Tag Archives: Electoral College

national news, political news

Trump ‘mandate’ getting smaller by the day

hillary

Donald J. Trump’s so-called presidential election “mandate” is disappearing right before his eyes.

The president-elect has captured the Electoral College vote by a healthy — if not overwhelming — margin. He’ll finish with 306 electoral votes to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s 232 votes. Of course, that assumes that all the electors earmarked for both candidates actually vote that way when they take the tally in December.

I’ll be intrigued, though, to hear whether Trump declares his election is a “mandate” to do all the things he wants to do: build the wall, ban Muslims, toss out trade agreements, “bomb the s*** out of ISIS,” you know … stuff like that.

Clinton’s popular vote margin has surpassed 1 million ballots, with the “lead” sure to grow as vote-counters tally up ballots in Clinton-friendly states such as California.

I don’t for a second doubt the legitimacy of Trump’s victory. He won where it counted. To be sure, Clinton will draw small comfort in knowing she collected more ballots nationally than the man who “defeated” her.

However, I think it’s worth stating that the winner needs to take some care — if he’s capable of demonstrating that trait — in crowing about whatever “mandate” he thinks he got from an election that clearly is sending mixed messages throughout the nation and around the world.

The mandate is shrinking each day.

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Indeed, I cannot help but think of a friend of mine, the late Buddy Seewald of Amarillo, who once talked describe the local effort in the Texas Panhandle to “re-defeat” President Bush in 2004. Bush, then the Texas governor, won the presidency in 2000 in a manner similar to the way Trump was elected: He got the requisite number of electoral votes — with a major boost from the U.S. Supreme Court — while losing the popular vote to Vice President Al Gore.

Might that be the rallying cry if Donald Trump runs for re-election in 2020? It works for me.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/clinton-popular-vote-trump-2016-election-231434

national news, political news

The ‘system’ elected Donald Trump

trump-wins

The irony of the 2016 presidential election outcome is too good to let go.

Donald J. Trump bitched continually about the possibility of losing the presidential election to a “rigged electoral system.” He even threatened to forgo accepting the result if he came up on the short end of the count.

Then he won. He was elected president of the United States with a healthy Electoral College majority. It stands currently at 290 electoral votes, with more likely to come in once they declare that he won in Michigan, which is still “too close to call.”

But wait! Hillary Rodham Clinton has collected nearly a million more actual votes than Trump. That number is likely to increase once they finish counting all the scattered ballots … and there appear to be many more to be counted in California.

So …

As someone has pointed out already on social media, the people voted for Hillary, but the system elected Trump.

national news, political news

Now … about the Electoral College

electoralcollege

Election Night 2016 proved to be one for the books.

Donald J. Trump got elected president of the United States despite being outvoted by Hillary Rodham Clinton.

But wait! He won more electoral votes.

They’re still counting ballots and it appears that Clinton’s vote lead will expand before they’re all done.

Then came the question from one of the folks attending an election watch party at some friends’ house: Is the Electoral College in the U.S. Constitution?

Yes it is. Article II lays out the rules for the Electoral College. You know how it goes: We aren’t voting directly for president; we’re voting for electors who then meet in December to cast their votes for president in accordance — supposedly — with the majority of voters from their respective states.

I’ve found myself defending the Electoral College to people abroad who cannot understand how it works, or why the founders created the system. In November 2000, for example, my wife and I were in Greece, the cradle of western civilization and the birthplace of democracy. The Greeks are quite sophisticated about these things. However, they couldn’t quite grasp the idea of one candidate — Al Gore — getting more votes than George W. Bush, but losing the election. The 2000 presidential election was still in doubt while my wife and I were touring Greece. I defended the Electoral College as best I could.

Sixteen years later, we’ve had another circumstance with the “winner” getting fewer votes than the “loser.”

It’s the fifth time in our nation’s history where this has occurred. Three of them occurred in the 19th century; two of them have occurred within just the first two decades of the 21st century.

I’m not yet ready to jump on climb aboard the dump-the-Electoral College bandwagon. I have to say, though, that that I am beginning to grow less enamored of the archaic system that was devised by men who — in their time — didn’t grant rights of full citizenship to women or to blacks. Women didn’t get the right to vote until 1920, for crying out loud and it took landmark civil rights legislation in the 1960s to guarantee full citizenship rights to African-Americans.

