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You are here: Home / Elections / Election 2016 / Late Night Open Thread: The Electoral College Must Die

Late Night Open Thread: The Electoral College Must Die

by Anne Laurie|  November 10, 20161:00 am| 88 Comments

This post is in: Election 2016, Open Threads, Daydream Believers

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undecided-voters-ohman

(Jack Ohman via GoComics.com)
.

Updated poll numbers

231,556,622 eligible voters

46.9% didn't vote
25.6% voted for Clinton
25.5% voted for Trump
1.7% voted for Johnson

— Josh Nelson (@SSS_joshnelson) November 9, 2016

The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 7, 2012

And who would know that better than Donald Trump?

Charles P. Pierce, in Esquire:

PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA—On September 4, 1787, in a hall not far from here, the delegates to the Constitutional Convention reached yet another compromise. Like all of those compromises, this one was driven at least in part by the nervousness of the smaller states about their place in the new order, and in part because of the nervousness of the slave states over the status of their slaves. This compromise had to do with how the new system would produce what was still referred to in their deliberations as the “Chief Magistrate.”

There was some support for the idea to leave the choice to the national legislature. This was opposed on the grounds that this obviously would compromise the Chief Magistrate’s independence. There was some support for a direct election of the president, but that was opposed on the grounds that, taken as a group, the people were not, well, smart enough to make this decision by themselves. So, voila, the Founders gifted their posterity with that creaky, preposterous creature called the Electoral College…

Basically, however, the Electoral College remains pretty much as he and the rest of them left it. They felt that it would act as a kind of brake on the anti-democratic tendencies of the general population and that, as such, it would prevent angry demagogues from achieving real power. So, yeah, in the cold light of this morning, they called it a little early…

Donald Trump won the Republican nomination because more people voted for him than voted for anyone else. Donald Trump won the presidential election because enough people voted for him in enough states to hit the tripwire on one of the oldest booby traps in American politics. And it worked precisely as it was meant to work, although it produced exactly the opposite of the result it was meant to produce…

Dan Savage re-upped a column from September:

… Trump is polling well enough in some swing states that there’s a chance he could lose the popular vote and win the White House. Because, you see, our founding/slave-owning fathers saddled us with an anti-democratic Electoral College because it looked so nice up there on the mantle with that anti-Democratic U.S. Senate they got us. (Although the U.S. Senate does look like the more Democratic institution today, because states can’t be gerrymandered. Sad!)

But speaking of the electoral college: Hey, urbanists, progressives, blue-state voters, and city dwellers! Want politicians to pay more attention to the concerns of cities and the people who live and vote in them, aka 63% of the American people? Get behind the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact:

The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC) is an agreement among several U.S. states and the District of Columbia to award all their respective electoral votes to whichever presidential candidate wins the overall popular vote in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. The compact is designed to ensure that the candidate who wins the most popular votes is elected president, and it will come into effect only when it will guarantee that outcome. As of 2016, it has been joined by ten states and the District of Columbia; their 165 combined electoral votes amount to 30.7% of the total Electoral College vote, and 61.1% of the 270 votes needed for it to have legal force.

The Electoral College was expressly designed to keep the White House away from the “wrong” people. In 1787, that meant white men who didn’t have a stake in keeping not-rich white men and/or those who might sympathize with abolitionists out of what wasn’t yet the Oval Office, because the thought of black men — much less women — actually voting was more dystopian fiction than political possibility. Well, the nation they invented survived any number of uneducated “populist” presidents, starting with Andrew Jackson, and now eight years of a Black president. Yesterday, we’d finally have broken the Woman Barrier, if not for the Republicans’ combination of voter suppression and gerrymandering (plus the assistance of a dishonestly partisan FBI director and a foreign autocrat).

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Reader Interactions

88Comments

  1. 1.

    EBT

    November 10, 2016 at 1:07 am

    We should be so lucky to get rid of it.

  2. 2.

    Ian

    November 10, 2016 at 1:12 am

    The electoral college benefits us. Ignore the candidate that lost PA, MI, WI, OH, and FL and blame the electoral system. A week ago I would have proudly said that to a Trump Asshat.

  3. 3.

    Major Major Major Major

    November 10, 2016 at 1:12 am

    @EBT: Hey, um, be safe about the gun thing, OK? They’re really dangerous for depressives to have around. Sounded like you fell into that bucket. Talk to a doctor first.

  4. 4.

    Mnemosyne

    November 10, 2016 at 1:14 am

    Voter ID is voter suppression, and it was baked into the cake back in 2012. The fact that Trump benefited from the pre-existing plan to break the “firewall” states is just a coincidence.

  5. 5.

    Mnemosyne

    November 10, 2016 at 1:17 am

    In election-related but not news, tomorrow’s Young Storytellers session is going to be pretty somber. One of the little girls is writing a play about how walls are bad and we need bridges instead, and now she knows that the adults around her have failed her, and the wall she has nightmares about is going to be built.

