Electoral College so a handful of crowded states couldn’t steamroll everybody else. A candidate had to care what Wisconsin dairy farmers and Nevada ranchers thought, not just what played well in Manhattan.
Under the compact, Wisconsin’s 10 electors could end up decided by how many ballots Democrats stacked up in Los Angeles County. A Wisconsin voter could watch his state go one direction and its electors march off in the other.
Call that “making every vote count” if you like. It sure looks like making a few big blue states count more than the rest of the country put together.
And the compact doesn’t travel alone. Turley pointed to Harvard professor Michael Klarman, who laid out a plan years ago to remake the system so Republicans “will never win another election.” Klarman flagged his own obstacle, warning that “the Supreme Court could strike down everything I just described.”
The fix for that problem? Pack the Court first.
Turley spelled out why the White House matters so much to that sequence. “None of this is possible with a Republican in the White House,” he wrote.
That’s the real prize. A Democrat President in 2029, a Senate without the filibuster, two new Senate seats each from Washington, DC and Puerto Rico, and a Supreme Court stretched to whatever size it takes to bless the whole project. A Court packed that way would come gunning for the rulings that overturned Roe v Wade, ended affirmative action, and protected Second Amendment rights.
None of the players are hiding the ball, either. Fox News has reported that Kamala Harris called for Supreme Court expansion and changes to the Electoral College, that Gavin Newsom signaled openness to packing the Court while trashing the Electoral College as perverted, and that James Carville advised Democrats to prepare statehood and Court packing quietly.
But the furthest-left wing of the party wants to go even bigger. Turley noted that the Democratic Socialists of America, an openly Marxist outfit, has called for abolishing the Senate, the Supreme Court, and the presidency altogether. The compact fits neatly into that same push for raw, unchecked majority rule.
The New Jacobins Want a Revolution With No Brakes
Turley reached back to the 1790s for his comparison, and it’s not a flattering one for Democrats.
The American Revolution and the French Revolution started in the same era. One produced the oldest working republic on earth. The other produced the guillotine and the Reign of Terror.
The French radicals, the Jacobins, pushed for a single legislative chamber and as much direct democracy as they could cram into the system. Even Thomas Paine, who cheered both revolutions, came to regret some of those ideas after Paris turned into a slaughterhouse.
“The New Jacobins are seeking to pursue the same disastrous reforms,” Turley wrote.
Benjamin Rush, who signed the Declaration of Independence, had a word for what happens when a democracy loses its guardrails. He called them “mobocracies.”
Maybe the comparison runs a little hot. American Democrats aren’t building scaffolds in Philadelphia. But the instinct to tear down every institution that slows a temporary majority looks awfully familiar.
And that majority may not last. Turley pointed out that the Republican losses landed in the normal range for a midterm, smaller than what Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Barack Obama absorbed. Obama took a beating in 2010 and won a second term two years later.
Plenty of Republican voters stayed home or switched over this cycle, and a good share of that damage traces back to the neoconservatives who pushed Donald Trump toward military action against Iran. NBC News exit polling found roughly two out of every three voters called that move the wrong decision, and Democrats walked off with the overwhelming share of those ballots.
Democrats know a mood like that can fade. Arizona and Nevada, two states reshaped by years of heavy immigration, may not stay blue forever either.
So they want to lock the door behind them before voters change their minds.
Wisconsin Democrat Kelda Roys already told reporters the compact would land at the top of the pile, promising, “National popular vote will be something that we’ll prioritize early in the session.”
Sources: Jonathan Turley, Fox News, “Midterms empower Democrats to target the Electoral College”; National Popular Vote, “Midterm Election Results in 5 States Provide Way for National Popular Vote to Reach 270 During 2027”; Snopes, “Can Democrats effectively abolish Electoral College after midterm wins?”; Mother Jones, “America Finally Has the Votes to End the Electoral College”; The New Republic, “Democrats Win Enough Seats Nationwide to End Electoral College”; Yahoo News, “Democrats’ big midterm wins could change how we elect the next president”; The Center Square, “National popular vote indirectly on the midterm ballot”