“That’s a fargin’ trick question!”
OK, since y’all didn’t want to talk about cosmic coincidences, before I leave the office, here are some other possible topics:
- Trump, Putin agree on phone to improve relations, Kremlin says — Here we go with the bromance. Who do you think is going to get the upper hand in this negotiation — the ex-KGB man who’s been ruthless running the Once and Future Evil Empire, or the guy who was easily flattered when Putin gave him a backhanded compliment?
- Obama at press conference will not say if Trump is qualified to be president — “That’s a fargin’ trick question!” he cried.
- Pro-Trump rally planned for Saturday at SC State House — What? What do they need a rally for? They just won the election — something about which I wish people would stop reminding me, by the way…
- Schools chief should be a cabinet post, Haley urges lawmakers — Well, yeah… Something I’ve only been saying for what, 25 years now? Be nice if it actually happened. It’s ridiculous for the state’s largest executive function to be walled off from the state’s chief executive. Watch for Democrats to resist this, as always, since they continue to consider superintendent to be their best shot at a statewide position.
- SC Democratic leader Harrison considering a bid for party chair — That’s national party chair. Hey, who better for such a hopeless job than the guy who’s been doing it in South Carolina? Seriously, Jaime’s a good man. He should go for it.
Related Posts
Brad, you may get your wish after all. Apparently there are a couple of Republican electoral college voters who are trying to get a movement started to deny Trump the necessary 270 votes to become president and force the college to cast their votes for someone else. If they succeed, we may have a real crisis on our hands and then what?
I didn’t support Trump or Clinton but I would never stoop to the point of going against the wishes of the voters and deny them their choice for POTUS. This is hubris to the highest degree and is just as much a slap in the face of the voters as it was having the choice between Clinton and Trump.
The people have spoken, like it or not and if they succeed in denying Trump the presidency, I hope they enjoy the fruits of the evil they will loosen when they open this particular Pandora’s Box. I was willing to give either one a chance to prove me wrong but I cannot agree with anyone interfering to the degree these people are trying to do. Yes, they are Republicans and if they continue on the path they have chosen, in the end, it will be the end of the Republican Party along with the Democrat Party as well. In the future if enough electoral college voters decide on their own to usurp the choice of their states voters, it will be as if their votes didn’t matter and that is wrong at any level.
Enough is enough and it is time to move on. If Trump goes off the rails, impeachment is one option on the table to pursue.
My apology, it is two Democrat electoral college voters trying to persuade Republicans to vote against Trump so someone other than Trump can be elected by the Republicans. My sentiment remains the same and if they pull this off, they need to remember that Reid chose the nuclear option on an issue not long ago and if Republicans do the same, Democrats should just sit down, shut up, and remember they were the ones who went along with Harry Reid. As Obama and supporters reminded everyone 8 years ago, elections have consequences. We won, get over it. I didn’t agree with the attitude at the time and if reversed and Republicans display the same attitude toward Democrats, I still wouldn’t agree.
And if in the future a Democrat who is not considered worthy of being POTUS wins the election, they should expect the same in return. What if the reverse were true and Republicans who believe Clinton would be just as unfit were to try to persuade Democrat electoral college voters to go against their voters? It is a Pandora’s Box that should be left unopened – by both sides.
Again, my apology for the mix-up.
And yet, isn’t this what the Founding Fathers anticipated? That evolving information would change the picture for the Electoral College? That they needed to be empowered to do right by the country – not the voters, the country.
No, I don’t think “evolving information” was a consideration. In Federalist #68, the argument for the electoral college is essentially the same argument in favor of a democratic republic vs. a direct democracy.
Federalist #68 essentially argues that the electors will be driven by a “sense of the people”, and that’s what we have. Although the system is slightly different now (state-wide slates of electors vs. by district) you still have the leavening effect that requires a candidate to be broadly popular vs. regionally.
It’s not a perfect system, but it does answer quite handsomely. Anyone who would choose to heave it overboard because of one election is short-sighted.
I think the fundamental thing that produced Trump was not the electoral college, but rather, the first past the post GOP primary system where someone could simply win a mere plurality of the votes, but would end up with all the delegates. The overcrowded GOP primary field was a contributing factor. If there had only been four or five candidates from the beginning, Trump would never had gotten his momentum.
But it it what it is. I’ll say this, the next four years won’t lack for interesting events.
The “sense of the people” is what I was referring to; the writer’s of the Constitution were highly sensitive to the differences between mob rule and the generalized will of the people.
Since EVERYONE was surprised Trump won – including his supporters and the candidate himself – perhaps it was more of a drunken bender in the voting booth rather than a overwhelming desire to vote for the least qualified candidate ever to have been elected? If the sense of the people is clearly seen to have evolved on this outcome, than an evolution of the Electoral College would be representative of the peoples’ will where a static vote would not.