    Fuck you, racist white voters. You’re making a little girl’s nightmare come true because your fragile egos couldn’t handle an inclusive society.

  6. 6.

    jacy

    November 10, 2016 at 1:21 am

    My daughter called me shaken tonight. She’s a preschool teacher and had stopped at Walmart to get some supplies for crafts for her class. When she came out into the parking lot, a car full of young black guys pulled up and started yelling slurs at her and saying “Fuck Trump, bitch.”

    She’s a Democrat and voted for Hillary, and to her credit, she did not blame them for their anger. She understood it, because she had spent her lunch hour in car crying about the whole thing. But still — she was shaken. Welcome to the Trump presidency.

  7. 7.

    Peale

    November 10, 2016 at 1:22 am

    Or we could just try to win more voters in places where we need them.

    I don’t think spending a lot of time trying to change the constitution is time well spent.

  8. 8.

    Mnemosyne

    November 10, 2016 at 1:22 am

    Repeated from below:

    Crap. I just had a sudden realization: the reason Karl Rove was so shocked by the election results in 2012 was that he had already put his plan to break the firewall states into motion, and he was shocked that it hadn’t worked.

    And then he had four more years to perfect it.

    Fuck.

  9. 9.

    Joyce H

    November 10, 2016 at 1:26 am

    The Electoral College should go because it has outlived its usefulness. It was originally intended to serve as a brake between the passions of the mob and the levers of power – if the mob voted for an obviously unfit candidate, the Wise Men of the Electoral College were there to override them. In other words, if this year a handful of ‘faithless electors’ refused to vote for Trump and invalidated his election, that would be the Electoral College working EXACTLY AS THE FRAMERS INTENDED.

    However, by now the expectation is that the EC would simply rubberstamp the results, so if the Electoral College did such a thing, I think Trump voters would rebel and many would consider them justified. The catch is that with the shift in population to cities and the outsized EC representation of low-population and rural states, it’s now becoming routine that the EC winner is not the popular vote winner. Twice in the last five elections!

    Yes, the Electoral College should go. It’s no longer performing as intended, and it probably can’t perform as intended, and all it serves to do now is hand the presidency to the loser.

  10. 10.

    Peale

    November 10, 2016 at 1:29 am

    @Mnemosyne: The damage done due to our mid-term, umm, weakness, is going to be a problem for a long time. I guess we have to look to see if we are tapped out of potential voters in those states.

  11. 11.

    EBT

    November 10, 2016 at 1:34 am

    @Major Major Major Major: I genuinely don’t feel safe in my own apartment at this point. I thought I gave up the days of not feeling safe in my own home when I finally got away from my mother. I will not go back to that feeling.

  12. 12.

    Major Major Major Major

    November 10, 2016 at 1:42 am

    @EBT: I understand. I’m just saying.

  13. 13.

    Peter

    November 10, 2016 at 1:50 am

    The great thing about the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact is that it can be enacted without a single red state or even large swing state needing to be involved. If you live in such a state which has not already signed on, get on the horn with your state representatives and governor and start pushing it.

  14. 14.

    Mnemosyne

    November 10, 2016 at 1:54 am

    @EBT:

    Random thought (and I don’t know much about weapons) — would a knife serve the same purpose, like one you could conceal in a boot or pocket? If you get jumped, a knife might actually work better, and it’s more practical in that it’s never going to go off accidentally.

    (Chiming in because I am also a person who has had depression. I don’t have a gun, but I don’t have a self-defense need right now like you do.)

  15. 15.

    EBT

    November 10, 2016 at 1:56 am

    @Mnemosyne: My first thought was (and still is to) get a can of bear spray. I have physical issues beyond the psychological problems, and do worry that a legal knife might be less effective in my hands.

  16. 16.

    Peter

    November 10, 2016 at 2:01 am

    @Joyce H: They would cry about the system being rigged. Which would be absurd, because the electoral college already handed Trump an election that he lost, but they’d say it anyway.

  17. 17.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    November 10, 2016 at 2:04 am

    @Mnemosyne: Remember what the PA Republican Chairman said in 2012 before the election, he guaranteed that voter ID would deliver PA for Romney.

  18. 18.

    Major Major Major Major

    November 10, 2016 at 2:05 am

    @EBT: That might be a better bet. Or something like that.

  19. 19.

    Calming Influence

    November 10, 2016 at 2:06 am

    I’ve got to give a shout-out to Nate Silver — he didn’t get it exactly right, but he was closer than anyone else. He was pessimistic enough that last night I wisely tripled up on my blood pressure medication, so the stroke I had has only effected the little finger on my left hand.

  20. 20.

    Linnaeus

    November 10, 2016 at 2:08 am

    The state level work begins now…or whenever the grieving is over. ‘Cause the Republicans don’t sleep on this.

  21. 21.

    Mnemosyne

    November 10, 2016 at 2:08 am

    @EBT:

    You’re in California, right? You can keep the big can of bear spray at home, but by state law you need this size to carry on your person in populated areas.

