Official
By Mitch Berg
Today’s the day that the Electoral College will meet and, despite six weeks of demonstrations, threats and magical thinking, elect Donald Trump as president.
The Electoral College – which, back in the days when Hillary was considered inevitable, was above reproach – like so much in our federal system, is designed to protect the huge, diverse minority from the majority.
And it worked. And that doesn’t sit well with our left:
Donald Trump’s election is difficult for many Americans to accept, but there is no good reason to question its democratic legitimacy. For better or worse, Trump won the presidency by constitutional and sensible democratic rules that guided both campaigns and were known to any politically conscious citizen. He also won the national popular vote cast outside of the single state of California. Moreover, Clinton won all of California’s 55 electoral votes despite the fact that 4.3 million of the state’s voters voted for Trump. That big winner-take-all advantage for California’s Democrats and Clinton was certainly felt, but it wasn’t enough to override her losses in many other states.
Under our electoral vote system, American voters elected a national president, not California’s choice. It is in the nation’s interest for Democratic Party’s leaders and for Clinton voters to fully recognize the legitimacy of the election as they had urged Trump to do after the third presidential debate.
I say this: if you want to abolish the Electoral College, and make this nation a pure majority-rule state – i.e. ruled by California and New York – go for it.
But then, remove all impediments to secession.
UPDATE: There’s one “faithless elector” so far. It’s a Democrat, naturally – and, of course, from Minnesota:
BREAKING: Minnesota elector refuses to vote for Hillary Clinton, is dismissed under state law; alternative will vote instead
— BNO News (@BNONews) December 19, 2016
Of course it was a Minnesota Democrat.
No word on whether Jill Stein is going to demand a recount.
UPDATE 2: Democrat demonstrators outside the State Capitol urging Minnesota’s electors meeting therein to “vote their conscience”…:
https://www.facebook.com/deb.brown.338/videos/10210675393737580/
…notwithstanding that, per state law, they were bound to vote HIllary.
UPDATE 3: 1:54PM ET: Trump goes past 270 electoral votes.
1:55PM ET: Democrats: “Well? Why isn’t America great again? Huh? Huh? Huh?”
December 19th, 2016 at 1:06 pm
The reason why you set up arbitrary rules, like the electoral college, and stick to them is because all of these rules are arbitrary. As Campbell notes, Cali has 55 electoral votes, all of which went for Hillary, even though one third of Californians voted for Trump. The winner take all system isn’t fair. Obama got 52% of the vote in 2012, to Romney’s 48%. Obama’s narrow victory got the full power of the presidency.
Hey, let’s have votes on gay marriage, immigration, and Affirmative action! Let’s make federal judges elected positions!
The Left is not for democracy. They are for whatever gives them power to tell you what to do. Don’t let them claim an imaginary moral high ground.
December 19th, 2016 at 2:46 pm
The stupidity of the democratic demonstrators. Did they want MN’s electors to vote for someone besides Hillary? how was that going to work in MN?
MN was a state where I could safely not vote for Trump and know it would make no difference.
December 19th, 2016 at 3:18 pm
Iowahawk links to a video of a lady protester inside the Wisconsin capitol, yelling and screaming at the electors. I look at this lady and think “thank God Trump got elected and not Hillary…or The Berne”.
So are national Democrats going to pull a Wisconsin and just be so unhinged and crazed that no one outside the 45% who always vote Democrat, will vote for them?
December 19th, 2016 at 3:46 pm
January 6 is the day the joint session of congress will meet to count the EC votes, and Biden’s job is to declares who won the votes for POTUS and VP. Seems the delusional Dems still might have time to try some futile effort to impugn the process.
December 19th, 2016 at 6:39 pm
Electoral College blah blah blah blah. Who writes these chants? Pathetic.
December 19th, 2016 at 6:42 pm
So Hillary lost four electors, Trump lost two, meaning that Trump gained two over Hillary. Hillary would have lost more electotral votes, but, despite what the Democrats have been saying, faithless electors can, indeed, be prevented from casting their votes.
December 19th, 2016 at 9:49 pm
In my state, one of the four Dem electors jumped ship and voted for Bernie.
Not exactly the result Lessig had in mind. “It’s not the DNC — it’s the comedy channel.”
December 19th, 2016 at 9:49 pm
So that’s it. POTUS, Congress and 39 state legislatures and governors.
If the GOP can’t push the lefist reprobates into the pit now, they never will.
As for me, I’m looking forward to lots of unhinged lefties doing all manner of crazy shit for my amusements. Tears, screaming, self-mutilations and immolations, mass kool-aid ceremonies, hair tearing….I’m ready to soak it all in.
Let the games begin.
December 20th, 2016 at 1:17 am
Swiftee, we used to have a guy that worked up here at night. He was a technical assistant and had some kind of nuclear tech job on submarines during the cold war. He hated commies and that was good enough for me.
This guy captained one of the tourist subs in Kona until the crash of 2008. When the submarine company cut the Kona staff he was offered a move to Oahu, but said F it. He hated living on Oahu. Instead he took the severance and spent it on an extended trip to the Faroe Islands, of all places. His last name was Scottish. Maybe that is where his people came from?
Why in the Hell would you take the last $20K you had in the world and spend it living on some cold, barren, windswept islands between the UK and Iceland?
When the money was gone he came back to Hawaii and went to work for us.
This guy quit us about a year and a half ago, after an incident with the TMT protesters. He did not feel as though the company was backing him up. He was living with a rich girl friend here on the Big Island at the time. The last I heard he had bailed on her and was living out of a pick up truck somewhere in New Zealand. Funny guy.
A few years ago, when he still worked for us, he told me that the US was shot, that the next president was going to be Hillary. It was inevitable. It was rigged. I reminded him that that the US was exceptional, that we had changed the world in 1980 when Reagan was elected and we could do it again. The special power of the US is that we can change all of the world. We are not bound by history.
He did not believe me then.
I think that he does now.
December 20th, 2016 at 10:10 am
ARJC, submarine guys spend 90 days at a whack sealed up in a metal tube with 80 other guys, 1200 feet below the surface of the ocean.
That guy’s behavior is well within normal parameters.