2 elections. 2 utterly deplorable “winners”. But rather than throw out the electoral college let’s make it actually do it’s job. Trump is clearly incompetent. Just watch the unfolding cluster of his transition. There is nothing in the constitution to prevent them from voting for whoever they choose. If an argument can be made for keeping the damn thing then now is the time. All we need is 39 people who actually love their country to not vote Trump. Then let the House decide.
“All we need is 39 people [to flip their pledged votes]…Then let the House decide.”
Wait, what?
That would be worse than the situation we have now. In your scenario, the EC would repudiate the rules – the rules that we all agreed upon going into the contest – and infuriate every single person who voted for Trump. You think there’s resentment now? In your hypothetical, boy – look out.
And for what?
You honestly think the GOP house would vote for Hillary? That’s never going to happen. No way, no how. First, every single irate Trump voter is going to be calling their Congressman and threatening to vote them out if they sold out Trump. There’s no chance that a Congressman votes against Trump. I’m not saying this as a Trump supporter. I’m saying this as someone who is seeing reality for what it is.
So even in your scenario, we end up back where we are now, except we’ve irretrievably broken the electoral college precedent of pledged electors by changing the rules of the game after the game has been played. If you want to change the Electoral College system – fine. Have at it. But to change it after a vote, when all the rules were agreed upon, that is unfair.
Luckily, for the country your scenario is never, never going to happen.
Do you really think I give a rats rear end about offending Trump voters? Really that is a reason to allow a lunatic in charge of the nuclear code? They should be offended. What they did is horrendous. Besides their job is to pick the best person for the job not to please a minority of the voters.
I’ve been reading about the electoral college. So have I got this wrong? My take on what they intended was not that the people would vote for electors based on them already being pledged to a certain candidate – which is what we do. But rather electors would be chosen based on their suitability to make a reasoned rational analytical decision about who would be best for the job. i.e. They wanted them to be unbound and free thinking and only concerned about making a good decision. The same sort of principle that applies to congressional representation – you pick someone who will decide stuff for you. The Electoral college is like a special one time Congress that has only one job. So you would actually know the name of the electors and be voting for them particularly because of who they personally are. This is not what we do.
It seems to me the way we do it is about the closest way you can get to doing exactly what the Founders were afraid of and still stay within the bounds of the rules they wrote. They were afraid of direct popular election because it could, for example, give us someone like Donald Trump. By choosing electors based on who they are pledged to by a direct popular vote – we essentially just do it anyway.
Bart, I get that you are offended by the idea of electors not voting in harmony with their state popular vote outcome, but that may actually be closer to the Founder’s intention, as I understand it – to have electors not directly bound to the people but with the freedom to make a different choice if they truly feel it is what is best for the country.
I wish we could do it the original way – It’d be fun for SC to not automatically always be all red – there’d at least be a chance an elector or two might differ. I suppose choosing educated wise electors would be looked upon as an elitist thing that would further enhance class divisions….hmmm.
There is a move to pass legislation where all states agree to abide by the national popular vote when assigning their electors – i.e. if a coalition of enough states that collectively have 270 electoral votes between them agree to assign their electors according to whoever wins the popular vote – that person would win the electoral college. I’m not so sure this is a good idea. Although it would be really nice in this particular situation, in the long run – it would completely kill the buffer of protection that the electoral college was supposed to provide. A lot of years the popular choice could be the stupid one. But then again, since we’ve already pretty much circumvented the Founder’s true intention and it is unlikely we can go back to it, maybe we should at least get the popular vote instead. The situation we’ve got now is a mess – neither what the founder’s wanted or the popular vote and deeply unsatisfying all around.
But maybe I’m reading it wrong. Bryan?
I think you’re right about this, Scout:
Of course, it’s been a bunch of years since I studied that stuff, but even if that WASN’T what the Framers intended, its what they should have intended.
We have moved away from the wise system they tried to set up, always toward more direct democracy.
I’ve always thought one of the BEST ideas in the Constitution was to make sure each part of the government was composed of people chosen not only by different methods, but by different constituencies.
The House was and should still be the only body chosen directly by equal-sized populations of voters. The idea was that the House was supposed to represent aggregations of people, and the Senate was to represent STATES. Which is why Legislatures used to choose senators. But then we went to direct election of Senators and messed THAT up by removing the insulation that was supposed to shield that body from the momentary passions sweeping through the mob — I mean, the people.
The judiciary was to be protected from popular whim by being nominated by one political branch, and confirmed by the more grounded part (the Senate) of the other. This has worked moderately well — at least, it works unless, as we’ve seen this year, one body refuses to do its duty.
Then there’s the presidency. In this case, of course, I’d be happier (and the nation would be far better off) with the popular vote prevailing. But on the whole, I don’t think it’s a good idea for the president to be chosen in a manner so close to that of the House. We need a system in which cooler heads prevail. If we can find some.
