Trump lied: The election was not rigged
It was a long day, managing the polls at my local precinct. Donald Trump trounced Hillary Clinton 720-298 in my upstate South Carolina voting district. Many voters, and not necessarily young voters, said that they were voting for the first time. Just as Barack Obama brought in many new voters in 2008, I think Trump did the same this time around.
In a repudiation of everything that I hold good and decent, America elected a former birther as president of the United States.
Sad.
I don’t even think he was really a Birther, He just used them like Arpiao did, to suck in money.
But yeah, the man is an anti-christ.
I don’t think I would use the term anti-Christ for him. For one I am not of that religious persuasion, secondly it was used wrongly to describe our great current President by a lot of the scum known as Birthers. I prefer to call him an unprincipled opportunistic egomaniac.
He was never a Birther nor holds any deep political or policy views. I very much doubt he holds any religious views. He worships the image he sees in the mirror very day.
That’s one way to look at it.
Maybe next time #Democrats won’t over sample Polling Democrats by 20 and 30% to get the result they want? Maybe the Media will be more journalistic instead of in the Think-Tank? Maybe the small group of elites will consider Corruption is NOT cool on the Ticket? Maybe Our U.S. Constitution will be taken a little more seriously by the U.S. Supreme Court Justices, and Congress? Congratulations President Elect Trump!
Hey, hear the News? #Revenge by a Nation of #Birthers You lied to us! #SCOTUS #FoxNews #ABCNews #CBSNews #NBCNews #CNNNews #MSNBCNews https://t.co/G9fUKJuc3G
People who survive into the future will look back upon 2016 as a significant turning point in the great experiment in democracy and the rule of law that is/was the United States of America. We can make a list: there was the acquittal of the Malheur occupiers and now the election of Trump.
I also was an Election Inspector Chairman in my New York county. It also was a very busy day, not quite to your extent, but we had about 66% turnout. Unheard of. (Plus some very sad stories from folks who had try to register through the DMV but were told that our BOE never received or used the info to register them.) In the end their vote for Trump was meaningless as fas as NY is concerned. but it was sad to know, rather than suspect, that some of my fellow inspectors and other community members would support this charlatan. Time to consult with my Fidelity representative on how to protect my assets against the upcoming financial deluge.
It’s a very small consolation, but Clinton is going to win the popular vote. She currently leads by about 200,000 votes and 30% of the ballots still have to be counted in California, where she leads by 2.5 million votes.
Democrats have now won the popular vote in 6 of the last 7 elections, but they lost two of those elections.
Trump knew that there was something wrong with the ballot machines and he took care of the problem BEFORE it became a problem. Reagan failed to do just that and look where we are today. Everybody wants to blame President Owens (Obama) and ignore Reagan’s failures. Not so.
Reagan In. Castro Up.
Proof positive that the election was rigged!!!
Time to consult with my Fidelity representative on how to protect my assets against the upcoming financial deluge.
I went to bed last night expecting to see a 500+ point drop in the DOW. I’m surprised and happy that, so far, there wasn’t a sell off. I am a Fidelity client as well and may ask that they move everything into CASH.
One thing you can say about Trump, he has perpetuated the biggest con to date. As old P. T. Barnum may have said. “There’s a sucker born every minute” 59.35 Million according to the Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/2016-election-results/us-presidential-race/?hpid=hp_hp-bignews6_map-for-desktop%3Aelections-2016%2Fgeneral-staging
But this would give Democrats the argument that they have the will of the majority of the American people behind them to block Trump’s efforts.
Republicans: you are being obstructionist.
Democrats: no, we are just following the will of the majority of Americans.
now you know how the birthers felt when Obama was elected, don’t you?
Same vilification of the president-elect, same whining, same gloom, and no one can do it a bit about it.
It will be interesting to se what actually happens, as least he did not promise the moon to the electorate.
I don’t know how we can ever get over this.
At least Trump will be able to see Obama’s transcripts and birth records and finally realize how dead wrong all these birthers have been all along.
Trump promised to end all funding for space exploration, so he most definitely didn’t promise the moon to anybody. For 75 more Trump promises, see:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/01/22/here-are-76-of-donald-trumps-many-campaign-promises/
He didn’t ???
76 of Donald Trump’s many campaign promises
…. and I see Doc was posting the exact same article at the exact same time LOL
The key difference, is that we’re not grasping at straws. No one here is cooking up conspiracies to explain away the results. Nor will we waste years trying to nullify the election. P.S. Obama’s second term has come and gone. You failed.
So then you admit all the bs you spread about Obama for years was nonsense
I hope our fears are unfounded, as were yours.
My fears aren’t for me. I’m a straight, white, Christian male. Pretty much the only demographic that wont be under GOP attack. It’s all the others. They’re the ones I fear for.
I suspect that much of Trump did not believe in many of his campaign promises. That’s why he can change positions so easily.
What will be interesting is how long of a honeymoon his supporters will give him.
Especially, when he does not build a wall, create new jobs, vet immigrants, prevent terrorist attacks, quickly defeat ISIS, indict Clinton, investigate Obama’s birth certificate, etc. And how they will handle it when he blames Obama for his failures.
And the reactions of the democrats is to consist of riots and crime. Although some of the rioting might be paid rioting for some reason or another
My comments on Obama were never about his personal being, but were limited to the paper documents claiming to be accurate information about his nativity.
Outside, of course, my antipathy towards lawyers in general.
I fear that , in accord with the Plato’s “the Republic”, that the next elected president will tend to be more dictatorial in nature.
Conservatives have an uncanny knack of blaming their failures on others. Trump is very adept at doing that. They will forgive him. He is the racist, sexist misogynist hero they have been praying for for years. He shall remain blameless.
In that regard, you would be very different from the birthers I encounter daily at YouTube and other web site comment sections. Their personal hatred of Obama brings to mind a rabid dog.
They won’t remember.
That’s bs and you know it they were always personal. It was never about the birth certificate
Have faith, Doc! “True” conservatives have a long history of turning against their champions. Ever red President since the sainted Reagan (Well, OK, that’s all 2 of them, but hey, this wave of Stupid has only been washing up to the mountaintops for 40 years so far) has been rejected, as they inevitably had to compromise to govern, and/or were revealed to be centrists, not wingnuts.
Trump will be the third. He’ll spend too much and fail to shrink govenemnt. They won’t turn on him over particular promises, but for general failure to “be conservative”. And they’ll go back to searching for the One True Conservative.
