There are no “moderate” Democrats anymore, let’s just get that out of the way. Yes, even Sen. John Fetterman is no real “moderate,” considering he votes with his party like 95 percent of the time.
In that vein, Andy Beshear is the governor of Kentucky. He is the Democrat the party’s establishment wing holds up as proof that moderate Democrats still exist. He has been floated as a 2028 presidential possibility. But on Sunday, he became the latest member of his increasingly anti-American party to call for abolishing the Electoral College — while trying to sneak it past his audience with the phrase “direct elections of the President and Vice President” and a folksy “Fix the Darn Government” framing.
Andy Beshear wants to abolish the Electoral College.
He says it would be part of a "Fix The Darn Government Constitutional Amendment."
He somehow seems to believe that making this argument with a folksy "darn" makes it sound less radical. pic.twitter.com/2TmjY15SwS
— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) August 16, 2026
Let’s translate what Beshear actually proposed. His constitutional amendment package includes: outlawing partisan redistricting, enshrining pieces of the Voting Rights Act, creating congressional term limits, overturning Citizens United, and eliminating the Electoral College. The first four items are arguable on their merits. The last one is a demand to permanently concentrate presidential election power in New York, California and the big, blue cities around the country — and ensure that states like Kentucky are never competitive in a presidential election again.
Beshear’s explanation for why abolishing the Electoral College would help Kentucky was remarkable in its internal incoherence: candidates would have to “earn votes all over the United States” rather than just knowing about seven swing states. He somehow believes that a national popular vote — in a country where 20% of the population lives in New York, California, and Texas — would cause candidates to campaign in rural Kentucky more than they do now.
The math says exactly the opposite. Under a national popular vote, campaigns would concentrate resources in the highest-population media markets, which are overwhelmingly coastal and urban (and blue). Kentucky, with 4.5 million people, would matter less in a direct election than it does now. A governor who claims to care about his state’s political representation just advocated for a system that would make that representation structurally irrelevant.
But that incoherence doesn’t matter, because the actual goal of abolishing the Electoral College has nothing to do with helping Kentucky. It has everything to do with the mathematical reality that Democrats lose presidential elections when the Electoral College is the metric and win the popular vote almost automatically because of their outsized margins in California and New York (though Trump nabbed the popular vote, too, in 2024). Abolish the Electoral College and Democrats win the presidency indefinitely on current population distribution. Beshear knows this. He’s using “help Kentucky” as cover for what is fundamentally a partisan power grab.
The good news is that a constitutional amendment requires ratification by 38 states. Democrats will never get 38 states to agree to permanently reduce their own political influence in favor of California and New York. The proposal is dead on arrival — which makes it pure political messaging, not serious constitutional advocacy.
But it’s useful messaging for Republicans heading into November. The man the Democratic establishment called moderate just showed you his hand. There are no moderate Democrats. There is only the question of how fast they move.