It would be nice for it to be an actual COLLEGE, in which people study year after year our nation’s history and political science, so that they are completely infused with the kind of knowledge that Donald Trump utterly lacks. But that would be especially tough in these days when people think they’re entitled to their own facts as well as their own opinions, which makes it next to impossible to have a consensus about what the nation is about, so that we can design an acceptable curriculum for said college…
I just tried reading up on it, but I sort of got bogged down in the insistence by Hamilton and Madison on choosing electors by DISTRICT, as opposed to what we now have.
Seems to me that isn’t directly to the point. Seems to me we went wrong when voters started choosing CANDIDATES for president, rather than electors.
But maybe I’m thinking of it wrong…
And yes, I was looking it up on Wikipedia. I know many people scorn that source, but I find it the most useful tool ever devised for looking up, and reminding yourself of, stuff you’re supposed to have learned in school…
Of course, it’s not quite as strong at explanation as at concrete facts — say, the date of an election or who was on the ballot, as opposed to how the system works. But what source of general information exists that does it better? I know of none…
“It would be nice for it to be an actual COLLEGE”
I hear the Electoral College is playing basketball against the College of Cardinals later tonight. The Electoral College team has a lot of youth on their side, but the leader of the Cardinals team is said to be infallible.
Should make for a good game.
🙂
At the last moment in the game, in a team huddle during the last time out, the coach will propose to throw the picket fence at ’em, and have one of the cardinals take the last shot. The cardinals will all look uncomfortable, and everyone will look at Frances, who will say, “I’ll make it.”
Francis is as cool as they come. Unfortunately for the Cardinals, the Electoral college can still win the game even if they don’t get the most baskets. You have to really run up the score on them to be sure of a win.
Madison, among others, was very much afraid of a US Senate represented equally by all the states – because he feared the sort of shenanigans (“momentary passions”) states legislatures might get up to. He preferred one elected proportionately by population. He was so upset over the prospect of a Senate in which the states had equal representation that he ramped down the powers he originally wanted to give it.
As for the Electoral College, it already doesn’t work as originally planned. Not only aren’t the state legislatures involved, but the way it was supposed to work was for the winners (P/VP) to be the two top electoral vote getters. So there’s nothing sacrosanct about how it works now.
You really should to take a long look at Empire of Liberty and other histories of the period by the foremost historian of that era, Gordon Wood. It’s true that many of the Framers wanted a government run by the “better sort,” as it was termed at the time. But Wood’s shows how developments very quickly made that that conception unworkable (even before the close of the 18th century) as the country moved toward giving more voice to the “middling sort.” Wood celebrates this development – saying it’s what made America distinctly American – rather than it becoming just a copy of an old world country, like Britain, where the common folk were supposed to defer to their “betters.”
Government by the “middling sort” would be a substantial improvement over what just happened.
I believe the Framers were less motivated to make sure leaders were of the “best sort” than to include safeguards to keep them from being the “worst sort.”
If they thought leaders would be the “best sort” under their system, they would have seen no need for those checks and balances. They were pessimists about human nature, hence the system we have…
Who the “best sort” is and who the “worst” is a matter of opinion. There’s no obvious measure for it.
As for the checks and balances, that was meant to distribute power between the branches, not between “classes” of people. According to Wood, the Framers very much believed that the “best sort” would rule — or would have to if a shaky construction like a republic were to survive. It did survive, however, even without their “vision” of a country managed by the “natural aristocracy” taking hold.
Of course the “experiment” isn’t finished — though this latest election might do the job.
Also, human frailty being what it is, don’t you think to some small extent, Madison was speaking as the resident of the most populous state when he expressed horror at the less-populous states having an equal say?
But perhaps I malign him. I need to go back and finish that Madison bio I started awhile back and ended up getting distracted from…
Scout, what you described in the first half of your post is the American political history I learned in school.
But I disagree it’s too late to follow the Constitution. This would only work, however, if it becomes apparent that the people realize they voted in error – and voice that collectively. Or at least are thankful another outcome is put forth as resolution.
How would the “people” voice their mistake collectively, in a manner that would pass constitutional muster? How would their regret “become apparent?”
Aside from voting, I mean. Which they just did. And if we did that again, Trump voters would be so ticked off they were turn out with a vengeance, and the result would be even MORE for him, even if that did not reflect a sense of the people as a whole.
Of course, they would be absolutely right to realize that last week they were absolutely wrong, but I just don’t see how that would be expressed…
It’s what is going to happen with Brexit. Parliament will review it and say it is not in the best interests of the country – and this time the real majority will exhale a sigh of relief and walk away from the crazy talk.
But, yes, that’s what I was saying – it has to be abundantly clear that the will of the people (not just everyone as a popular vote but everyone within the framework of the Electoral College vote tabulation methodology). It’s a political safety valve; not an instigation for revolt.