And he’ll manage to actually follow through on all his nuttery, leading the country to a 3rd ‘conservative’ collapse by 2021. They’ve (they is a reference to the policies favored by conservatives) managed to exacerbate bubbles and recessions every decade like clockwork.
Not the way Trump was describing, of course, but that’s a valid point.
Two of the last five presidential elections have thwarted the will of the majority (well, the plurality) of voters. Clinton currently leads the popular vote by 254,000 votes and 32% of the ballots in California haven’t been counted yet.
The electoral college is an anachronism which has long outlived whatever usefulness it had.
And what is it with states being unable to expeditiously count votes? This is 2016, people. The election was two days ago and they are still counting ballots in California, Washington, and Michigan, and we still don’t know who carried Michigan.
There are multiple things wrong with the electoral college.
1. It gives small states more power in selecting their President. Wyoming has 3 Electoral votes for 563,capeople (2010 census), therefore giving one vote for every 187,876 people. California has 55 electoral votes for 37,253,956, therefore giving one electoral vote for every 677,345 people. People in Wyoming have, theoretically 3.61 times the vote of a person in California. Yes, I know I used the most extreme examples for this. I actually did an analysis of it, awarding each state’s electoral votes by proportional (based upon the Clinton & Trump votes, I did not consider 3rd parties such as McMullian who would have siphoned off an electoral vote in Utah probably, and it came out 270-268 Trump).
2. It shrinks the map. Instead of Candidates going for all the states, they limit their campaigns into just the states that they think are up in the air. A Republican in California doesn’t count on his vote, because his vote is in a heavily blue state. A Democrat in Wyoming doesn’t count because his vote is in a heavily red state. It doesn’t matter whether or not the victory margin is 1%, 10%, or 50%. It’s the same number of electoral votes. So, in a heavily Democratic state, why would anybody campaign and reach the issues of those voters. They’re going to one side anyways.
I ultimately believe that squeezing 100,000 votes in California should have the same impact in the election as squeezing 100,000 votes in Florida, but with the electoral college system it just doesn’t.
I’d prefer an national popular vote system, with some sort of ranked choice voting (therefore actually getting a system that might allow more than two parties).
I have yet to experience a birther who could say one nice thing about President Obama’s achievements, or about him personally.
Please prove me wrong.
I’m as disappointed about the way the election has turned out as anyone. Still, I’m trying to keep a stiff upper lip. I don’t want to become what I couldn’t stand for the last eight years. I’m not Chicken Little. I’m not the boy who cried wolf. I don’t own a tinfoil hat, nor do I want to own one.
The one thing that I think united us is the idea that there is an objective reality and you can’t have any sort of meaningful debate without agreed-upon facts.
Whether I like it or not, on Jan. 20, 2017, Donald Trump will be the President. That’s reality.
I also realize that as a straight, white, middle-aged male, I might not be hurt by his policies as much as some other people might be and that probably makes it easy for me to say what I said above. While I cannot support any policies that cause harm to people who don’t look like me (and I will speak out against them), I do hope the country moves forward and that there’s none of the obstructing for the sake of obstructing that we’ve seen in the last eight years (of course, at least until the midterms, the Republicans have both the House and the Senate so that won’t be a problem for Trump).
And I’ll do whatever I can to make sure somebody better becomes President in 2020.
Bob, he is a great orator, dresses well, and knows that a smile is better than a frown when discussing things.
He, also, appears to believe that what he believes is a good thing for the country, and did instituted a health plan that helped some lower income people get insurance, but allowed his advisors to ignore the financial cost of health care.
I am having trouble trying to remember what he has claimed as a successful achievement that has affected the country but it might be the low interest rate for home buying, providing phones and computers for income persons, and the creation of CommonCore for the educational systems.
Honestly, I can not remember an achievement that any president has accomplished that was positive in the long run , and that includes all presidents that I have lived under.
No government can be run when being ruled by the will of the majority, and why on earth does the fact that one particular person wins an election seem to require that a system that has worked, more or less successfully , should be changed to a different election system.
It is bad enough that the laws are. amended or changed to affect the eligibility of the voters of the nation.
As an aside, I remember in PolySci reading about a town in France where every adult was entitled to vote in the city elections, and then they found out that the mental institution in the town controlled the vote in the town so that had to pass a law removing the inmates from the voter roles.
There are various lists of Obama accomplishments on the web, some quite long. In any administration, much of what actually happens is legislation passed by Congress. I do think one of the things that did happen of considerable value under the Obama administration was the revitalization of the auto industry. I also think that Obama, through executive action, stabilized the undocumented alien situation in the country as Congress failed to pass any comprehensive reforms.
The problem with the ACA is that Congress blocked any attempt to improve/fix the Act, only voting dozens of times, unsuccessfully, to repeal it. While insurance costs increased under the ACA, that’s been going on for 40 years.
Looks like you answered your own question: Many are upset that laws were changed in certain states to affect disproportionate disenfranchisement. Laws enacted by the party that twice in last five elections lost the popular vote yet won the presidency.
That is not listing an accomplishment you believe President Obama has done.
Still, you said he was a nice dresser and gifted communicator. Which is two nice things about President Obama more than I’ve heard from any other birther.
Kudos to jack for finally coming around to say some positive things about President Obama as he is leaving office. I suspect that by about February there may be a national outcry to have him come back and be the actual President, leaving the funny hair guy as a figurehead. But Barack deserves a nice vacation and will say no, I think.
You missed that he is a terrific family man who takes the time despite a schedule none of us could even imagine to have dinner with Michelle and his daughters every night that he is in Washington.
The ACA does have cost controls. The problem that some plans are experiencing is that healthy people think they will never get sick and haven’t enrolled at high enough rates. The way to fix that would be to automatically enroll them in a basic plan with premiums paid by payroll deduction. It’s just common sense that everyone have health insurance because all of us will get sick at some point.
Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy.
11:45 PM – 6 Nov 2012
100,483 100,483 Retweets
65,804
Same here.
I do think that Trump will hurt the country. He’s appointed a climate change skeptic (not a scientist) as head of his EPA transition team, he basically said during the campaign that he was going to cut all funding for alternative energy, roll back regulations on fossil fuels, and said he would cancel the space program.
So he is basically giving China (who is adopting solar power at three times the rate of the United States) and perhaps to Russia the future.
