I’m having some fun rattling the cages of my friends on the right by reminding them that Hillary Rodham Clinton has a significant — and growing — lead in the popular vote overĀ Donald J. Trump.
They, of course, remind me — correctly, of course — that Trump won the votes that actually elect the president, the Electoral College.
Now comes a new spin that is born out of an old one. They are reminding me that Trump won many more counties across the country, that Hillary’s votes were gathered in the large urban areas — such as Los Angeles, Chicago, New York. They also seem to infer that because her votes are clustered in the larger metro areas that they somehow are less representative, or even less legitimate, than the vast expanse of territory that Trump was able to claim on Election Day.
Hold that thought!
Mitt Romney also won more counties than President Obama in 2012; but the president corralled 5 million more votes than his challenger. Sen. John McCain also won the vast majority of counties in 2008, but Sen. Obama piled up nearly 10 million more votes than McCain.
And yes, we heard much the same refrain from the losers in both those elections: Sure, Obama won, but Romney/McCain each carried more actual real estate than Barack Obama.
Sure thing, but human beings cast votes. More of them voted for Obama than they did for either of his presidential challengers.
I need no reminders that Trump’s victory was forged in Rural America. He turned out the rural vote precisely to counteract the large urban vote that Clinton was sure to get. It turns out that his rural vote outnumbered Clinton’s urban vote — in the states that mattered. I refer to those swing states that voted twice for President Obama.
However, I refuse to accept the notion that Clinton’s popular vote is somehow de-legitimized because of where her massive vote totals are being compiled.
“We are” — as the young state senator from Illinois reminded us during his keynote speech at theĀ 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston — “the United States of America.” We aren’t divided into political parties, said state Sen. Barack Obama. We are one nation, undivided and united, he said.
So it is that our votes all count the same. Whether they are come from large cities or small farming communities, they all are tabulated together.
Thus, Hillary Clinton’s popularĀ margin — sitting currently at 2.5 million — is the product of a targeted effort to boost turnout in strong Democratic bases within our cities, it remains irrefutably a national total.
Donald Trump has been elected president. I accept Americans’ electoral verdict. I don’t like it, but it’s what we’re going to get.
Accordingly, it would do the other side just as well to accept the notion that while Trump won where it counted the most, Hillary Clinton — and those who voted for her — still command a significant voice of opposition to the policies that the new president is about to drop on the nation’s lap.