It will not be pleasant over the next four years but Trump is the voter’s choice state by state, not by the accumulative total. In a representative government, sometimes the majority does not win and when disputes arise that end up in court, at times the final decisions are handed down by the SCOTUS.
I agree with Brad that if the electoral college members decide to invalidate the election and take it upon themselves to decide who the next president will be, they are inviting more division, hatred, civil unrest, and a revolt – not theoretical but an actual revolt by the voters who voted for Trump and I would suspect by voters who decided for Clinton as the lesser of the two evils. A foolish decision by the Trump opposition if it should gain traction would be a disaster for this country and could be the tipping point seriously affecting and impacting the future course of this country. Then we would be a nation not governed by but under the absolute dictates of a select few individuals and that becomes anything but a democracy operating in a republic form of government.
A revolt by the electoral college would then become a true example of a nuclear option and the extent of harm it would do this nation would make a Trump presidency pale in comparison. I hold the writers of the Constitution and Bill of Rights in high regard considering the period of our history when they as an assembly of good young men undertook the task of developing a blueprint for a country and its future that has withstood the test of time. Yes, there have been times when it was absolutely necessary and a moral imperative to make some changes but overall, it has served us very well and will do so for the foreseeable future.
However, at that particular time in history, education, being informed, and political involvement was not as prevalent and easily accessible as it is today in a world of instant communication available to the majority of Americans and citizens of the world outside our borders. Most Americans can read and write but that was not the case during the time of Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, and other prominent figures in our history. It was a time when the leaders actually were the final arbiters of what would and would not be according to a provision or loophole they allowed for if they decided the voters were wrong even if the voters overwhelmingly voted for someone they deemed to be the wrong choice.
I too studied the election process and the electoral college and the responsibility of the members of the college. That is why I do not agree in any way any movement to invalidate the voter’s choice by voting for Trump and as noted on many occasions, I did not vote nor support him. But, he is the winner by a substantial margin by state and electoral votes and I will wish him nothing but the best and hope he will not be the instrument of division and destruction so many are hoping for simply for ideological reasons. I sincerely hope he will be able to prove to the people of this country he can be a decent president. All we can do is wait and see if his campaign rhetoric was just that, rhetoric. If it was, he will be a one term president or maybe an impeached one.
It is my personal goal to put aside my preconceived perception of Trump and give him a chance. What others do is up to them, not me.
I agree with much, but not quite all, of what Bart says here. For instance, I agree that a “revolt by the electoral college” would be extraordinarily dangerous. If it happened, they would be performing their proper, original role as the Constitution was written, but over the last couple of centuries we have created in the public SUCH an unreasonable belief in the rightness of direct democracy that people would FEEL like the best result was an illegitimate one.
And that would be bad.
But I disagree that it would be so bad “would make a Trump presidency pale in comparison.” It could be AS bad, or even worse, as things develop. But “pale in comparison,” no. The potential harm of a Trump presidency is practically unlimited….
And of course the harm ALREADY done, by lowering the position to accommodate such a man, is considerable. We were a better country when such a thing was inconceivable…
“potential harm”
You’ll save yourself a lot of trouble if you’ll just wait until something bad actually happens.
There was potential harm if Hillary was elected as well.
As I just said and keep saying, the harm has been done. The presidency is degraded by the election of such a man. Things could get somewhat better as we go forward, or they could get worse. But it’s awful right now.
And as I said over and over before the election, a Clinton administration would have been MISERABLE for the country. No president in our history up to now was as HATED by half the country as she would be, and it would be bad.
But at least she’d be qualified. At least she wouldn’t be grossly unfit for the job. The presidency would still be something a serious person could respect.
I still respect the presidency, for what it has always been up to now, and all I can hope for is that the institution itself somehow restrains and informs Trump so that he is no longer the man he has been for 70 years.
It’s a thin hope — and as you’ll recall, people who kept hoping for him to change during the election were bitterly disappointed, every time — but I’ve got to cling to something…
“It’s a thin hope — and as you’ll recall, people who kept hoping for him to change during the election were bitterly disappointed, every time ”
He did adapt (not change). There were very few incidents after the convention — everything that came up was ancient history.
Other than bringing on the Brietbart guy to his team, he’s done nothing else worth getting riled up about. His son even reached out to Kasich supposedly before the election to offer him control of the budget and Kasich turned him down. Big mistake on his part. Kasich is a minor footnote in history now.
Giuliani Is Top Choice for Secretary of State, Aides Say
Oh, and if Trump wants to show me he’s serious, he (and not his child, which would be an insult) will extend that invitation to Kasich now. And who knows? Maybe he will…
Refusing such a thing before the election would have been the right thing for Kasich to do. If only MORE Republicans had stood up.