The gap in time — just 16 years — between the last two elections in which one candidate wins the “popular vote” but loses a presidential election is giving me serious pause about the wisdom of a system that hasn’t changed with the nation.

national news, political news

Still waiting for the mea culpa on ‘rigged election’

vote1

Donald J. Trump leveled some pretty hideous accusations at local election officials throughout the country.

The president-elect said while campaigning for the highest office in the land that the election would be “rigged” against him … if he lost.

He, quite naturally, never uttered a peep about such corruption in the event he would win.

Well, he did. He won it fair and square.

Have we heard a sound from the winner about the “rigged” election process? Have we heard him say a word about how at times campaign rhetoric gets a bit overheated and that, well, he was trying to make some kind of political point?

Remember how Trump sought to excuse his anti-woman comments as mere “entertainment,” that he really had “great respect” for women and that he didn’t really mean what he said about how he judged women on their appearance?

He’s capable of taking back these statements, yes?

Trump ought to do so in this case.

http://www.beaumontenterprise.com/opinions/editorials/article/EDITORIAL-Trump-s-triumph-proves-system-is-not-10605289.php

He’s likely to finish with more than 300 electoral votes. Hillary Rodham Clinton is likely to finish with more actual votes than Trump.

The system isn’t “rigged.” It never has been. The system has been run at the local level by dedicated public servants committed to ensuring the integrity of this cherished right of citizenship.

The man who benefited most from that system, the president-elect, owes them all an apology.

national news, political news

Well, that is some surprise … yes?

trump

Americans have spoken a language I don’t quite understand.

I am acutely aware that my friends on the right will be glad to translate for me the message that voters delivered yesterday by electing Donald J. Trump as the next president of the United States of America.

Let’s see. I opened the blinds on my home office this morning and noticed that the sun rose in the east, the leaves that were on my trees are still scattered on my lawn. The sun is shining.

Despite the language barrier that has developed overnight, I am going to remain steadfast in a couple of core beliefs.

First, Americans have elected a patently unqualified and unfit man to become commander in chief/head of state and government/leader of the Free World. I won’t belabor the point. I’ve made it ad infinitum already on this blog.

The very core of Trump’s campaign was based on dividing people and religious groups against each other. Now he says he intends to unify the country? Good luck with that.

Second, my hope had been all along that had Hillary Clinton won — as every pollster in the country seemed to expect would happen — that Trump would accept the result and offer his support for the new president. I expect Clinton to do that very thing later today.

I, too, accept the result. Do I agree with it? Obviously, no. Given that I believe in our political system, I understand how it works and how we elect presidents.

I hasten to point, too, that when all the votes are counted, Clinton is going to command a significant popular vote majority over Trump. But Trump won where it counts, in the Electoral College. Unlike the 2000 election, which required a 5-4 U.S. Supreme Court decision to stop counting ballots in Florida to elect George W. Bush, there won’t be that headache this time around.

I take small comfort in realizing that few Americans saw this result coming, that they would awaken this morning to the news that Donald J. Trump would be the next president. The pro-Trump partisans stood out like pie-in-the-sky braggarts prior to Election Day.

Now they look like geniuses.

Congratulations to them.

Now I need to clear my head … and learn the language that voters spoke last night.

national news, political news

Chaotic campaign becomes even more chaotic

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You want chaos on the election trail? Pandemonium in the board room? Shock in our living rooms?

Welcome to Presidential Election 2016, which is heading for what looks like the wildest finish in history. Why, this might even top the 2000 election, where Al Gore won more popular votes than George W. Bush, but lost the presidency because Bush got one more Electoral College vote than he needed.

I’m not going to predict that this campaign will end with that scenario. The grenade that FBI Director James Comey tossed into the middle of this fight has the potential of upsetting everything we thought about the bizarre nature of this bizarre campaign.

He said he’s found more e-mails that might have something to do with Hillary Clinton’s on-going e-mail controversy. We don’t know what’s in them. We don’t even know if she sent them.

Donald Trump calls it the “mother lode.”

I keep hearing two things: (1) The polls are tightening and (2) few voters’ minds have been changed because of what Comey has said.

