Tag Archives: Hillary Clinton

national news, political news

Trump redefines electoral ‘landslide’

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Donald J. Trump is measuring electoral landslides with a different set of parameters than most of us.

The president-elect keeps saying he won the election this past month “in a landslide” over Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Hmm. I wonder about that.

When I was studying political science in college, I always believed an electoral landslide — when talking about presidential elections — usually meant something akin to a 10-percentage-point popular vote margin, give or take.

The landslide elections in my lifetime occurred in 1952 and 1956, with Dwight Eisenhower’s two election victories over Adlai Stevenson; 1964, with Lyndon Johnson’s landslide win over Barry Goldwater; 1980 and 1984, with Ronald Reagan’s wins over Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale.

The 1988 election with George H.W. Bush defeating Michael Dukakis came close to a landslide.

Then you can measure Electoral College landslides, which often don’t coincide with popular vote landslides. George H.W. Bush scored an Electoral College landslide over Dukakis; Bill Clinton rolled up big Electoral College margins over Bush in 1992 and Bob Dole in 1996; Barack Obama’s electoral-vote victory in 2008 over John McCain could be called a landslide.

Now, back to the president-elect’s preposterous assertion of a “landslide” victory over Hillary Clinton.

He’s now trailing the loser by 2.6 million votes nationally. Yes, Trump won the Electoral College vote by a comfortable margin, at 306-232 — but it ain’t a landslide by what I consider to be most people’s measuring stick.

By all means, Trump won the election. He’s going to be the next president. However, the president-elect needs to stop with the delusion that he won by a landslide.

It was a squeaker, dude, in a deeply divided nation. Furthermore, he would do well to listen to the views expressed by the majority of those who voted against him.

national news, political news

Imagine the surprise: Hillary’s foes will keep looking

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Let me see a show of hands.

Who is surprised that congressional Republicans are going to keep looking for something — anything! — to hang around Hillary Rodham Clinton’s neck?

I didn’t think so. No one, yes?

U.S. House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, said he’s going to pursue an investigation into whether Clinton committed perjury to Congress while testifying about her use of a personal e-mail server while she was secretary of state.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/clinton-opponents-vow-to-continue-their-pursuit/ar-AAl87tn?li=BBnb7Kz

Let’s see how this goes. The FBI investigated Clinton thoroughly and determined she didn’t commit any crimes. Did the feds determine she lied under oath to Congress? Umm, no. Did they find any other criminality? Again, no.

That won’t prevent Chaffetz and other GOP lawmakers from continuing to search for someone with which to charge the defeated Democratic presidential nominee.

As The Hill reports: “‘A political election does not extinguish the need for transparency, truth and justice,’ he told Fox News this week.” The Hill adds that Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group, also plans to stay on the hunt. Hmm. Imagine that.

I get that Chairman Chaffetz doesn’t want an election by itself to spell the end of a congressional probe. What I don’t get is why Chaffetz wants to keep scouring after the FBI has made its determination that “no reasonable prosecutor” would seek an indictment alleging criminality against Clinton.

If he had the goods on Clinton, surely he could have produced it long ago.

What’s more, Donald J. Trump, who’s about to become president, has said he no longer wants to pursue a probe of Clinton.

None of that, however, is likely to stop Chaffetz and other GOP zealots from continuing their incessant march into more dead ends.

Enough, already!

national news, political news

Needing help accepting this outcome … fully

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A friend of mine has acknowledged a greater-than-normal disappointment in the presidential election result.

He said he’s having trouble accepting that Donald J. Trump is now the president-elect of the United States of America.

I am now going to admit the same thing.

Just as my friend said, I’ve voted for losing presidential candidates many times over the years. I’ve voted in 12 presidential elections, dating back to 1972. My record as of Nov. 8 is now 5-7 … that’s five winners and seven losers.

I know how it feels to be on the losing side.

This one is different than all the rest of them. It’s even different from my first vote, when Sen. George McGovern got smashed to smithereens in a 49-state blowout to President Nixon. I was young, full of piddle and vinegar, just home from service in the Army, newly married and I worked my butt off in my hometown to elect a good and decent man to the presidency.

It’s not that I believe Trump was inferior to his chief opponent, Hillary Rodham Clinton. It’s deeper than that. He’s patently unfit for the office. I will maintain that belief more than likely for the entire time he serves as president.

That could change. Trump could prove me wrong. He could turn out to be a quick study. He could muster some semblance of the decorum needed to serve as head of state and the leader of our government. Trump could actually grasp the concept of limited presidential power and he could accede to the will of another co-equal branch of government, the one on Capitol Hill, aka Congress.