Still, I’m not young any more, and the destruction from climate change (assuming that market forces don’t derail Trump’s mistakes) will hit after I’m gone. I also have an investment advisor that does well in down markets, presuming we will have another recession (predicted by Moody’s Analytics) when Trump’s policies are implemented. And rolling back the controls put in place after the financial industry bad behavior caused the “great recession” could lead to another.
But I could be wrong.
My high school civics teacher taught us that politics was like a pendulum, and when it swung too far one way, it would swing back the other. Well Obama took us one way, Trump the other, and then there will be another swing back.
Clinton now leads Trump in the popular vote by about 400,000 votes and 30% of the ballots in California haven’t been counted yet. Washington (the state) also is lagging, with 40% of the ballots yet to be counted.
” I also have an investment advisor that does well in down markets, presuming we will have another recession (predicted by Moody’s Analytics) when Trump’s policies are implemented. And rolling back the controls put in place after the financial industry bad behavior caused the “great recession” could lead to another.”
Does he need any new customers?
1. What you’re suggesting is that every single government on earth should be run by the minority. That’s called dictatorship. If you do not have a majority of the people behind you, then why should this even be called anything close to a Democracy, when 2 of our 3 elected bodies of government are actually not democratic in representation?
Furthermore, you have yet to tell me why someone in Wyoming should have three times the say for the President than someone in California (this is just simple math from the electoral college)? Furthermore, let’s say that Hillary Clinton gets 120,000 more votes in Florida. She wins the state, and therefore wins the Presidency. She gets 120,000 more votes in California, it doesn’t matter. Why should voters in close states matter more than voters in partisan states?
Not at all, I am saying that a true democracy tends to degrade into a state of anarchy as the politicians, swayed by the votes of the unemployed, sick, disabled. un-educated, will try to provide more benefits for said citizens, who are unable to produce wealth for the nation, and in doing so will have to increase taxes to the point that the capitalists will cease to produce goods.
And the first example of that was the first colony established in the USA where all goods produced where distributed equally among the colonist regardless of the source of production of the goods, and , the humans found that there was no benefit to be derived from working in the fields so they cease their work and lived on the distributed goods.
The system failed and they switched to those who worked got goods and those that didn’t , didn’t get good and the colony flourished.
What really is killing the country is the cheap money where you can not earn money on your saved wealth, at least more than1% return when the inflation rate is 2-3%. This is killing the insurance companies and the pension plans ability to earn more money for future expenditures that will be required for pension and insurance payments.
Hell, I don’t expect Trump to do very much as the cost of correction of the problems with the business system will be almost impossible to get through the Congress, even though the R’s control both houses. Senators and Reps have to deal with their local problems and if you try to raise the interest rates it will result is horror stories galore.
For heavens sakes, this country is a constitutional republic , not a democracy!
The people do not vote on laws in the government, they vote to put people in congress to have a voice in the laws, And our representatives don’t have to pay a damn bit of attention to us.
When a political leader says we have to vote the bill in to law before we can find out what the bill does and says, you can see how little the leaders care about the voters, or non-voters.
http://mashable.com/2016/11/10/shaun-king-twitter-feed/?utm_cid=mash-prod-email-topstories&utm_emailalert=daily&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=daily&utm_sid=51cdde35b91a7c7889541f40#crVbBtsR.kqq
If you want a return on investment, there are better options than a bank CD. That’s certainly not what pension plans do.
If interest rates go up, then the interest on the national debt goes up too.
Doc, yep, you are correct, but interest rate is usually based upon the risk to the investor
Most people do not want their bank, insurance company, company, or the government to invest in risky things where the chance that the money will be lost
How can an individual save for their old age if the interest earned on their saved wages is less than the inflation sponsored by the government.
Not this old chestnut again! There is another one of those words that you use that doesn’t mean what you think it means.
The United States is a Constitutional Democratic Republic.
Democratic as opposed to Autocratic or Dictatorial or Militaristic. Republic as opposed to Monarchic or Theocratic. This system is enshrined in the Constitution. You can have any combination of those sets of words. Iran is a Democratic Theocracy. Russia is an Autocratic Republic. The UK is a Democratic Monarchy.
Democracy means ‘rule of the people’. It does NOT mean that every decision, big or little, is voted on by the entire populace – that is a stupid idea for any group bigger than about 25, you can’t even run a Golf Club (or a Hippie Commune) successfully on pure Democracy. Democracy means the decision makers are ANSWERABLE to the people via democratic processes.
In the case of the United States the ‘people have ruled’ that their government shall have the form of a Republic which means we are NOT a Monarchy (but we could have been – there were those who wanted ‘King’ George Washington) and we are not a Theocracy (even though some folks seem to think the opposite). We are a Republic and our leaders are chosen Democratically.
Please stop pretending that your definition of Democracy has any ‘point scoring’ relevance in a discussion like this. Democracy in the United States is no less democracy than democracy in Australia (where all citizens above voting age are REQUIRED to vote or face a fine).
Maybe that is what you mean then? Voting should be compulsory? If that were the case, Trump would have lost by a YUGE landslide.
Yes, that is why the interest rate that the Government pays on loans is less than what everyone else pays. It is the lowest possible risk – all it has to do is print money to cover any loan. However, Congress has, over the last six years, tried, with malice aforethought, to destroy that country’s risk reputation by every means possible – threatening to drive the country into bankruptcy on several occasions. And of course Trump is threatening to run the country like he ran his businesses – businesses that he rode in to bankruptcy several times over – during BOOM economic periods.
That is the very definition of Capitalism. What the heck are you talking about?
Cognitive dissonance: Congress passed big infrastructure programs early in Obama’s administration. The States refused to accept the money on ideological grounds (they said the nation couldn’t afford to borrow that money even though it would have created thousands of jobs when that was exactly what was needed to recover from the Bush recession) and the nation’s infrastructure has suffered. Now Trump says he wants to borrow a trillion dollars (and cut a trillion dollars in taxes) to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure. Rebuilding infrastructure is great, of course – but Obama wanted to do that and was told to pound sand. Obama’s stimulus, when a stimulus was vital for recover, was never the less evil, but a Trump’s stimulus when joblessness is reasonably low is somehow a stroke of genius?
You tell me: how is Trumps borrowings going to reduce ‘Government Sponsored’ inflation so that interest earned on savings actually improves an individual’s retirement position? Because the Trump administration is going to have to print a heck of a lot of money (or more likely go bankrupt) to cover those loans after he cuts taxes for everyone but the wage slave.