Refusing it now would be tougher, because NOW it would be a matter of serving the country, not Trump.
Doesn’t mean he’d accept. He’s serving his state right now. But it would be harder to say no, for anyone with a sense of duty…
“Other than bringing on the Brietbart guy to his team, he’s done nothing else worth getting riled up about.”
Oh, I’d say wanting to give his kids Top Secret clearances — while also having them run his business — is something to get a little stirred up about.
“Oh, I’d say wanting to give his kids Top Secret clearances — while also having them run his business — is something to get a little stirred up about.”
Apparently that didn’t happen.
Turns out I was wrong to think Trump didn’t have anyone on his team who knew anything about foreign affairs. He had former Rep. Mike Rogers on his transition team.
Note, HAD. Rogers just quit, after being asked to leave by “senior transition team members.
Meanwhile, some of the Republican national security people who opposed Trump in the election have apparently had some interactions with the transition team, as evidenced by this.
Yesterday, in a conciliatory mood, Elliot Cohen Tweeted this:
Today, he Tweeted this:
Gee, an anti-Trump guy who nobody knows isn’t happy that he’s not called on to bring his expertise to the table.
Check out Eliot Cohen’s tweets PRIOR to the election. Like the one titled “My quote: “Republicans this year got into bed with a monster, and it’s going to take some time for them to get out.”
Why is it that Trump must now make nice with the people who hated him so much a week ago? It must be tough to be proven irrelevant and out of touch.
If someone called you a monster, would you just say “Hey, no big deal.. come on board and grace us with your knowledge”. ? The insiders are freaking out because they’re no longer on the inside.
“If someone called you a monster, would you just say ‘Hey, no big deal.. come on board and grace us with your knowledge’. ?”
Yeah, I would. Because I’d be thinking, OMG, I’m going to have to pull this together and DO this job now… which would be overwhelming.
And I’d be looking for every way possible to make up for my own deficiencies. Which I would know would be considerable.
This is a little hard to imagine in my own case, because I wouldn’t have tried to alienate them in the first place, but if ALL of the serious authorities on foreign policy in my own party had distanced themselves from me, I’d be scrambling like crazy to get them back. Unlike Trump, I know what the nuclear triad is, and I have a fundamental sense of postwar internationalism sort of ingrained in my outlook. But I know that’s not NEARLY good enough to even begin trying to conduct this nation’s foreign policy. I’d need every expert I could get to help me, every minute of every day.
I’d also be driving everybody who’d ever held the job nuts asking them to advise me on how to handle it all — Jimmy Carter, both Bushes, Clinton, Obama — and all the secretaries of state and national security advisers I could corral.
Of course, being me, I’d ask everybody who knew anything in the OTHER party to tell me all they could, and to join my administration if they would — in ADDITION, of course, to reconciling with the ones in my own party…
By the way, here’s an oped piece from Eliot Cohen about all this…
When do you expect to reach out to Will Folks for advice on how to run a blog?
HA! Now that’s funny.
But I’ve exchanged thoughts about blogging with Will. I took him out to breakfast once a year or so ago. Not to ask him anything, just to catch up.
I did once try to implement something Will did, but it didn’t work out. This was several years back. I had talked with Nancy Mace, and then later with Will I think, about their partnership. Him handling the content, her handling the technical side and, I think (it’s been awhile), the business side. I think I asked quite a bit about how they made it work.
I tried setting up something like that — an actual partnership, splitting things 50-50 — and it REALLY didn’t work out.
I’ve tried other arrangements, as well, twice taking on people to sell ads for commissions, but it’s always been a bust.
So, it’s back to me being my own IT department (with occasional help from Webfaction, which handles my hosting, in a pinch), and also — when I can overcome my HUGE aversion, not to mention ethical objections, to trying to sell an ad — bringing in a tiny bit of revenue now and then….
By the way, the secrets of why Will has the readership he does are not complicated:
1. He does it full-time. I don’t.
2. He breaks news. I don’t even try, beyond an incidental scoop now and then, because of item No. 3.
3. He doesn’t worry about a lot of journalistic niceties that hold back MSM types. He hears something, he reports it (at least I have that impression, but I could be wrong — I don’t read him that often). If I tried to be a serious news source, I would only do it with the proper resources — which would AT LEAST involve me working at it more than full-time, and preferably some other people. I’d want to do it right, and still be timely. Which takes a lot. So I stick to what I know I can do by myself reasonably well.
“Apparently that didn’t happen.”
Well, good Lord, let’s HOPE not! There are still some grownups in charge. For the moment…
And now there’s this:
“Christie Ally Exits Trump Team as Carson Spurns Offer”
Well, who needed her anyway? I hated it when she replaced Diane on the show to start with…”
Actually, I just said that for the joke. It’s a little-known fact, Normie, that I found Diane pretty irritating…
So did I, Cliff.