I cannot get past the notion, though, that he’s going to try to run roughshod over the system. That he’s going to do some incredibly stupid things, issue some incompetent — or unlawful — orders.

I want none of that to happen. I want the new president to succeed. In some perverse way, I’m actually pulling for him. I know that sounds like a huge contradiction, given what I’ve written already in this post, along with what I’ve stated in countless previous posts on this blog.

It’s not. I have declared already that I do not subscribe to the hope that he will fail. Presidential failure means failure for the entire country. I will not forsake my citizenship; I won’t move to another nation. I will stay put and speak out whenever I feel like it. I’ll praise the good things Trump does and will criticize the bad.

So help me, I cannot yet come to grips with the notion that this guy — the former reality TV celebrity, the hotel mogul, the guy who admits to cheating on his wives, who acknowledges seeking to impose his sexual will on women, who mocked a physically disabled reporter, denigrated Gold Star parents and flung insults at opponents — is about to become the 45th president of the United States.

It’s not like the previous times I’ve voted for the losing candidate. Yes, I know Trump won the election fair and square. I accept the fact that he won the required number of electoral votes. And yes … he will be my president.

I’m just having trouble moving forward and putting the result behind me.

Do I need an intervention?

business news, national news, political news

‘Emoluments clause’ to be put to stern test

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I am not a constitutional scholar, but I know enough about the document to be able to talk about most of its contents with at least a smattering of intelligence

But a new phrase has popped up on many Americans’ radar in recent months. It’s the “emoluments clause” of the U.S. Constitution.

It’s contained in Article I. It’s the final clause in Section 9. It reads:

“No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”

Why the interest in this relatively obscure portion of the nation’s government document?

http://www.heritage.org/constitution/#!/articles/1/essays/68/emoluments-clause

We have a president-elect, Donald J. Trump, who possesses business interests that span the globe. He has done a lot of business with kings, princes and foreign states. He’s gotten money from them, enriching himself — and his family.

Now that he’s about to become president of the United States, we’re hearing more chatter about this emoluments clause … just as we did during the campaign when Trump’s allies used it to describe the so-called favors Hillary Rodham Clinton earned while she and her family ran the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Global Initiative.

Those Hillary haters are quiet about Trump’s dealings.

Trump has announced he’s going to turn everything over to his children: Ivanka, Don Jr. and Eric. He’s going to walk away from the myriad business dealings.

That would be OK, except that he is planning to hand it all over the Younger Trumps. My hunch is that they’ll remain in his family and, thus, will rake in the revenue derived from whatever deals they strike.

What’s the better option for Trump? Sell it all. Liquidate everything and remove yourself entirely from every single aspect of the business. Give the kids their portion of what you get from the sale and let them invest their largesse any way they wish.

Absent a  complete and total severance from these business dealings, we are about to hear a lot more about the emoluments clause. It will not be pretty.

media news, national news, political news

Media actually called the ’16 election … really!

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This just in: The media called the 2016 presidential  election correctly … sort of.

Hillary Rodham Clinton is leading Donald J. Trump by just a shade less than 2 percentage points in the popular vote. She’s up by 2.5 million votes and the number might climb.

So, why are the media taking such a battering over “missing” the results? Oh, yes. The Electoral College.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/elections/live_results/2016_general/president/map.html

The media and the pollsters all across the country might have been too transfixed by the overall national mood and less intrigued by what was happening in rural communities blanketing those critical “swing states” that voted for Trump on Nov. 8.

I won’t give the media a pass.

I’ll just note that the RealClearPolitics average of polls had Clinton leading Trump nationally by 2 to 5 percentage points. She’s going to finish with a 2-percentage point “victory” in the popular vote.

That won’t get her a ticket — let alone the keys — to the White House.

If the media fell short, they missed the signs that were developing in rural America that propelled Donald Trump to the victory that shocked ’em all.

national news, political news

Why is Trump resisting a Wisconsin recount?

donald_trump_lies

I have a theory as to why Donald J. Trump doesn’t want the vote recount in Wisconsin to proceed.

It’s not that the president-elect fears it would overturn the result and hand the state to Hillary Rodham Clinton. Nor is it that it’s going to put the nation’s faith in local elections officials in jeopardy.

Quite the contrary. My theory is that a recount is going to suggest that there’s nothing inherently and critically wrong with the way the votes were tabulated in Wisconsin, and possibly in Michigan and Pennsylvania.

https://www.thenation.com/article/donald-trump-is-a-hypersensitive-tantrum-throwing-sore-winner-but-the-recount-must-go-on/

You see, such a discovery snatches one of the Trump’s favorite talking points right out of his pie hole. It delivers the strongest rebuke yet about the defamatory remarks he made about a “rigged election.” He was talking about possibly losing to Hillary Rodham Clinton and whether he would accept the results as announced.

