US Presidential Race 2016

[Deleted]

 

[greatkingrat]

Dec 20, 2016 2:49:53 GMT J.G.Harston said:

Dec 20, 2016 0:28:29 GMT @pjones said:

That makes the final Electoral College vote

For President
Donald Trump 304
...
Vice President
Mike Pence 305
...

So Mike Pence is president?

He would have been if the 12th amendment hadn't been ratified.

[timrollpickering]

Dec 20, 2016 9:34:55 GMT greatkingrat said:

Dec 20, 2016 2:49:53 GMT J.G.Harston said:

So Mike Pence is president?

He would have been if the 12th amendment hadn't been ratified.

If the old system remained I suspect the machinations would have been even more convoluted. In 1796 all manner of rumours, mainly focused on a belief Hamilton was trying to get Pinckney over Adams, led to vote scattering and Jefferson becoming Veep. The 1800 election saw Jefferson and Burr formally tie, with a Federalist Reps having to choose between them.

IIRC an earlier proposed version of the 12th Amendment would have required election by district, which could have had interesting consequences, but it failed to pass Congress by one vote. It's possible that without the 12th being passed in 1804 alternate changes would have come later.

[Georg Ebner]

Dec 19, 2016 15:38:09 GMT johnloony said:

Dec 19, 2016 12:39:21 GMT Georg Ebner said:

Updated version, with the final results (as I hope):

Are those numbers the difference between the state and the national average? Otherwise some of them are confusing me

Exactly.

[Andrew_S]

Interesting piece IMO:

"The smug style in American liberalism
by Emmett Rensin on April 21, 2016

There is a smug style in American liberalism. It has been growing these past decades. It is a way of conducting politics, predicated on the belief that American life is not divided by moral difference or policy divergence — not really — but by the failure of half the country to know what's good for them.

In 2016, the smug style has found expression in media and in policy, in the attitudes of liberals both visible and private, providing a foundational set of assumptions above which a great number of liberals comport their understanding of the world.

It has led an American ideology hitherto responsible for a great share of the good accomplished over the past century of our political life to a posture of reaction and disrespect: a condescending, defensive sneer toward any person or movement outside of its consensus, dressed up as a monopoly on reason."

www.vox.com/2016/4/21/11451378/smug-american-liberalism

[johnloony]

Dec 21, 2016 2:56:05 GMT @pjones said:

A couple of interesting videos from the electoral college votes yesterday.

This from Minnesota  shows the process of a faithless elector being excluded and replaced

Given the purpose of the very existence of the Electoral College, I am amazed that there are any such state-level faithless-elector laws, and that they have not been challenged decades ago. I suppose they would be declared unConstitutional by the Federal Supreme Court if ever they were challenged, otherwise what's the point of having the electors at all? If there is a faithless-elector law, all you need is a rubber-stamp (literally) rather than a group of people.

My fantasy alternative-history system would be one in which
(a) the electors for each state are elected proportionally, not winner-takes-all;
(b) there is a wide range of different political parties at the national level and at each state level (a bit like the political party systems of most European countries) rather than two parties which completely dominate;
(c) the Electoral College meets in one place federally (instead of in each state separately) and votes by Repeated Ballot until one candidate gets a majority of the votes.

[jamie]

Dec 21, 2016 9:51:42 GMT johnloony said:

Given the purpose of the very existence of the Electoral College, I am amazed that there are any such state-level faithless-elector laws, and that they have not been challenged decades ago. I suppose they would be declared unConstitutional by the Federal Supreme Court if ever they were challenged, otherwise what's the point of having the electors at all? If there is a faithless-elector law, all you need is a rubber-stamp (literally) rather than a group of people.

They haven't ever been properly challenged because nobody expects a significant number of faithless electors so there's not really any point. If every unconstitutional state law was challenged the courts would be very busy for many years, so the ones that nobody expects to need to be enforced are just ignored. 