“Apparently that didn’t happen.“
Ok, so the story shifts from ”he asked for such a thing“ to ”they asked about the possibility of such a thing.” That’s what ya might call cold comfort.
Indeed.
The electoral college was not determined by a plurality of voters. There is no constitutional mandate on how they can vote. The man who captured the artificially drawn state boundary so called electoral vote is totally unfit to be president. I see nothing remotely out of line in any reasonable way with voting not Trump. It’s the only patriotic vote they could make. A vote for Trump is simply morally unconscionable.
If the election had come down to just a few states with just enough electoral votes had been successful electing a candidate with 270 electoral votes and the majority of the states did not vote for the winner, then it would be reasonable to take into serious consideration to use the provision provided.
Clinton won the popular vote by around 600k and the majority of the votes in the 600k are from 2 or 3 states on the West coast. If the total popular vote was the only determining factor, a handful of states with large cities favoring one candidate could determine who the president would be and the majority of the states would basically be unrepresented.
It is not a thrill for me to think about a Trump administration but his election to me does not meet the standard for the electoral college to overturn the will of so many states including several that traditionally vote Democrat. The difference between the popular vote and electoral votes won is not enough to warrant asking the electoral voters to go against what the voters have decided.
Of course, each of us is entitled to our opinion about the issue. Thank you Mark, Scout, and Bryan for your comments. As always, civil, well thought out, and nicely presented.
“If the total popular vote was the only determining factor, a handful of states with large cities favoring one candidate could determine who the president would be and the majority of the states would basically be unrepresented.”
Exactly. Go look at the final electoral map. Hillary was a textbook example of a candidate with only regional appeal. (NE and left coast)
… and poor, rural areas with black majorities. Break it down by county instead of state…
Agree, look at the counties to see how the votes went by race, income, social standing, etc. But be sure to include ALL in the breakdown because it is very likely that in many of the deep blue counties, there are pockets of deep red as well. Do we discount any deep red areas in deep blue counties as irrelevant?
We can break the vote down using a thousand different methods to try to determine what is fair and representative of all participants in the voting process. The final analysis comes down to the count by state and the candidate with the most votes in each state, and if correct except for Maine, will be awarded all of the electoral votes from the state.
Maybe it would be a better idea if we were to use Maine as the way to award electoral votes. Then each candidate would receive his or her fair share of electoral votes and if this had been done, it is more than likely Clinton would have been the winner considering how close Trump’s win was in the Rust Belt states.
This just drives me crazy(er) STATES are NOT what needs representing. States are nothing but geographically ambiguous plots of land drawn up hundreds of year ago. Does the Alleghaney River or the Ozark mountains have a vested interest in whether we tax capital gains? Does Death Valley care if we send troop into Iraq? What really matters are people. And human beings should be equally represented regardless of which side of an imaginary line they live on. Let’s see how the electors vote this time. If they stick with Trump it’s time to get rid of the electoral college. The living people should decide not dead map makers.
Imagine a candidate who offered tax breaks to Californians and New Yorkers. Or ran on a platform of closing military bases in smaller states and moving them to more populous states?
There are way too many ways to rig a pure popular vote election that could leave too many people without any representation. Hillary was the coastal President. It’s her fault she was such a lousy candidate that she lost states Democrats don’t typically lose. She blew it and all the talk of messing with the electoral college is just sour grapes.
Geez people can the argument get any more strained. We can’t move our nucelera waste out of th state because Nevada is a swing state and SC is not. So in fact it’s the electoral college that drives political decisions NOW, not some hypothetical what if.
It’s really hard to type on a tiny phone.
I thought we couldn’t store our nuclear waste in Nevada because of Harry Reid. A problem that we soon won’t have…
States are places where people live.
Suppose you live in Kansas.
You vote Republican (come on and TRY to imagine it, bud). Everybody in your family votes Republican. All your neighbors, except one eccentric character on your block maybe, votes Republican. Based on your experience, pretty much all of Kansas is the same. And election results make it look even MORE that way than it is.
You look around. In every state that you can reach within a day’s drive, it’s the same. Republican.
But, because someone in their wisdom did away with the Electoral College decades earlier, in every single election in your adult lifetime, the person who has won the presidential election has been a Democrat, someone with relatively little support outside the sprawling metropolitan areas of New York, Washington, Los Angeles, Chicago and a few other cities. Every time, it’s been someone who speaks as though he or she holds you and people who see life as you do in utter contempt.
And you don’t even know anyone who lives in any of those places, or would dream of living in those places.
And you had every reason to think this situation would continue for the rest of your life.
How fair would you think that was?
And in that hypothetical situation, the candidates for President never, ever, ever campaign within your state to even attempt to earn your vote.
They don’t campaign in my state NOW. For every hypothetical I can throw back a real problem that exists now. But keep them coming, I need some debating batting practice. But just don’t use the nonsensical expression “the people have spoken”. That is bull.