Are we really and truly going to elect someone — Trump — who has admitted to behaving boorishly? Are we going to elect an individual with a string of failed businesses, lawsuits, allegations of sexual assault leveled against him?

We’re going to do this because the FBI director has inserted himself and his agency into the middle of a presidential campaign while saying virtually nothing of substance about what he might — or might not — have on one of the candidates?

Am I happy with the choices we face? No. I wish the major parties had nominated different candidates for president. We’re stuck, though, with these. We’re left with a choice. Of the two major-party nominees, the choice is clear — to me.

If only we could rid ourselves of the chaos.

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How will the loser concede this election?

republican-presidential-nominee-mitt-romney-embraces-his-wife-ann-as-his-family-look-on-during-his-election-night-rally-in-boston

Allow me to play out what looks like an increasing probable political outcome.

It is that Hillary Rodham Clinton will be elected the 45th president of the United States of America.

The trend is moving rapidly in her favor in the wake of (a) two debate performances against Donald J. Trump and (b) the continuing fallout from Trump’s hideous statements about women.

So, what might we expect when the loser of this miserable election decides to issue a concession statement?

It’s been said that the winner’s victory declaration will set the tone for the next four years. What’s being said with increasing frequency is that the loser’s concession will be equally important.

Trump has waged a campaign of anger, fear, suspicion, innuendo, invective and bigotry. Listen to his supporters yell “Lock her up!” at those rallies. Listen, too, to them complain about alleged conspiracies involving the “liberal mainstream media” and “politically correct special interests” who are teaming up to “rig” an election that produces a desired result.

They are echoing the statements of their guy, Trump.

The candidate has bitched about a “rigged election.”

Tradition holds that the loser concedes once the election is decided and then declares his intention to work with the winner to heal the wounds opened up by months of bitter campaigning. Recall, though, when Al Gore conceded defeat in 2000, only to take it back when the Florida ballot-counting threw the proverbial wrench into the entire election process.

It’s fair to wonder what kind of concession statement Donald Trump would deliver when the time comes for him to call it quits.

Will he lead his ardent Republican “base” voters into lingering bitterness? Will he make an accusation of election-rigging? If that happens, and no one should be surprised if does, then we’re headed for a very difficult transition as the new president prepares to assume the most cherished role in the nation — if not the world.

My hope is that if he loses — and one is compelled to offer that qualifier until one candidate gets the Electoral College majority required to win — that he does so with a modicum of grace, decorum and good will.

However, my fear is that Trump would hold true to the form that enabled him to secure a major-party presidential nomination. It was a butt-ugly process and my concern is that he very well could make it an equally unattractive concession.

national news, political news

How do you ‘rig’ a U.S. presidential election?

shutterstock_331242347.jpg-voting

I’m going to crawl way out on a limb.

Hillary Rodham Clinton is going to win several states this fall that normally vote Republican in presidential elections.

I won’t suggest that Texas will be one of them. There are some others, though, that appear vulnerable to an electoral flip: Arizona comes to mind; Missouri, too; maybe North Carolina; and, yes, even Utah. Let me throw in Montana and the Dakotas just for giggles and grins.

Which brings to mind the weird prediction that Republican nominee Donald J. Trump has leveled at the electoral process. He says the election will be “rigged.”

My question centers on how you “rig” a national presidential election in which each state awards its Electoral College votes in a system run by state politicians.

The state’s I’ve mentioned have substantial Republican majorities in their legislatures. Missouri is governed by a Democrat, but it has gone Republican for several election cycles.

Trump, though, suggests that Clinton is going to manage to “rig” the election.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/president-obama-says-donald-trump%e2%80%99s-claim-that-election-will-be-rigged-is-%e2%80%98ridiculous%e2%80%99/ar-BBvgPV9?li=BBnbcA1

Trump provoked a strong response from President Obama, who today called the “rigging” accusation “ridiculous.”

The president mentioned that it’s impossible for him to understand how a candidate can suggest something like that would happen before the results are in. If the GOP nominee were leading by 15 points on Election Day and still lost, the president said, then he might have reason to question the results.

My point here, though, is that presidential elections aren’t really managed at a single location. They are managed in 50 state capitals, with its hefty share of Republican-controlled legislative chambers and governor’s offices.