Traderjack, you still have yet to tell me why someone living in Wyoming (where the electoral college gives 1 vote for every 187,875 people) should have 3 times the say of someone living in California (where the electoral college gives 1 vote for every (677,345 people)? Why are people in Wyoming 3.6 times more deserving of electing the President than someone who lives in California? You have yet to answer that question? They already have 66.1 times more power than someone in California in the Senate? Why should they have 3.6 times the power of someone to elect someone who is supposed to represent all Americans equally?
I personally believe that we should switch to the Popular vote in electing the President. One man, one vote. What should be more basic than that?
And stop with the “We are a republic, not a democracy.” Maybe we should turn into a dictatorship, rather, if you truly believe that the government should not be accountable to the people, or that one group of people should have more say in electing our President, than another group. Do you really believe that the government shouldn’t answer to the majority of the people?
Frankly, the electoral college has failed. In the last 5 elections, it has not gone with the winner of the popular vote twice. That’s 40% difference. Oh, and my personal quotes is from Donald Trump on this: “The Electoral College is a disaster, not a Democracy.” (twitter, Nov. 6, 2012, 8:45 pm)
The other unknown is the extent to which the electoral college holds down voter turnout. Common sense tells us that people are going to be more motivated to vote in competitive states, and the figures tend to bear this out. In California this year voter turnout was down by 8%. Other states were voter turnout was down significantly include Utah, Kansas, Mississippi, West Virginia, Hawaii, Kentucky, Vermont, and Maryland, none of which were competitive states.
With a popular vote every vote would carry equal weight, and every vote would be significant. A popular also would make it less likely that a winner would be declared while voting is still underway in western states.
1834 was the first presidential in which all electors (except in South Carolina) were selected by popular vote.
Since then there have been 47 presidential elections, and the winner of the popular vote has been elected 43 times. Those who lost the popular vote but won the electoral vote were Rutherford B. Hayes, Benjamin Harrison, George W. Bush, and now Trump. Hayes, Harrison and Bush have all been regarded by historians as mediocre presidents or worse.
Given that track record, it is difficult for me to see how the electoral college system has provided any benefit to this country since its first three decades. 91% of the presidents would have won anyway if there had been no electoral college, and the few who won while losing the popular vote did not exactly distinguish themselves.
https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=231656
‘”Yes, I said democracy is ultimately tyrannical — because it is.
America is not a Democracy. It is a Constitutional Republic. This is very important; in a democracy 50%+1 can render the 50%-1 slaves by mere vote. Those who are in the minority in a democracy have no rights at all. Democracy is best represented by two wolves and a sheep voting on what’s for dinner.
We are all minorities in some form or fashion. If you’re gay, black, yellow, male, female, whatever — all it takes is some other set of groups to get together and decide to oppress you, and in a democracy you’re ****ed.
America’s founding fathers put in place two systems to prevent this. The first was the bicameral legislature; a House elected by the people at large and a Senate elected by the State Legislators. This structure guaranteed that a landmass that amassed 50%+1 of the population (not even in the same state or states!) could not band together and shove down the throat of the States any policy measure because you needed the concurrence of more than half the state legislatures, where each were delegated but two votes to their Senators who were accountable to said legislature, to pass anything at all
”
Read the rest of KD’s post, if you want to understand the problems
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=732374593582683&set=a.155589711261177.35489.100004304462496&type=3&theater
Just so you know what others believe.
How can they know the total, when all the votes aren’t counted yet? Belief without basis doesn’t mean much.
I didn’t think much of it. He’s just pushing buttons.
Which is precisely the kind of fact-free nonsense that right-wingers have propagated over and over again on Facebook.
According to CNN, the current popular vote tally is Clinton 61,039, 676 (47.8%) and Trump 60,371,193 (47.3%). The number may change before you click on the link.
http://www.cnn.com/election/results/president
The Associated Press has slightly different numbers: Clinton 60,981,119 (47.79%), Trump 60,350,241 (47.3%).
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/features/2016-election-results/
This is one of the major differences between birthers and anti-birthers. We provide facts which are backed up by reputable sources. Birthers provide “facts” which are pulled out of their posteriors or fake news sites.
That’s nonsense. The protection of minority rights are found in two places: The Bill of Rights and the traditional respect of the country for the norms of civilized behavior. Trump has undermined the second one. We’ll have to see what his Supreme Court nominees do to determine if the first one will hold.
But allowing someone who got fewer votes to win an election does nothing to protect minorities.
I think that it is telling that Jack equates what someone believes with actual, verifiable facts. It’s what Stephen Colbert dubbed “truthiness,” the idea that something is true if it feels true, the actual facts be damned.
I’m still waiting for Jack to explain how the electoral college has benefited the United States since the selection of electors by popular vote became the rule in 1834. The electoral vote system has led to three disputed elections (1876,1888 and 2000). If those elections had been decided by the popular vote, there would have been no question about who won.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/rigged-vote-four-us-presidential-elections-contested-results-180961033/?no-ist
The facebook post got it from this site: https://70news.wordpress.com/2016/11/12/final-election-2016-numbers-trump-won-both-popular-62-9-m-62-7-m-and-electoral-college-vote-306-232-hey-change-org-scrap-your-loony-petition-now/
Who then said they got the numbers from Twitter. Such an awesome source.
And , as Dr. C . stated that they had not counted all of the votes yet, then how can you believe any of your sources, just as though your think that the posted sources I put on the site were wrong, then, is it not possible, that your vaunted sources are in error also?
After all, they were not very accurate in their proclamations about Trump’s chance of success in the elections, as were most of the pollsters everywhere
It seems to me that any idea that Trump would succeed was derided on most sites for some reason. I voted for him, but I was not sure he could win the election and I was surprised
I wonder what it was like for the firm believers in the chances of Hillary winning?
I know my two daughters were almost in tears because Trump won, my son voted for Johnson, so I was basically alone in my position.
But I did enjoy watching the dismay in the media presentations as the voting went along..
As to the electoral college, it has worked for the country for the years the country has been existence, and there appears to be no need to change it just because Hillary lost the elections and the Democrats were disappointed
Rickey, in todays electronic world there are few things that are actual verifiable facts. You can not even believe your eyes when you look at the things shown on the web.
An actual verifiable fact is what someone desperately believes to be true in their mind and will not accept any challenge to the belief
If you believe that there is an accurate counting of total votes in the USA verifiable to 8 significant numbers you are a true believer.
I don’t know how many of those there were. fivethirtyeight.com gave her a 75-80% chance of winning depending on when you looked. As I said all along, those aren’t very good odds.