[nitory]

Dec 21, 2016 2:35:01 GMT Andrew_S said:

Interesting piece IMO:

"The smug style in American liberalism
by Emmett Rensin on April 21, 2016

www.vox.com/2016/4/21/11451378/smug-american-liberalism

Some good stuff  there. It mentions 'What's the matter with Kansas' a few times, which gives a good analysis of what happened last month, while some of the 'smug style' liberals probably skimmed through it and thought "stupid hicks lol", the message in the epilogue never resonated: 

Who is to blame for this landscape of distortion, of paranoia, and of good people led astray? Though Kansas voters have chosen self-destructive policies, it is just as clear to me that liberalism deserves a large part of the blame for the backlash phenomenon. Liberalism may not be the monstrous, all-powerful conspiracy that conservatives make it out to be, but its failings are clear nonetheless. Somewhere in the last four decades liberalism ceased to be relevant to huge portions of its traditional constituency, and we can say that liberalism lost places like Wichita and Shawnee, Kansas with as much accuracy as we can point out that conservatism won them over.



This is due partially, I think, to the Democratic Party's more-or-less official response to its waning fortunes. The Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), the organization that produced such figures as Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Joe Lieberman, and Terry McAuliffe, has long been pushing the party to forget blue-collar voters and concentrate instead on recruiting affluent, white-collar professionals who are liberal on social issues. The larger interests that the DLC wants desperately to court are corporations, capable of generating campaign contributions far outweighing anything raised by organized labor. The way to collect the votes and -- more important -- the money of these coveted constituencies, "New Democrats" think, is to stand rock-solid on, say, the pro-choice position while making endless concessions on economic issues, on welfare, NAFTA, Social Security, labor law, privatization, deregulation, and the rest of it. Such Democrats explicitly rule out what they deride as "class warfare" and take great pains to emphasize their friendliness to business interests. Like the conservatives, they take economic issues off the table. As for the working-class voters who were until recently the party's very backbone, the DLC figures they will have nowhere else to go; Democrats will always be marginally better on economic issues than Republicans. Besides, what politician in this success-worshiping country really wants to be the voice of poor people? Where's the soft money in that?



This is, in drastic miniature, the criminally stupid strategy that has dominated Democratic thinking off and on ever since the "New Politics" days of the early seventies. Over the years it has enjoyed a few successes, but, as political writer E. J. Dionne has pointed out, the larger result was that both parties have become "vehicles for upper-middle-class interests" and the old class-based language of the left quickly disappeared from the universe of the respectable. The Republicans, meanwhile, were industriously fabricating their own class-based language of the right, and while they made their populist appeal to blue-collar voters, Democrats were giving those same voters -- their traditional base -- the big brush-off, ousting their representatives from positions within the party and consigning their issues, with a laugh and a sneer, to the dustbin of history. A more ruinous strategy for Democrats would be difficult to invent. And the ruination just keeps on coming. However desperately they triangulate and accommodate, the losses keep mounting.



Curiously enough, though, Democrats of the DLC variety aren't worried. They seem to look forward to a day when their party really is what David Brooks and Ann Coulter claim it to be now: a coming-together of the rich and the self-righteous. While Republicans trick out their poisonous stereotype of the liberal elite, Democrats seem determined to live up to the libel.



Such Democrats look at a situation like present-day Kansas where social conservatives war ferociously on moderate Republicans and they rub their hands with anticipation: Just look at how Ronald Reagan's "social issues" have come back to bite his party in the ass! If only the crazy Cons push a little bit more, these Democrats think, the Republican Party will alienate the wealthy suburban Mods for good, and we will be able to step in and carry places like super-affluent Mission Hills, Kansas, along with all the juicy boodle that its inhabitants are capable of throwing our way.

The problem is not that Democrats are monolithically pro-choice or anti-school-prayer; it's that by dropping the class language that once distinguished them sharply from Republicans they have left themselves vulnerable to cultural wedge issues like guns and abortion and the sneers of Hollywood whose hallucinatory appeal would ordinarily be far overshadowed by material concerns. We are in an environment where Republicans talk constantly about class -- in a coded way, to be sure -- but where Democrats are afraid to bring it up.



