We won. He lost. Yet Hillary Clinton has conceded and he will be president. The system let the people of the country down.
Our Constitution has openly subverted the will of the people twice in 20 years — 2000 and 2016 — and done it more covertly, through the unelected Supreme Court, on numerous other instances, most famously the Citizens United ruling that privileged money over people in our politics.
The last anti-democratic result produced an incompetent administration that let us get hit on 9/11, invaded Iraq based on deliberate misinformation, wasted trillions, lost the war, and crashed the economy in 2008. This time the result may be worse.
This is not a sustainable situation. The electoral college must go. The Senate has to be based on population. And the Supreme Court requires, at minimum, term limits. How that will happen, I’m not sure, but a majority of voters should elect our president, not a minority.
The Electoral College just jumped the shark. At least in 2000 we could say it was a razor thin margin and the whole thing hinged on the mess in Florida. This time the EC vote isn’t close. It’s getting farther out of whack with what the majority of the voters decided.
I’d actually leave the Senate and Supreme Court alone. Yet the House no longer serves the function of proportional representation. We blame gerrymandering, and that certainly needs to be fixed, but the bigger problem is rep districts have grown too larger to truly represent the diversity in our nation. When the House first went to 435 seats roughly a century ago, we averaged 212,000 people per seat. It’s now up to 735,000 people. Too many people of all political bents and demographics are being held captive inside districts that don’t represent their interests.
Of course, you’re quite right. Even the House has become undemocratic. Most egregiously, in some years, Democrats have received far more votes but Republicans have preserved a majority of seats. The system is showing signs of its age.
…which has the added benefit of keeping the math simple for many different possible supermajority requirements. I agree with leaving Senate and SCOTUS as they are (but constitutionally require advice and consent to actually be executed by automatically seating nominees after a certain time period has lapsed). If we do go to a popular vote for POTUS I would add a provision for a runoff between the top two vote-getters one week later if no majority.
Let’s focus on rebuilding unions, organizing around bread and butter economic concerns, and rebuilding our coalition around working families instead of college professionals. That seems to be the way to win in the short term while building the majorities for those reforms in the long term.
We have elected another Hitler.
Upwards of sixty million Americans think that Der Fuhrer should be President. I frankly don’t care whether that is 49% or 51% of the vote. That is SIXTY MILLION PEOPLE voting from willful ignorance, or lies, or bigotry, or racism. Trying excuse it by saying that any of them wanted “change” is itself confirmation of this. We have jumped from the frying pan to the fire. We’ll have “change” alright.
America, as we knew it, is dead.
I am making every effort to retire the word “Republican” from my vocabulary. There are no instances of “Republican” left.
The appropriate word, from now on, is “Collaborator”, and that’s what I’ll use.
This comment is horribly offensive. It is easy for people in the tech and finance sectors who live in Cambridge, Brookline and Somerville in homes valued near $1 million with household incomes in six figures to accuse people who are in economic difficulty of being collaborators, a word that is vile for anyone who knows world history.
Trump voters are not a monolith. Most are angry at the asshats who have promoted HRC and her family as the apotheosis of good while they were taking it on the chin during Bill’s tenure. I remember one person here who said that Bill Clinton was the coolest of the cool, even though he was sexually exploiting his 20 something intern.
Most Americans oppose Trump’s specific policy proposals. More Americans voted for HRC than the the Pumpkin President. Look at the polling data.
Just last week you were arguing with me that the poorest people in Massachusetts, the residents of New Bedford, Fall River, Springfield, Lawrence, Worcester, the Cape and rural Massachusetts should be stripped of the gas tax money they pay in order to give MBTA customers a free ride. Please explain how that is the progressive alternative to Trumpism.
who did not accommodate Trump, and are now likely at the very least disempowered in their party, and the Vichy Republicans, who jettisoned any pretense of principle and have been devoting themselves to catering to the whims of this demagogue. It does look like we shall have a Congress of Vichy Republicans.
I received this from Michael Moore via email back on July 5. Do read it.
Of course, he got Florida.
If we keep plugging our ears and screaming “racist” every time someone tries to explain what’s going on, we’re never going to really understand what is happening and why. And we’ll just have more of the same (keep doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result…) until (maybe) demographics finally save us – but by then it might be too late.
the 64 Electoral Vote Question.
Paul Simmons, the only BMGer who has run campaigns in Western PA, also warned about that regions vulnerability. I mean, there is little we can do here in general but bitch and moan and test one another’s assumptions. I do think a lot of us phone banked, canvassed, and gave money.
I also think there is a lot of internal soul searching about what it means to be a Democrat in 2016 America and who is a Democrat and how we can organize around those questions. I find that discussion a lot more interesting and essential than complaining about racist voters or the Electoral College which isn’t going away. But I get today is a let off steam day.
Frankly, much about me says I should be Republican. I belong to all the historically advantaged demographics: WASP, male, straight, etc. I have had the worst luck launching a career based on my training, despite having done everything right (gone to school and done well, involvement in church and other community organizations, Eagle Scout) and nothing big wrong (substance abuse, fathering a child I can’t support, criminal record). I could be resentful and there are some days I do feel quite down on myself, but I would NEVER consider voting for the likes of Trump. I suppose the one difference between me and his base is my college degrees, but it isn’t my education that keeps me away from such attitudes since I’m sure as a teenager I would have rejected them as strongly as I do now. I also grew up in a town prone to Trumpian attitudes and could have absorbed it. Can anybody try to “diagnose” what special powers I have to keep such attitudes at bay?
Both on the career and feeling I did everything right and haven’t gotten rewarded for it, and for being part of strong community organizations like Scouting and church. We need those organizations more, their atrophy is part of the reason organic solidarity is non existent in this country and so many voters felt alienated and alone. And I agree we are outliers, sadly as white males and even as a white male millennial in my case, who still vote Democratic.