You’re really trying to compare a facebook picture who got their information from a blog who got their information from twitter to a reputable news site getting their information from the state elections sites?
Displaying the count as it now stands is one thing. Giving a total that shows something contrary to what has been counted is not factual.
It doesn’t require 8 significant digits to conclude that Hillary won the popular vote. 2 are sufficient. Moreover, her lead has grown steadily since Election Day. The reason for that is simple-the majority of outstanding votes are in California, a state she won by close to 2:1. For every 100,000 votes they count, her lead will increase by around 30,000. Simple math.
2 significant numbers in the case of cast votes would in the increase of votes in the million range so 100,000 votes would not count unless it increase the total by 500,000
Clinton’s lead in the popular vote is now 690,207.
Clinton’s lead, right now according to the New York Times, is 776,854.
Applying the popular vote argument to an election where the popular vote is not going to decide the election is unfair all around. What fraction of a percent more is Hillary’s vote total over Trump? What motivation did Republicans have to vote in California which always goes blue and not even the Senate race mattered to them? How many red state Democrats did not vote? The discussion of what should happen in the future is good.The argument that Clinton should be president because she won the popular vote is not. All strategy was based on the swing states. Hillary came up short. She didn’t have the stamina or the personality to campaign well. The average Joe and Jane get that something is amiss when you have personal servers as Secretary of State and that hammers are used on evidence. But so and so did this which is just as bad was a failed argument.
The Presidency? State wide ballot initiatives on taxes, the death penalty and legalized marijuana. Congressional races, state and local races.
Except that nobody here is arguing that Clinton “should be be president” because she won the popular vote. We know how presidential elections are decided. What we are saying – and this is hardly a new argument – is that the electoral college is an anachronism which needs to go. Not only has the electoral college led to the winner of the popular vote losing the election in two of the past five presidential elections, as you have suggested there is good reason to believe that the electoral college discourages voter turnout in states which are not competitive.
As for Clinton’s personal server, it’s interesting that out of all the e-mails which were released by Wikileaks, not a single one came from that server. And your comment about Clinton’s stamina is a cheap shot which doesn’t deserve a response.
In 2012 Trump thought that Romney was going to win the popular vote but lose the electoral college vote. So he tweet the electoral college was a disaster for democracy. today he tweeted that the electoral college is genius. LOL
Clinton’s lead in the popular vote is now 797,970 according to CNN.
And regarding the destruction of Clinton’s phones with a hammer, charo says this was destruction of evidence. Does charo know that these phones were considered to be “evidence” at the time they were destroyed? Or is this just more disingenuousness from a Trump apologist? I’ve had it with that brand of nonsense.
“Trump, with his usual talent for avoiding nuance, summed up the criticism: ‘People who have nothing to hide don’t smash phones with hammers.’ But ask a few security and forensics experts, and they’ll tell you Clinton’s mistake wasn’t destroying the devices. If anything, she should have wrecked them more thoroughly.”
https://www.wired.com/2016/09/actually-clinton-destroyed-phones-better/
Another statistic to chew on.
Pennsylvania, Ohio and Wisconsin combined have 48 electoral votes with a combined population of 31.1 million. That works out to about one electoral vote for every 627,488 people.
California has 55 electoral votes with a population of 38.8 million. That works out to about one electoral vote for every 705,454 people.
As I recall, Jack lives in California. I’d like to hear him explain why his vote should count for less than the votes of people who live in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Wisconsin.
The same argument applies then as now. The popular vote has no bearing when the whole campaign mindset as well as the the voters’ mindset is the electoral college. You can make a theoretical argument about the popular vote versus the electoral college but using the two elections is not valid. There are people on both sides who feel their vote doesn’t matter. Additionally, the margin was so slim that a country wide recount would have been in order for both elections.
So, none of the emails mentioned the private server? Anyone who has ever held a public position would have suffered more consequences. It is the different levels of justice that is also at issue.
She did not hit the campaign trail hard and did a lot of private fundraising. You show up and make your case to the people. That takes work. So, I erred on the side of her being unable to versus had no desire to.
798790/121860524 = .66 percent rounded
Not true. Consider the case of Alberto Gonzales. he should have been indicted for mishandling highly classified documents but the Bush Administration DOJ chose not to pursue it.
https://oig.justice.gov/special/s0809/final.pdf
I phrased that poorly. I meant a public servant, as in the average government worker. We can list high profile figures on both sides of who “got away with it.”
In my borough about 10 years ago a District Justice position opened up. A fairly well connected Republic woman ran against a young Democrat. The Republican, whom I knew, did not campaign hard. Where I live is pretty conservative, although the demographics are changing. Anyways, the young Democrat pounded on doors … and won by two votes. Another side note, the Republican state house incumbent pounded on our door before the election. Much to my horror, he asked to use the bathroom, and I had fallen behind on the cleaning. Good outcome: my daughter was embarrassed and has been organizing closets, throwing out old toys,… Silver linings always exist if you look for them.
That argument has some merit, but I think the effect would balance out. If votes in California, Texas, New York, etc.mattered, BOTH sides would have campaigned there, advertised there, etc. and the result might well have ended up the same.
The real argument is that the last several elections have all been fought in the same limited number of states. The last time we saw any candidate in New York, other than to raise money was at least 20 years ago. Even with 2 New Yorkers running, neither campaigned here. New York and California already pay way more into the federal pot than they get back, and we don’t even get a full say in how it’s spent.
As for a countrywide recount, if that’s what needed then so be it. A margin of 700,000, which may grow to 1 million isn’t going to go away.
Just to add, recounting is not terribly different from counting in the first place. It would be done at the precinct level, not nationally. The initial count without mail-in ballots was done by the AM of Nov 9 (maybe 12-18 hrs after the polls closed). There is no question a recount could be done quickly once all the mail-in ballots arrive. And margins of 0.6% almost never get overturned. You literally have to get into a Florida 2000 scenario to have a realistic chance of overturning.
Of course there are people on both sides who feel that their vote doesn’t matter. That is precisely the problem.
And there would be nothing wrong with having a country-wide recount. There would be plenty of time for that. Inauguration Day is more than two months away. If it takes a recount to verify a winner, so be it.
There is no evidence that even a single e-mail was hacked from Clinton’s server. E-mails were hacked from John Podesta’s server, and e-mails were hacked from the DNC’s server, but no one has produced an e-mail which was hacked from Clinton’s server. Thousands of Clinton’s e-mails were released to the public by the State Departments, but they weren’t hacked.
