In November 2019, Virginia voters sowed the wind when they handed the entire state government over to Democrats.  They began to reap the whirlwind when the new government launched a full-scale war against Virginians' Second Amendment rights.

It was exciting when myriad counties declared themselves Second Amendment sanctuaries.  That excitement, however, did not alter the fact that a Democrat government was going on the rampage.

The next step in this rampage broke on Tuesday, when the Virginia House of Delegates voted to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact ("NPVIC"), an attempted end-run around the Electoral College.  A little background explains why this is such a pernicious idea, one intended to give Democrats a permanent grip on the White House.

The Founders feared the mob.  Therefore, they put multiple layers between voters and their government.

Until the 17th Amendment, Americans didn't vote directly for senators.  Instead, each state's legislature voted for the state's senators.  Judges are selected by the president and approved by the senators, again putting them at a remove from voters.  Only representatives come to D.C. via direct democracy — and all their initiatives are tempered by the Senate (including impeachment), once again to make sure voters don't become a mob, driven by the passions of the moment.

Then there's the Electoral College.  Not only does it prevent the mob rule the Founders feared because it puts voters at a remove from direct elections, it also ensures that presidents cannot campaign only in large population centers, pandering to the preferences of those centers, while ignoring the rest of the United States.

Without the Electoral College, presidential candidates would only campaign in, and shape their policies for, New York (Leftist), California (Leftist), Illinois (Leftist), Texas (generally conservative, but with its population centers rapidly going Left), Florida (a swing state, hewing Left because of snowbirds from New York, Wisconsin, and Minnesota), Ohio (another swing state), Washington state (Leftist), Colorado (Leftist), and Massachusetts (Leftist).  Everyone else in America would have no seat at the presidential table.

The Electoral College, therefore, stands as a bright line between a representative executive who must campaign in all of the states, taking note of the needs and values of all Americans, and an executive who can govern to the Left of Bernie Sanders after getting votes from a handful of populous states.  This is why Democrats are pushing for the NPVIC.  The compact basically says that whatever the popular vote is in America, that's how signatory states must vote.

Had the NPVIC been in place nationwide in 2016, Hillary would be president now because she carried the popular vote.  (And it's probably not a coincidence that her popular vote lead was almost exactly equal to the number of illegal aliens in California alone.)  The Democrats immediately argued that the only reason Hillary lost was because these 225-year-old rules were suddenly unfair.

The NPVIC is manifestly unconstitutional because it does away with the Electoral College without the mechanism of a constitutional amendment.  It ought to be a no-brainer in the Supreme Court, but the reality is that the Court is only one vote away from finding penumbras and emanations that would replace a constitutional amendment with the NPVIC.

Currently, sixteen states have passed the NPVIC: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington.  All that is needed is for the Virginia Senate to pass the NPVIC (as it inevitably will), and for Gov. Northam to sign it (as he inevitably will), for Virginia to join the list.  Not coincidentally, all of these states have voted consistently for Democrat presidential candidates in the last many elections.

Fortunately, there is still a brake in place on the NPVIC: it does not go into effect until the states that passed it collectively represent an absolute majority of Electoral College votes (that is, at least 270 Electoral College votes).  As matters now stand, without Virginia, the states represent 196 electoral votes.  After Virginia enters into the compact, bringing with it its 13 electoral college votes, the compact will be up to 209 electoral votes.  Psychologically, crossing the 200 mark is a big deal.

If people who are bothered by Trump's tweets and pugnacity decide to revert to a superficially bland (but still deeply leftist) candidate such as Klobuchar or Bloomberg, and the Supreme Court once again has an activist, leftist majority, Katie, bar the door!  At that point, the Electoral College will end without a constitutional amendment, and California and New York, complete with their illegal alien voting population, will set the presidential agenda for a long time to come.