.. and yet you spent your energies with Evan Falchuk and the relative frivolity of legalizing Marijuana. If I were you, I’d resist the urge to pat myself on the back for having ‘did everything right,’ if only for the sake of avoiding looking like the compleat stereotypical millenial tool.
Christopher, at least, has an earnest, if oft naive, fairmindedness to explain his predicament. You always act like you know better. But you do not.
It just goes to show, white people get what white people want: you wanted legalized marijuana and a self-righteous binky of entitlement and snobbery over others resentment Congratulations. That’s just exactly what you got. Enjoy it.
…then I would have a lot more sympathy. I can understand fears about jobs and one’s economic status generally. Trump could say he would rein in trade agreements and could even address immigration’s impact on jobs without sound quite so xenophobic. What I wrongly assumed about my country is that some of his attitudes and comments regarding certain groups of people would be as obvious deal-breakers to others as they are for me.
The passive Trump voter who thought he’ll be better than Hillary, the cognitive dissonance to ignore or downplay the racism or say it doesn’t matter is profound. I haven’t argued it isn’t, I just think it’ll make the challenge easier if we can offer something concrete in a package that isn’t compromised. I could be proven wrong and we could be living in a worse place than I thought. My initial reaction to this election was one of sadness not fear, but my wife and other POC are fearful and that frightens me in turn.
I didn’t realize that she was your wife, as opposed to fiance.
Congratulations!
It’ll happen, traction. I’d bet on both of you.
When Donald Trump “focus[ed] much his attention on the four blue states in the rustbelt…”, what did that MEAN in practice?
You saw the same clips I did. I saw a campaign proudly and flagrantly appealing to racism, bigotry, and ignorance — boldly lying like no candidate has lied before. You seem to be saying that when a movement flagrantly appeals to bigotry, we should do … what?
What do you tell the Muslims in America today? Do you tell them they’re wrong to be terrified of what happens next?
What would YOU say about the new government if we were Germans in Germany seventy eight years ago today?
It already IS too late, the Collaborators now hold a gigantic lead in state legislators, governors, the House, the Senate, and White House.
We have been proud of mouthing “Never forget” at every excuse. It sure looks to me like you are demanding that steadfastly turn aside.
The problem is not so much the Electoral College but the gerrymandering that gives the Repugnants a 5-10% advantage in holding the House of Representatives, the barriers to voting that many Repugnantly controlled states have erected in the wake of the Repugnant Supreme Court decision to limit the Voting Rights Act, and a continuing campaign to delegitimize democracy and an accurate view of reality all up and down the line through Repugnant media (thanks, Reagan, for doing away with the Equal Time requirement on the people’s airwaves).
This has been a campaign that has gone on since at least 1964 and the Repugnant reaction to the devastating Goldwater campaign. The John Birch Society and the KKK have won.
Now, what are WE – you and you and you and me – going to do about it?
God bless the Commonwealth! (Rough night for the Governor, though.)
Question 2 goes down! I am pleasantly surprised. (Hat tip to Pablo for calling it.) There is a power in union organizing.
Re: the electoral college, I brought this up recently under the assumption that HRC would win the popular vote big, and the electoral college bigger. Today (despite her lead) argues FOR the electoral college. If we didn’t have it we’d be recounting every close state and dragging this out unnecessarily.
Also, even if we kept the EC … why doesn’t the federal government run federal elections? We could have voting machines in every post office that could be open for a month in advance.
I don’t think the federal government running the election is necessary or appropriate.
I do think we need to broaden the federally established requirements for elections. Not just all skin colors and genders and 18+. I think we need to set rules on minimum hours the polls are open, distribution of polling locations, ID requirements (or not, etc.), ballot equipment audit-ability, voter registration rules/regs/requirements, absentee, and early. What good is a national popular vote if the citizenry eligible to participate is finely controlled by the states?
I’d tack on: let’s revise the primary system to shorten it, reduce caucuses, devalue money, and devalue tradition in favor of something more democratic. I’d not that while the list above requires an awful lot of Republicans to get done, this paragraph can be done by and large by the Democrats themselves.
n/t
” The last anti-democratic result produced an incompetent administration that let us get hit on 9/11,”
maybe if Bill Clinton had some balls and reacted correctly, overwhemingly the FIRST time the world trade center was attacked, 9-11 would never have happened.
Lets avoid stupid discussions today.
He made the point repeatedly, and presumably many of the people who voted for him agree, and even some who didn’t (like me). It’s not a stupid discussion at all, because 9/11 was a horror, and might have been prevented if the Bush administration hadn’t been so inadequate.
But sure, that was the first inkling he was a different sort of candidate. Made a bold and valid attack none of the Democrats in power have ever been ballsy enough to make. The lesson of Bernie and sadly of Trump is not to be afraid of being who you are, the voters value authenticity more than poll tested line items and Washington experience. They always have, and always will time and time again.
… I wonder if you were one of those saying, in 1992, that the problem with the Clinton Administration is that “Janet Reno had some balls” (actual quote I heard after Waco). You can’t have it both ways.
The man who planned and who perpetrated the first attack upon the World Trade Center was apprehended, tried and convicted and are today in a US Jail. That’s the way it should be. That’s the way it is. If due process is the reason for further attacks then that’s on the attackers and not Clinton.
Why would about a dozen rural state legislatures (or so) vote to diminish their power in favor of big cites?
The only alternative would be to changes voting to something like an IRV system, but if a political nerd like me can’t describe how it works, good luck selling that to the general public.
Once CA, WA and OR finish counting. Those three all take a while and went strongly Clinton.