That is a subjective assessment on your part.
You’re forgetting the votes which went to third-party candidates. As of today Clinton has won 47.9% of the popular vote (which, incidentally, matches George W. Bush’s percentage in 2000) and Trump has won 47.2%.
http://edition.cnn.com/election/results/president
The point is that the election for president is the only election we hold in the United States in which the person who gets the most votes (even if it is only one vote more) doesn’t necessarily win. I have yet to hear anyone present a cogent argument why it should continue to be this way.
Valerie Plame!! How quickly they forget.
You , perhaps, fail to realize that the election would never be over should it go to the popular vole
If the vote was by one vote won, then every politician would want the recount and inspection of the chads to make sure that every vote was properly counted, and , then, when they were properly counted, then the politician would demand that every voter cast was by cast by a valid voter and they would have to check the voter citizenship status.
the stakes are too high to allow that to happen if you are not the loser.
Hillary’s server was bleached and no emails were recovered, is that not true?
“As a server, it can have open ports running services that you can connect to and gain access to the server. By using known exploits, you could gain root access. For example, some FTP servers for Unix have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by tools like Metasploit to gain a root shell.”
http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/11234/how-does-hacking-work
Ah, the favorite wording of the people! there is no evidence , there fore it did not happen!
there is never evidence of a successful hack that steals the information without the knowledge of the user or the server.
It was a compromise to allow small states (by population) to have more say. Sometimes to reach agreement, you give something. I don’t completely agree that the President is the only office where we don’t honor the principle of one person, one vote. The Senate shares the same disproportionate nature as does the Electoral College. A senator from Hawaii represents far fewer people that one from California. That last inequity is the one thing that cannot be changed in the Constitution as it says: “…no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.” That is in the section on amendments.
Actually, if the devices contained governmental information and the information had not been transmitted to the governmental archives , according to federal law, they might have been evidence
destruction of the device implies that the device contains information that the destroyer does not want disclosed to someone, for some reason or another.
It seems to me that Pennsylvania (my state) is a microcosm of the issue. In past elections, the Democrats had to shore up Pittsburgh and Phillie (the swing states) for the win. The rural areas were inconsequential for the most part. In the 2016 election cycle, “the popular vote” won in a sense because the “swing states” did not come through and the rural areas (popular vote) mattered.
Nonetheless, I see the electoral college as working. After the Bush years, people wanted a change. The electoral college reflected the change. After eight years of a Democratic Administration, not enough voters wanted a Clinton Administration or the numbers would have been stronger. If the popular vote clearly thwarted the will of the people, I would see a stronger argument for getting rid of the electoral college. Red states are not strongly red anymore, yet there was a shift in the swing states to red. So regionally, even though you may believe that a Trump presidency will not help and may even hurt, the states that went for Trump, geographically, more regions of the country either felt positive about Trump or negative about Clinton.
Anyways, my two cents.
I agree, but that’s a different argument than the one I am making. Senators are elected by popular vote. The presidency is the only elected office I can think of which does not necessarily go to the winner of the popular vote.
That’s nonsense. The chances of a vote by 120 million people being decided by one vote are less than infinitesimal.
And there is no basis in any state’s elections laws to allow a challenger to question the citizenship status of voters after an election. For one thing, how would you determine who an ineligible voter voted for? We have secret ballots, you know. All that would required in a contested election is a recount.
As a loser by one vote in a majority election would you challenge the count?
No? you would be considered an outstanding citizen if you accept that close of a vote on any election, except, of course, a jury verdict.
And yet, here we are, discussing whether or not the electoral college is good or bad, based upon this election, were decry results, and winners exult in results.
Losers are never happy, and winners are always happy.
Live with it.
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It’s called security. That is what you’re supposed to do to devices you don’t plan to use anymore.
Obama opponents, the birthers, denied that they lost, claiming Obama was not a legitimate president, and to this day some of them still believe that Obama will be erased along with everything he did as president.
Those of us who are disappointed with Trump’s election are not spinning nonsense and claiming that Trump isn’t “really” president.
That is a huge difference.
I would demand a recount, if that’s what you mean.
It’s not a question of being a sore loser. I accept that Trump won the electoral vote fair and square. My concern is that in two of the last five presidential elections the electoral vote has not represented the will of the American people. When I was a youngster in school we thought that it was quaint that back in the 19th century there were elections where the winner of the popular vote was not elected president. Surely, we thought, it will never happen again. Now that it has happened twice in the last sixteen years, it is no longer quaint.
Clinton now leads in the popular vote by 947,579 votes. She almost certainly will end up with more votes than George W. Bush received in 2004.
However that’s not the way that the founders set up the senate originally. Back then the state legislatures picked their senators. That changed by law to have people vote on senators. Just as the electoral college could change. Here’s an article I read a while back: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/five-myths-about-the-electoral-college/2012/11/02/2d45c526-1f85-11e2-afca-58c2f5789c5d_story.html?utm_term=.410a580cbc72
The whole protect the small states makes sense when it comes to the senate.
It works except when the winner of the popular vote doesn’t win the election. Read up on the elections of 1876 and 1888 and see how smoothly things didn’t go.
In 1876 the Republicans made a deal with the devil to get Rutherford B. Hayes into the White House, even though Democrat Samuel Tilden won 51% of the popular vote. The Democrats agreed to let Hayes have 20 disputed electoral votes in return for the end of Reconstruction in the south. That led to Jim Crow laws, segregation, and all of the associated injustices which were forced upon African-Americans for decades to come.
In 1888 Grover Cleveland won the popular vote but lost to Benjamin Harrison, who subsequently was found to have paid people to vote for him in New York and Indiana, the two states which swung the electoral college in his favor.
And of course in 2000 Bush’s victory in the electoral college led to a legal challenge which wasn’t resolved until the Supreme Court got involved more than a month after election day.
Nothing like those controversies have ever arisen in elections where the winner of the popular vote also won the electoral college.
It’s unclear to me how the elections of 1876, 1888 and 2000 can be cited as examples of the electoral college working, unless by “working” you mean that you’re happy with the outcome.
If you follow this link I think you will see the last word on the electoral college:
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/266038556504494082?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Clinton’s lead in the popular vote now exceeds 1 million. She is going to end up leading Trump by at least a full percentage point.
And I am happy that you are happy with that loss!
The emails released by Wikileaks came from the ‘state.gov’ email server.
