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On July 2nd, 1964, after signing the Civil Rights Act, President Lyndon Johnson is reported as saying, "I think we just delivered the South to the Republican Party for a long time to come".

Johnson was indeed prescient. Not only has America swung right in the South, the effect has been equally noticeable in all of its rural areas. Comparing the 1964 Electoral Map below with that of 2016, it's as if America was slashed, Freddie Kruger style, right across the bread-basket states. Our rural centers now bleed Republican Red.

But the shift, back in 1964, was far more dramatic than our current maps indicate. Prior to the Civil Rights Act, America's party affiliations were reversed, with the South being the Democratic stronghold and the rest of the country solidly Republican. That deserves repeating as it is profound how dramatically both Party's ideologies have changed since the Civil Rights Act.

Democrats use to be the favorite party of the southern voter? Hard to believe.

The history of that anomaly (by today's standards) began post Reconstruction in 1865 as Southern states rebelled against the party who ended slavery, the Republicans. It was sort of an "enemy of my enemy" situation if nothing else.

Roosevelt's solution to the Great Depression of the 1930s, his New Deal, greatly benefited the Southern states while simultaneously neglecting African-American citizens in those states. As a result, the New Deal won the hearts and minds of racists throughout what would colloquially be called the "Deep South" or "Solid South".

Later President Truman's integration of the Military in 1948 further solidified the south squarely under Democratic control.

Today, the divide is more predictably based on population size with large cities, and states with large populations overall, nearly always turning blue as their populations increase.

States that continue to hemorrhage their youth to the excitement of the big cities turn a deeper red as their populations dwindle or stagnate.

What's concerning today, decades since the Civil Rights Act, is that the maps are incredibly reliable indicators of who will become the next President. But for a few swing states, we know with near certainty which states will support which party, regardless of that party's candidate.

The growing polarization and firming party allegiance since 2016 has resulted in amazingly accurate predictive modeling. Should 2024 be a re-match between Biden and Trump, we already can predict a second Trump term! And even if Trump has to serve it from jail. His supporters won't ever believe he was not set-up once he is convicted.

I flinched just now typing the words, "second Trump term" but, honestly, Biden is not a strong contender against MAGA-crazed supporters and party-line voters in those red states.

This worst-case scenario, Dictator Donald, is more of a given, a shoe-in, for Trump given that the Electoral College System continues to favor Republican victories despite how the majority of American's vote. Trump took office first in 2016 with a 77 delegate lead over Clinton, who received nearly 3 percent more of the overall popular vote!

We are apparently stuck with this broken system. Efforts to change are blocked by it's beneficiaries, the Republicans, and dismissed by supporters of a more equitable system as pipe-dreams. We assume we will never get enough of a quorum for a Constitutional Amendment so we give up or dream up clever hail-Mary passes around the system.

As readers on medium, I already assume the majority of you understand the Electoral College and it's short-comings far better than I, so I will not be unpacking all that background here. I'm a music writer after all, not a political pundit. Articles like today's are my inner-child screaming in fear that the monsters that haunt our Democracy are once again under my bed, but nobody will believe me.

What needs to change is actually quite simple. We need to do away with the Electoral college. As stated earlier, this requires a Constitutional Convention and a plurality of support that we know we won't get from those who benefit with the status-quo.

There is another great suggestion. In fact, several good ideas here, with my favorite being the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (or as I re-branded it in the title, NaPoVICom.

Wrapping it back around to music. The system has remained broken in many ways for far too long. It does seem to be favoring wealthy white men more than any other group though. We've yet to see a woman President. Have had just one, albeit mixed, non-Caucasian male President out of the 46 so far. It appears our next President for sure will be yet another old white guy. The system is rigged against minorities. The current red-state vs blue-state division we see is a result of racial discrimination as are most of our American institutions.

We have yet to purge our collective conscience for our original sin of Slavery. The sounds of which echo throughout every chamber of our Government today. The Electoral College itself is a direct result of that institution (see the three-fifths compromise).

Our dysfunctional electoral maps favor rural states with total populations of less than half any urban modern city. It gives people in Wyoming, for example, a vote worth three times more electoral power than any vote from California simply because of the Electoral College rules. It's simply not fair for any American citizens, especially the powerless, the poor, and the minorities. The current Political system in America is strictly for the wealthy elites: And guess what? There's A Song For That!.

Former Fugees founder, Wyclef Jean, imagined how America would react to a regular, non-elite, non-white, and none-wealthy Presidential Candidate who tried to actually change the system.

Wyclef theorized that someone who was elected by the people and for the people instead of by the wealthy donors would not last long. He wrote:

"If I was president, all blacks would have reparations No segregation, feed the nation so there's no famine, Muslims, Jews, Chritians would all hold hands, Every week on the beach, party by the sand, (I woulda) Take trips on Air Force 1, Don't need to bring no homeless with no sneaks, da Air Force 1, Better Schools in the hood, better teacher's for the classes, Making money, paying no taxes, I'd find the best scientists, tell them come up with an answer, I want the cure for Aids and Cancer, But I gotta watch my back, snipers on the hill, With the steal, waiting to J.F.Kill.

IF I was President, I'd get elected on Friday, Assasinated on Saturday, Burried on Sunday, Thay go back to work on Monday, If I was President, If I was President.

Enjoy Today's song. Watch the upcoming caucuses knowing that the system is heavily rigged and probably not in your favor. We need a change. The divide has grown larger lately and we are on a path to either dictatorship or armed conflict should we not collectively say, "Enough!" and fix this broken system.

DJ Robin Sherman spent most of his life entertaining crowds as a DJ, musician, and comedian. Enjoy more of his love for music and writing at "There's a Song for That!" and Virtual Crate Digger.

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