That’s why we have Congressional houses and state governments. The President isn’t a dictator, but has considerable powers. The electoral college is a way to either protect the less populated states or give them undue influence, depending on your point of view. The Senate makeup, in my view does the protecting job in my view. 2 states with 2 million residents combined have as many Senators as California and NY with what? 50 million!
Wonder if the president-elect is aware he’s not a dictator?
What’s evolving now is basically what you are describing. But instead of urban voters who hold rural voters in contempt it’s white voters who hold minorities in contempt. We have an openly racist, xenophobe in a major position of power inside the Trump administration.
Bud, you’re just not getting it. Here, let me get an expert to explain it to you:
Hahahahahahahah.
That’s one of his two Tweets so far today.
The other one brags how he would have won anyway without the Electoral College.
Seriously. This is apparently all that the soon-to-be-most-powerful-man-on-the-planet is thinking about today. THESE are the thoughts he felt compelled to share with the world.
Here’s a separate post on the subject…
So? That’s where the people live.
This is why I am in favor of the Electoral College system. It nationalizes our winner in a way a consolidated popular vote does not.
The same downside as had the potential to exist in 1785 is the one that still offers the existential threat the system has no answer to – class chism. And that’s what we are seeing. And will see. Retrograde forces always lose through history; after they create extensive societal damage, that is.
Did you mean “class schism?”
I did indeed. I was not autocorrected where I would have expected to have been.
Nationalized the election? What even does that mean? These arguments are just so crudely fashioned as to be meaningless. The ONLY thing the electoral college did this time around is elect a uniquely unqualified man to the highest and most powerful office in the land.
Bud, You scrambled my words, which may be what created your confusion.
I LOVE that this Open Thread, which like on most blogs could have devolved into a chat about irrelevancies, became a serious discussion of the issues Hamilton, Madison and Jay were on about in the Federalist Papers….
I mean, it could have turned into a bunch of quotations from “Johnny Dangerously,” but of course I’d never say or do anything that might encourage that sort of behavior. 🙂
Someone tried to do that on this blog once — ONCE!
The electoral college folks are making the same argument that branded Negro slaves as 3/5 of a person prior to the Civil War. If you live in LA or NY your humanity is reduced because of the electoral college. Brad you more than anyone else should see the damage this terrible system is doing to our country by giving us president Trump against the will of the voters.
Now you’re just being silly. Oh, and good luck with your constitutional amendment process in getting rid of the electoral college.
It’s such a waste of time… you have to get two thirds of Congress or two thirds of state legislatures to agree to amend the Constitution FIRST. And then get 3/4 of the states (38) to ratify it.
IT AIN’T HAPPENIN’. Quit wasting your time dreaming about it.
Just writing that makes me wonder what they were smoking (or drinking) back when Prohibition was passed. How could 3/4 of the states gone for that?
“you have to get two thirds of Congress or two thirds of state legislatures to agree to amend the Constitution FIRST. And then get 3/4 of the states (38) to ratify it.”
Civics. Fun, huh?
I’ve read of an interesting idea: Attempting to pass an amendment via the convention of states method outlined in Article V, but using an interstate compact to streamline the process.
Basically, you get 38 states to sign on to an agreement that contains a bunch of contingent provisions whose net effect is to say, “Once 38 states sign on to this compact, then we all agree that the applications for the convention will be sent to Congress so as to initiate the call to convention, we all agree that proposed amendment XYZ, exactly as set forth below, will be the resulting proposed amendment from this convention, we all agree to recommend to Congress the state legislature method of ratification, and we all agree that we will ratify it.”
So, you get sort of instant convention that is called automatically once the 38th state signs on. There are still a couple steps of formal action required by Congress, but it makes it theoretically more feasible, provided the amendment is agreed to in advance.
Sounds interesting. What sort of amendments will the states be proposing?
Well the place I read about this was a letter advocating for a balanced budget amendment, and nothing else.
How about a constitutional amendment that says the Constitution means what it says?
There already exists a compact among 10 states to give electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote regardless of the state’s results. It doesn’t become active until states having at least 270 electoral votes have joined the compact.
I wonder how much the Electoral College suppresses the vote?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact
Prohibition was something that came hand-in-hand with women’s suffrage, sort of a last gasp of the Progressive Era.
A lot of men in this country had been heavy drinkers since before the nation was founded. It was one of farmers’ favorite uses of the grain they grew. I vaguely remember reading things about alcohol consumption that make early Americans sound like real sots. As of 1830, the average American consumed more than 7 gallons of pure alcohol a year. (Today, it’s more like 2.3 gallons.)
Anyway, it was mainly seen as a MALE phenomenon. And women had enough over the years of being abused by their men, and watching their kids starve because Dad was too drunk to hold a job. To hear the activists tell it, it was a HUGE problem.