Try to follow along here. The following points come DIRECTLY from the OFFICIAL FBI report into the matter:
What this means:
1) Secure ‘Classified’ systems CAN NOT send email to an ‘Unclassified’ system, via internet or any other means.
2) This means that somebody at the “CIA, NSA, etc., and even the FBI” MUST have had to MANUALLY key in any classified material on the unclassified system.
3) The AUTHOR of those documents that improperly contained classified information made no attempt to warn the recipient of their classified nature.
4) Clinton did not originate any of the classified information in the emails, had no way of knowing that they were classified, and her contributions did not in any way contribute ‘more’ classified information.
From ZFacts analysis of the CIA report:
Since the so-called ‘professionals’ knowingly violated the rules and sent classified information over the unclassified network, what difference does it make if Clinton used her private server instead of ‘state.gov’ which is also an unclassified server. She did, in fact, have access to a classified server, fax, and phone – but the ‘professionals’ did not use it.
In point of fact, state.gov is far less secure than Clinton’s personal server. There is no evidence Clinton lost any emails. However, the State Dept lost 251,287 classified emails in Nov 2010. Then in 2014 (after Clinton left office, by the way) the state.gov email system that Clinton “should have” used suffered the worst hack of any federal agency. It lasted over a year. Copies of Clinton’s emails were still archived there in her staff’s accounts.
A few somewhat unrelated thoughts.
Now that the US has resoundly proved (not for the first time) that it is not a democracy, would it be too much to ask that it stops its often misguided and rather hypocritical efforts to promote democracy beyond its borders? I, for one, would like to see a concerted world effort to try to promote democracy in the US, but I don’t think it’s going to happen.
Two, my dad used to be an army general with access to spooky types, and my mom still being alive (though with alzheimer) I still speak to old friends of the family. The rumor in those circles yesterday was that the call Trump made to President Holland was “incoherent”. The kindest version is, due to stress, overworking, time difference; the unkindest, diminished mental faculties; no none knows really. I told the gentleman who told me that, that my wife has been convinced for a while (based on our own family experience) that Trump is suffering from very early signs on onset of dementia. But obviously one shouldn’t attempt to diagnose from TV.
Finally, between Putin’s under-the-table money and Bannon reaching out to neofascist parties in the UK, France, Italy, Germany and Holland, I do worry we might see the breakup of the EU in the next 4 to 8 years, should one of these parties come to power in France, Germany or Italy. The notion lo the US and Russia working hand in hand to undo the last great democracies of Europe is something that even Mr. Heinlein (who had a rather good idea of what you’re facing now) hadn’t quite imagined.
We have a Presidential election in May 2017; we’re voting on Sunday in the “Right” open primaries (for Alain Juppé, a Chirac-like “safe” choice). It’s going to be an interesting year for us too.
Actually lots of e-mails were recovered. Just because a server has been wiped clean it doesn’t necessarily follow that all of the e-mails on that server are not recoverable.
As I mentioned previously, every time an e-mail is sent there are at least three copies of it. The sender has a copy, the recipient has a copy, and there is a copy on the server. If I delete all of my e-mails, copies still exist on the servers of the people I sent them to and who sent e-mails to me.
My point however, which seems to have escaped you, is that if anyone had successfully hacked Clinton’s server we surely would have seen copies of her e-mails be leaked prior to the election. But that never happened, which strongly suggests that her server was never hacked.
Clinton is now within 42,000 votes of achieving the third-largest popular vote total in U.S. history, trailing only Obama’s totals in 2008 and 2012. She has gotten more votes than Trump, more votes than Romney, more votes than McCain, and she is about to surpass Bush’s total in 2004.
Au Contraire, the hacker, using the stuff for their own purpose would have no reason to disclose the hacked system.
And it strongly suggests that the hacking of any un-protected system or I should say, any weakly protected system of any important person , in the world , will have an attack on their systems or servers.
It is better to assume, if you are an important person to assume that you will be successfully attacked as some time in the future.
As usual, you make no sense.
Why would a hacker be concerned about revealing that he or she successfully hacked a server which doesn’t exist anymore?
And what would be the point of hacking Clinton’s e-mails if the hacker wasn’t going to use them against her? What other “own purpose” would there be?
The people who hacked the DNC’s e-mails and John Podesta’s e-mails certainly had no reluctance about letting the public know about it.
Clinton’s popular vote total is now 62,086,442, which surpasses George Bush’s total in 2004.
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I wish France good luck in your election. The Trump campaign and election is mortifying…. It’s terrifying to see us and the world go down this path. In America, people used to say “it can’t happen here,” which of course was just naive and arrogant. My father always warned us to be ever vigilant against the reemergence of fascism, and now I find myself glad he is not here to see this happening again.
Having two rounds does allow people time to take a step back and a deep breath. Last time we ended with JM Le Pen (national Front) and J Chirac (Center-Right) in the second round, the Left massively voted for Chirac merely in order to not have the National Front in power.
The same is likely to happen this time, with Marine Le Pen and someone from the right (Juppé if the polls are correct) making it to the second round, in which case I strongly doubt Le Pen can prevail.
Realistically, the first thing that went wrong with your election is that 46% of eligible voters did not vote at all (from what i read), not for Jill Stein, not for anyone. This is a disgrace, which I attribute to the low information-value of American society.
In effect Trump is only supported by the same 30+% of your country who (as i said before) wish to exterminate or get rid of everyone else who’s not part of their tribe.
That is part of it, but it is more complicated.
The Electoral College is partially to blame. In most states the outcome was never in doubt, so there was little motivation to vote in those states unless there were compelling down-ballot races or propositions.
Election Day is not a holiday in the U.S., so many people have to take time off from work to do it. Most states require employers to allow time off to vote, but many cap the time allowed at two hours which is insufficient in many locations.
In some locations voters had to stand on line for hours to vote, which is scandalous. No one should have to wait more than 15 minutes to vote. Some people either saw a long line and decided that voting wasn’t worth the wait. Others stood on line until the were too tired to wait longer.
Early voting was cut back drastically in a number of states.
We have a patchwork of voting laws and voting times. Some states close the polls at 7:00 p.m. local time, while other stay open until 9:00 p.m.
Clinton now leads in the popular vote, 48% to 47.1%. Trump actually is winning a smaller percentage of the popular vote than Romney won in 2012 (47.2%).
All of this is true, and indeed should be reformed. I can’t quite imagine why there can’t be bipartisan agreement to vote on the week-end.
I can’t see much of a silver lining to a Trump-run US of A, except possibly as a scarecrow to others.