Democratic political strategy simply assumes that people know where their economic interest lies and that they will act on it by instinct. There is no need for any business-bumming class-war rhetoric on the part of candidates or party spokesmen, and there is certainly no need for a liberal to actually get his hands dirty fraternizing with the disgruntled. Let them look at the record and see for themselves: Democrats are slightly more generous with Social Security benefits, slightly stricter on environmental regulations, and do less union-busting than Republicans.

link

[The Bishop]

That really is a very very good piece.

[Deleted]

Not sure if we have discussed this, but Trump gained among Old Spanish/integrated rural Hispanics and lost among "new" and/or urban Hispanics. This trend could be quite influential in the future. Most of South Texas trended Trump (first Republican to break 30% in Duval County since Nixon). SW Colorado and rural Old Spanish northern New Mexico swung heavily towards Trump. Many "colonial era Spanish" populations and third or fourth generation Hispanic Americans outside of the big cities almost voted like whites. The rural/urban divide (using the peculiar US definition of "rural") and class were more significant than ethnicity among "old" Hispanics. 

[dizz]

[Deleted]

Dec 31, 2016 13:56:14 GMT @pjones said:

The next four years aren't going to be boring.

[timrollpickering]

Dec 31, 2016 1:55:23 GMT @pjones said:

Certificates of Vote for all the 50 States and District of Columbia Electoral College votes have been received by the national Archivist. Presumably the President of the Senate (i.e. Joe Biden) has also received his copies.

All 51 certificates can be seen here


www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/2016/certificates-of-vote.html

Now all that remains is for Joe Biden to read out the results of the election at a joint session of Congress on the 6th of January (exactly 34 months after this thread started!)

Also we'll see if any results get challenged in Congress - IIRC members of both houses have to petition for it and then both Houses have to concur in separate votes to set aside a result. Challenges happen from time to time without much impact but expect the Stop Trumpers to deluge Congress with emails to do this.

Come to think of it, constitutional scholars have noted a brief window when there will be no sworn in President able to exercise powers but a sworn in Veep. What is normally a fantasy of academics could again become the one last hope if they push for Pence to declare and incapacity and seize power in that brief moment.

[Deleted]

Dec 31, 2016 13:56:14 GMT @pjones said:

I'll raise you a tasteful Trump souvenir -

[neilm]

I told someone recently that I don't need the fountain of youth as I bathe in liberal tears.

[Richard Allen]

The problem with these jokes is that the US has just elected a big government liberal (using the modern America meaning) as President.

[neilm]

Jan 2, 2017 0:32:14 GMT Richard Allen said:

The problem with these jokes is that the US has just elected a big government liberal (using the modern America meaning) as President.

Rather like Bush 43 was a big government Conservative (again in the American sense), but they don't see it like that.

I may see if I can get a mug with Trump and Farage on it. That would be fun.

[Richard Allen]

Jan 2, 2017 0:48:51 GMT neilm said:

Jan 2, 2017 0:32:14 GMT Richard Allen said:

The problem with these jokes is that the US has just elected a big government liberal (using the modern America meaning) as President.

Rather like Bush 43 was a big government Conservative (again in the American sense), but they don't see it like that.

I may see if I can get a mug with Trump and Farage on it. That would be fun.

Bush 43 was a typical establishment conservative. Trump has spent the vast majority of his adult life espousing left wing causes and ideas.

[curiousliberal]

Jan 2, 2017 0:32:14 GMT Richard Allen said:

The problem with these jokes is that the US has just elected a big government liberal (using the modern America meaning) as President.

The other problem with that particular joke is that it is used as a uniform response to any criticism of Trump on Twitter (not that there is much high quality criticism on Twitter in the first place), even ones made by self-identifying conservatives. I wouldn't be surprised if more than few of the accounts tweeting screenshots of them purchasing a 'liberal tears' mug are bots, as that's all some of them seem to do.

[pragmaticidealist]

In hindsight the mayoralty of Bloomberg in NYC may have been a sneak preview of the Trump presidency.