She lost 312 to 226 in the Electoral College two years ago.
Now she wants to abolish it.
What she said in Nashville last week should disqualify her from ever holding office again.
The Plan She Called "Controversial" Before She Even Said It
At the National Urban League Conference on July 31, Harris laid out her three-part blueprint to restructure American democracy.
She wants to "revisit" – her word – the Electoral College.
She wants to expand the Supreme Court from nine justices to 13.
She wants statehood for Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico, which would hand Democrats four additional U.S. Senate seats.
Harris didn't hide the ball.
She opened by admitting the plan was "controversial coming from me in particular" – which is what you say when you know you're proposing something that failed badly the last time someone tried it.
The Last President Who Tried This Lost His Own Party
Franklin Roosevelt attempted to pack the Supreme Court in 1937.
He had just won 46 of 48 states.
He had a Senate with 76 Democrats and just 16 Republicans.
That Senate rejected his court-packing scheme by a vote of 70 to 20.
Seven of the ten senators who signed the scathing Judiciary Committee report opposing the plan were Democrats.
The committee called it "needless, futile, and utterly dangerous" and urged Congress to reject it "so emphatically that its parallel will never again be presented."
Harris is now recycling FDR's most embarrassing domestic failure as her comeback strategy.
The Electoral College pitch isn't new either.
Democrats have introduced more than 700 proposals to change or abolish it across American history.
Every single one failed.
The last serious attempt, in 1979, couldn't clear 51 Senate votes – and that was with Democrats running the chamber.
Mike Johnson Called It What It Is
Speaker Mike Johnson didn't mince words.
He called Harris and her allies "institutional arsonists."
"It's a dangerous thing, a dangerous gambit," Johnson said. "You don't just blow up the system when you lose."
Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina put it more directly: "Totally insane."
Even Democrats pushed back.
Rep. Jason Crow of Colorado told Fox News he wasn't focused on blowing up the Supreme Court.
When your own team thinks your plan is a distraction, you have a problem.
She Called It Ruthless. Here Is What Ruthless Actually Costs Her.
Harris told the crowd twice that Democrats need to be "too big to rig."
She said they need to be "ruthless" – then clarified she didn't mean "cruel" or "breaking the law."
But packing the Supreme Court with four partisan justices chosen specifically to reverse rulings you don't like is the textbook definition of breaking democratic norms.
And eliminating the Electoral College doesn't require bravery.
https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2083261798468161940?s=20
It requires three-quarters of states to ratify a constitutional amendment – which means winning the argument in rural America, in small states, in exactly the places Democrats have been losing for a decade.
The people who voted against her get a vote on whether to abolish the system she lost.
They're going to say no.
Here's the Part Harris Didn't Mention
Trump won 31 states in 2024.
Harris won 19.
The Electoral College exists precisely because the Founders understood that a purely popular vote would let a handful of major cities run the entire country.
Under the national popular vote system Harris is pushing, New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago would decide every presidential election.
The farmers in Georgia, the factory workers in Pennsylvania, the ranchers in Montana – none of them would matter.
That's not a glitch Harris found in the system.
That's the whole point of the system.
https://twitter.com/theblaze/status/2083255048251797970?s=20
The fact that she lost under it isn't evidence the system is broken.
It's evidence she was the wrong candidate.
Court-packing doesn't fix that either.
FDR had the biggest Senate majority in modern history and Democrats still killed his plan in a landslide.
Kamala Harris has a podcast and a maybe.
Sources:
- Lesley Abravanel, "Kamala Harris Thinks Revising Electoral College and Expanding the Supreme Court May Help Democrats," Yahoo News, August 3, 2026.
- Chuck Grassley, "Democrats Revive FDR Court-Packing Scheme to Rig the Supreme Court," The Federalist, June 25, 2026.
- Kerry Byrne, "On This Day in History, FDR's Effort to Pack the Supreme Court Failed Badly," Fox News, July 22, 2022.
- Staff, "Harris Labeled 'Institutional Arsonist' for Plan to Fundamentally Transform SCOTUS and Electoral College," Fox News, May 16, 2026.
- Staff, "Kamala Harris Suggests Revisiting Electoral College, Expanding Supreme Court," The Hill, August 4, 2026.
- Staff, "Past Attempts at Reform," FairVote, July 2026.