Hey, the man won the election, but he’s keeping up the drumbeat of allegation and innuendo about the integrity of a political system from which he drew direct benefit.

Might it be that a recount would douse all of that careless rhetoric and reveal the foolishness and recklessness of our next president?

national news, political news

Voter math is the same, no matter how you spin it

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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 over 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 the 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 popular 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.

national news, political news

That darn popular vote is getting in the way

election-day-2016-in-united-states

I know I am sounding a bit repetitive to some of you. Maybe I’m far too repetitive to suit you.

That’s just too damn bad. I’m going to say it again … with emphasis.

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s popular vote margin over Donald J. Trump is expanding. It’s now at slightly more than 2.5 million votes. It’s likely to grow even more, although I’m beginning to think we’re getting quite close to the end of the ballot tallying.

Oh, yes. We have that recount in Wisconsin with which to contend. Don’t expect much of a change there. Or in Pennsylvania or Michigan, two other states that might get their votes recounted.

Here’s my point. The president-elect is going to find a growing voice of discord among his constituents if and when he tries to foist his agenda on the nation.

Donald J. Trump’s vote deficit is approaching record levels among those candidates who won the presidential election while losing the popular vote. He and Clinton’s vote percentages are zeroing in on the Rutherford B. Hayes-Samuel Tilden contest of 1876.

http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/

What’s fascinating, too, is that Clinton’s popular vote total mirrors what the polls were indicating on the eve of Election Day. Trump, though, benefited by his ability to flip several states that had voted twice for President Obama, enabling him to win the Electoral College votes he needed to become president.

I am not calling for a wholesale reform of the electoral system.

I merely want to caution the president-elect to mindful of the hurdles he and his team are going to face governing a country with a widening vote deficit.

Go slow, Mr. President-elect. Stop playing to your “base” and remember that more of us out here voted against you than voted for you. Got it? Good. Now … proceed.

national news, political news

Twitter tirade shows danger of Trump presidency

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Donald J. Trump’s propensity for popping off on social media came into amazing, sharp focus with his latest rant about flag burning.

And it demonstrates why the president-elect’s on-the-job training for the office he is about to assume is so troubling to many of us … who didn’t vote for him.

Trump went on another Twitter tirade and said that those who burn the flag out of protest should spend time in the clink and possibly lose their citizenship.

Really, Mr. President-elect?

This goonish statement underscores as well as anything he’s muttered or sputtered during the course of his fledgling political career how — in a normal election year — he wouldn’t have won the presidency.

His ridiculous assertion ignores — willfully? — that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled time and again that flag-burning is a protected form of political speech. The First Amendment is pretty damn clear about it and anyone who has read that amendment ought to know it — and that makes me believe beyond a doubt that Trump has no clue as to what’s contained in the nation’s governing document.

And yet …

Donald Trump won enough electoral votes to defeat Hillary Rodham Clinton and become the 45th president of the United States.

It puzzles me to the max — even now, weeks after the election — just how this happened. Still, I accept the result, as distasteful as it is to my political palate.

I cannot help but wonder, though, how many more idiotic pronouncements the president-elect is going to make. How much more consternation is he going to cause with his utter ignorance of something so fundamental as freedom of speech and political expression?

I’ll repeat what I’ve said before and what others have said already: We have elected a dangerous man as our next president.

national news, political news

Let’s just call him ‘Lyin’ Donald’

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Donald J. Trump hung epithets around the necks of all his political foes while winning the presidential election.

The label “Lyin’ Ted” was aimed at U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas.

Cruz cannot come close to matching the lies that Trump has told.

With that, I want to hereby refer to Trump as “Lyin’ Donald.”

He has put out another grand lie. It regards the election results.

Without an ounce, a scintilla, a tiny grain of evidence, Trump now asserts that “millions of votes were cast illegally” for Hillary Rodham Clinton on Election Day.

Way to go, Lyin’ Donald. He’s managed yet again to defame local election workers, staffers and elected officials.

They’re recounting ballots in Wisconsin. They might do the same in Michigan and Pennsylvania. Lyin’ Donald won all three states. Green Party presidential candidate wants the votes recounted to ensure that the original count was done with integrity and honesty.

For Lyin’ Donald to suggest, though, that millions of votes were cast illegally only validates the assertion that many have made about the president-elect. He has no shame, no sense of propriety … but he’s loaded with gall.