I noticed that the looming dark clouds massing over Britain in anticipation of a f*ck*d-up Brexit have had the unintended effect of bringing some of our own anti-EU folks to a modicum of common sense.
If past examples hold true, it seems likely that a Trump regime will crash your economy. That, then, might serve as a dire warning to our own electorate. Not all of our hardline right-wingers suddenly appear eager to embrace a Trump regime — Sarkozy comes to mind with his recent anti-US/Trump declarations.
I’ve long held the views that the US right-wing has had a toxic effect upon the rest of the world; watching them unfettered, smashing their own country, might provide a lesson to those here tempted to follow that path.
The ultimate irony is that a good third of your people (or half of the voters) played right into the hands of those who wanted to see the US taken down by several notches. Those whom the gods would destroy…
The date is set in the Constitution. It would require a Constitutional Amendment to change it.
Better would be a public holiday.
Good point. Even easier then.
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I hope you are right about that lesson to prevent others from following that path. And I can see your point about the US right-wing’s effect on the rest of the world. But I think it is all reciprocal. Travelling in Europe, I’ve been reminded where our right’s racial and ethnic hatred comes from and still flourishes. Even David Duke had to go to the Ukraine to get his PhD in hatred–ironically, the country my grandfather fled from.
The date is set by statute: 3 U.S. Code § 1.
No doubt it hasn’t been a one-way street.
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Yes, a disgrace that I’ve tried to comprehend for years. I think part of the problem is their (our) profound naivety.
They (we) think it’s bad now, and “helplessly” throw their hands up. Or, they (we) think that it can’t get too bad. Europe has long memory, including recent memory, of how bad things can get. Americans largely underestimate it all.
I get particularly annoyed at Trump-supporting Americans who proclaim their patriotism by proudly holding out their own fathers or grandfathers who fought in WWII. This is incomprehensible to me. In heaven’s name, what do they think our fathers were fighting against?
Beats me, as a WW2 veteran all I know is at the start we were fighting against the Japanese who attacked us.
What do you think you forebears were fighting against?
remember that at that time the USA was a racially divided, hated queer people, didn’t like Asians, Mexicans, and anyone who did not look like us.
But fervently supported England, or Great Britain, which was a colonial power, and supported Russia which was a Communist nation, an supported China, and did not want to allow Jews from Germany to enter the country.
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The men in my family went to Europe to fight fascism and nazis, while the women organized the smuggling of children out of Europe. I wasn’t born until 10 years later.
But I do recognize that you are right–some other Americans had different motivations, and some were just drafted. And some then embraced McCarthy, and some lynched their fellow Americans soldiers. America has a complicated history.
Whoa.
That is TWO egregious errors in one week.
The referee on my shoulder has just sent me to the sin bin for an unspecified, but wholey deserved time period.
That was actually just the side action. The U.S. Government and Britian and Russia decided that the Nazis were the main fight, and then the Japanese would be taken care of after that. Largely, the Pacific Theater of the War was mainly a holding action that didn’t get the resources of the European Theater from the United States.
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Interesting. And my father (like so many), after fighting Hitler, was preparing to be shipped to the Pacific Theater. Until Truman dropped the bomb.
There also were logistical issues. With the exception of aircraft carriers, the Pacific fleet was largely destroyed at Pearl Harbor and had to be rebuilt before effective military action could be taken against Japan.
Many people believe that the U.S. declared war on Germany after Pearl Harbor, but that’s not the case. The U.S. declared war on Japan on December 8, but there was still resistance to fighting in Europe. Hitler made it easy by declaring war on the U.S. on December 11.
It is interesting to speculate what might have happened if Hitler had not declared war on the U.S. It might have been necessary to move most of the Atlantic fleet to the Pacific and focus all our efforts on fighting Japan. But when Germany declared war it became impractical to move resources to the Pacific.
But you’re correct that Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin wanted the U.S. to focus primarily on Europe. Germany had already invaded Russia and England was in a perilous situation, while the focus in the Pacific was to keep Japan out of Australia.
If I had to make a prediction, I’d say the US is turning into a combination of a string kleptocratic state (think Putin’s Russia) mixed with a neo-liberal (in the economic sense of the word) third world economy (think Brazil). Brazil isn’t hell on earth, but it has favellas, wide gap between rich and poor, hypermilitarized police, gang wars, poor human rights record, yet very entertaining TV. A far cry from the traditional US “golden age” which is now likely in the past.
Is kleptokakocracy a word? That’s what I fear we are all about to witness.
Update: Clinton now leads in the popular vote by 1.6 million votes. By comparison, Al Gore won the popular vote by 550,000 votes when he “lost” the election in 2000.
Update: Clinton now leads by 1.7 million popular votes.
Clinton: 63,752,692
Trump: 62,022,668
Clinton’s lead in the popular vote: 1,726,024
Other candidates: 7,486,627
http://uselectionatlas.org/2016.php
Is kleptokakocracy a word? That’s what I fear we are all about to witness.
Kleptomaniac I knew. Kleptocracy was new. I’m sure the word will be used extensively in future posting on this site and others as a descriptive noun for the future Trump presidency.
http://www.alphadictionary.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=7865
Your country has just officially signed up to join the kleptocratic ranks:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/11/22/1603120/-Trump-signals-he-ll-use-White-House-for-business-gains-A-president-can-t-have-a-conflict
and
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2016/11/17/would-trumps-foreign-business-ties-be-constitutional/constitutional-restrictions-on-foreign-gifts-dont-apply-to-presidents
If this isn’t challenged, you have become Zimbabwe with nuclear weapons.,
I’ve been saying here for years that your unfettered interpretation of free speech because of your First Amendment would get your country into trouble, and while there are many more reasons why Trump won, the steps taken recently by facebook and twitter to combat fake news and hate speech bear me out, at least in part.
I could endure the notion of the US devolving into “Brussia” (Brazil/Russia) with more equanimity if it didn’t affect the rest of us across the world.
I’m old enough to have been in Spain as a student under Franco in 1970-71.
I’m pretty sure that no broken promises, no economic catastrophe will drive the fascists away from their Beloved leader. They’ll huddle together around him and will fight the outside world like wolverines on meth to retain their grasp on power.
Transitioning back to a normal regime is a long, hazardous, risky and fraught with violence.
You haven’t even begun to consider some of the possible paths ahead including a passing of the torch from Trump to one of his children as president. Elections can be managed, especially with 60 million supporters.