Trump’s weird prediction, therefore, sounds like the whining of someone who knows he’s going to lose badly in about 96 days.

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But … senator, you cast your vote in secret

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dole

Bob Dole says he just cannot support Hillary Rodham Clinton’s quest for the presidency.

The former Republican U.S. senator from Kansas said he’s been a Republican all his life. Donald J. Trump, his party’s presumed presidential nominee, is “flawed,” according to Dole, but he’s getting his vote anyway.

“I have an obligation to the party. I mean, what am I going to do? I can’t vote for George Washington. So I’m supporting Donald Trump,” Dole explained Friday on NPR’s “Morning Edition.”

I think I want to reset this for just a moment.

I have great respect and admiration for Sen. Dole. I admire him for his valiant service to the country in the Army during World War II, for his years in the Senate and for his ability to reach across the aisle to work with Democrats; he and fellow World War II hero Sen. George McGovern, for example, were great personal friends and occasional legislative partners, particularly on programs involving agriculture.

He said, though, that he has to put party first and he must support Trump in his upcoming fight against Clinton.

The reset is this: Sen. Dole can say it all he wants — until he runs out of breath — that he’s going to vote a certain way.

But one of the many beauties of our political system is that we get to vote in private. It’s a secret. We all can blab our brains out over who we intend to vote for, but when the time comes we can change our mind.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/bob-dole-endorses-donald-trump-000000912.html

I think of Bob Dole as more of a patriot than a partisan.

He had been involved with government for many decades. He ran for president himself in 1996, losing in an Electoral College landslide to President Bill Clinton.

I don’t intend to sound cynical about what Bob Dole is going to do when the time comes to cast his vote. However, his party’s presidential nominee is like a volcano waiting to erupt.

I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Sen. Dole changes his mind over the course of the next few weeks and perhaps decide to keep that spot on his ballot unchecked.

A part of me would like to prove it.

political news, State news, Uncategorized

Texas could be in play — for once

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Texas-calendar

Is this the strangest election year you’ve seen since, oh, The Flood?

Consider, then, what just might be coming down the road in Texas, this place where Republicans rule from horizon to horizon and where Democrats seem to have been placed on a witness protection list.

Hillary Rodham Clinton just might — with the help of her probable Republican Party presidential campaign opponent — be able to make this state competitive in the upcoming election.

You can stop laughing now.

Hear me out.

GOP nominee-in-waiting Donald J. Trump appears to be doing everything he can to anger Latino voters. It all started with that hideous campaign launch in which he declared his intention to build a “beautiful wall” along our border with Mexico to keep out the rapists, murderers and drug dealers who, he said, were being sent here by the Mexican government.

Then just the other day he singled out an Indiana-born federal judge who Trump said “hates” him. The judge has a Latino name. Trump called him “a Mexican.” Uhh, no. He’s not. The judge is as American as Trump.

How does this play in Texas? The state’s largest minority group is Latino, who also are the fastest-growing demographic group in the state.

Just suppose the Latino population turns out in massive numbers after hearing the constant barrage of statements that the Republican nominee has made about them. Suppose that Clinton’s campaign team taps into that anger with a concerted effort targeted at reminding that voter bloc of what lies ahead for the country if Trump gets elected president.

http://www.texasmonthly.com/burka-blog/clinton-plans-play/

Granted, history hasn’t been good for Democrats in Texas. The state’s Latino population so far hasn’t turned out to vote in numbers commensurate with its enormous potential impact.

Erica Grieder, writing for Texas Monthly’s Burka Blog, notes: It seems that empirical evidence on campaigning in Texas deserves an asterisk too, because Clinton has now declared her intention to do something no Democrat has attempted recently: compete in a general election in Texas with the goal of winning. Barack Obama didn’t allocate serious time or resources to try to win the state’s electoral votes in 2008 or 2012.

My earlier prediction — such as it was — that Clinton might score an Electoral College sweep this fall is looking less and less possible, given recent polling data showing a tightening race across the nation.

However, consider this: If Clinton does make Texas a competitive state and closes to within spitting distance of Trump, then she’s likely to win those states that now are deemed too close to call.

Therefore, if Texas does flip from R to D, then I suggest we just might see a blowout in the making on Election Day.

And yes, I can hear you laughing now.