You’ll note that women got the vote, and Prohibition started, in the same year — 1920.
Did you see the Ken Burns documentary in three episodes?
“A Nation of Drunkards”, “A Nation of Scofflaws”, and “A Nation of Hypocrites”.
You know, I don’t think I did. I should watch those.
But first, I want to go back and finish watching his baseball series. That was really good, and I don’t know what sidetracked me.
I need to get back into my workout routine. Maybe I can watch those while I’m on the elliptical…
It would happen immediately if the Republicans ever lose one. Demographics are always shifting so this could happen eventually.
Suck it up, buttercups!
http://www.ksla.com/story/33716306/suck-it-up-buttercup-bill-targets-anti-trump-protests-in-iowa
This has been and may continue to be one of the best discussions I can remember in a long time. Maybe this election finally woke enough people up across this country to finally realize something is so structurally wrong in Washington that we ended up with Donald Trump as our next president. Maybe this will shake some damn sense into the heads of the so-called leaders of our nation and remind them that their prime directive – Star Trek reference, is to work together for the betterment of all the people and stop wasting time on freaking stupid issues that further divide a nation.
I still remember when GWB made the statement he had political capital to spend and he intended to spend it. It was a damn stupid remark to make then and it was just as stupid for Democrats to take the attitude after Obama’s election to tell Republicans, “we won, you lost, get over it”, or “elections have consequences”, and my favorite, “….We don’t mind the Republicans joining us. They can come for the ride, but they gotta sit in back.” In my estimation, the last remark cost him the House in 2010 after he had won it and the Senate in historical fashion in 2008.
Maybe our elected representatives in Congress will have common cause to work together since we have a president elect who is not fit to serve but was elected because of a house so divided. Maybe they will understand that together they can accomplish the positives we need as a country and move as far away from divisive identity politics as possible. If they cannot, in 2018 and 2020, both houses need to be emptied and filled with new faces who have the best interest of this country in mind and are not bound to some political party that is void of anything except a raw quest for power and influence no matter what the cost to the voters may be.
When I read about the demonstrations and riots in cities that are carried out by people who didn’t bother to register and vote plus the busing in of trouble makers whose purpose is to push a demonstration from a peaceful one to one of destruction, I ask myself what is next?
Another question is just how much influence does the major contributors actually have on an election since Trump spent half of what Clinton did and he still won? How is it that Wall Street contributed to Clinton by a 9 – 1 ratio and she still lost but the stock market has not crashed, in fact it closed today at 18,868.69, up 21.03 points and the S&P closed down by 0.25 points? Anyone out there have an answer? I am certainly interested in an explanation especially after the experts dire predictions of a total collapse if Trump won.
How is it that we are having the discussion about the Electoral College and doing away with it at this point? If Clinton had won the popular vote by 5% – 10%, I would be questioning it but she won by 600,000+ votes, approximately 1%. Overall, that is an insignificant number to argue about and if not for the coastal states, East and West, it is doubtful she would have had the 1% advantage in the popular vote.
Donald Trump is his own worst enemy and in the end, he will be the one who brings his administration to an ignominious end if he fulfills the dire predictions of the next four years. But, I still have some small hope we have learned a valuable lesson and won’t repeat it again in 2020 – if it is not too late.
Nature abhors a vacuum. Definition – “This idiom is used to express the idea that empty or unfilled spaces are unnatural as they go against the laws of nature and physics.” We were in a vacuum devoid of reasonable choices when we were faced with Trump and Clinton as the candidates of the two major political parties. Maybe nature will take care of what we could not. Maybe the Clinton name has been removed from the public arena for the time being, however, Chelsea is waiting in the wings for future generations. It is not likely a Trump other than Donald will get close to the White House except as a visitor on tour after “The Donald” finishes his term, assuming he will.
Excuse my rather disjointed comments, I find difficult to come to grips with what has transpired over the past few decades that has been the impetus for what we face the next four years.
Could it be that the Democratic candidate had flaws that are easily exploited and ran a crumby campaign? Could it be that our electoral politics at most levels has devolved to mudslinging , and facts or proposed solutions don’t matter? Could it be that we are far too polarized to conduct fair and serious election campaigns? Could it be that our country is highly self-interested, materialistic, intellectually lazy, and accusatory? Could it be that we have a highly diminished sense of community? I think all of the above produced a President-elect Trump.
Harry, I think your “could it be” comments are on point. Very perceptive. Thank you!
I think we are too polarized to conduct fair and civil plain old conversations with real people we know who happen to have a different opinion, in a lot of cases. It does happen here which is nice. But I think this is rare. Facebook and other comment areas on the internet devolve into unfounded rudeness quickly and people avoid talking about it in real situations. This is not good.
Your other observations are also good – but that one jumped at me.