    I’m also wondering if there are some self-defense/martial arts moves you can learn in addition to the pepper spray even with your physical limitations. The advantage of some kind of martial arts is that your training kicks in during a crisis and you’re less likely to panic in the moment. Plus it gives you a little extra confidence that, yes, you will be able to react to an attack and know what to do. Adam (the front-pager here) seems to know every Aikido instructor in the US and might be able to recommend someone who could help you figure out some moves within your limitations. Aikido is that martial art where you try to use your opponent’s own momentum against him rather than a lot of kicking/punching, so it might be suitable.

  22. 22.

    Calming Influence

    November 10, 2016 at 2:10 am

    @Calming Influence: The biggest downside is that now when I try to give a Trump supporter the finger it looks like some sort of Vulcan greeting.

  23. 23.

    Mnemosyne

    November 10, 2016 at 2:11 am

    @BillinGlendaleCA:

    Yep. The plan failed to launch in 2012, but worked in 2016. I knew there must be a reason my mind immediately associated voter ID and Rove.

  24. 24.

    Major Major Major Major

    November 10, 2016 at 2:14 am

    @Calming Influence: He got the level of uncertainty right, but I maintain that the model itself sucked otherwise. It’s not like he called Trump’s overperformance in the great lakes–he just allowed that “something might happen”. Which, yes, turned out to be the right way to do it. The rest though, the finnicky-ness of the whole thing, smacks of a bad underlying model.

  25. 25.

    Calming Influence

    November 10, 2016 at 2:30 am

    @Major Major Major Major: Yeah, but all their models sucked in hindsight. What made me seem smart to my friends last night was that I was saying “let’s wait and see”, and they were saying “Sam Wang! 99%!” Silver recognizing the uncertainty was something at least. I wasn’t really smart, but I think I was a little more prepared for the outcome.

  26. 26.

    Mnemosyne

    November 10, 2016 at 2:33 am

    @Calming Influence:

    Nobody’s model accounted for Republicans stacking the deck in their favor ahead of time.

  27. 27.

    Calming Influence

    November 10, 2016 at 2:53 am

    Hell, I’m not defending Silver’s model or him personally. He was so right in 2012 that I paid attention to him this cycle. If he were reading chicken entrails I wouldn’t have known the difference, so I haven’t gotten involved in poll analysis threads. Have I touched a nerve? If so, forgive my ignorance.

  28. 28.

    waysel

    November 10, 2016 at 2:55 am

    @Mnemosyne: This. Comey, voter suppression with a gutted VRA, Wikileaks, Fox News and all the MSM, and Bernie eroding trust in Democrats.

  29. 29.

    (((CassandraLeo)))

    November 10, 2016 at 2:57 am

    @Mnemosyne: Right. If people had been allowed to vote as usual, the polling error would still have been large, but it wouldn’t have been catastrophic, and Clinton would’ve won. States like PA, MI, WI, and NC were won because of voter suppression – not because of a legitimate surge in Trump voters. More people didn’t vote for Trump this time. Less people voted for Clinton, and the actions were conspicuously in states with voter suppression. It is also worth pointing out that this is the first presidential election since Shelby County gutted the Voting Rights Act. This is the Roberts Court’s decision working entirely as intended.

    Polling cannot factor into account events like voter suppression. People think they will vote and then find out that they can’t. There’s no way to account for that in a poll. In a legitimate system, this would not have happened. We need to focus incessantly on universal ballot access for all citizens. This needs to be a core Democratic initiative until it becomes a reality, and we need to keep banging the drum about why this happened. We might as well couple it with voting reform (Trump would almost certainly not have won even the Republican primary in a system like approval voting), getting rid of Citizens United, destroying gerrymandering (if voters really wanted “change”, why did the same number of incumbents as usual get reelected?), and various other reforms to the system. This election was a perfect storm of an unprecedented number of terrible factors. Some of them are purely due to bad design. It’s time to fix them.

  30. 30.

    Arclite

    November 10, 2016 at 2:57 am

    Still trying to wrap my head around “President Trump.” Seems like someone college freshman’s idea of dystopian science fiction.

  31. 31.

    opiejeanne

    November 10, 2016 at 3:02 am

    @(((CassandraLeo))): Actually, more voted for Clinton. She won the popular vote.

  32. 32.

    opiejeanne

    November 10, 2016 at 3:02 am

    @Arclite: I refuse to say the name. I’ve started using “It” to refer to It..

  33. 33.

    (((CassandraLeo)))

    November 10, 2016 at 3:03 am

    @opiejeanne: Well, right. I meant that without Shelby County, Clinton would have won the Electoral College, too.

  34. 34.

    Arclite

    November 10, 2016 at 3:06 am

    @Mnemosyne: I’m sure that’s a part of it. And, of course I’d prefer the president to be elected by popular vote. And I’m also sure that the racists, by and large, voted for Trump.

    However, it’s a huge mistake to discount the dissatisfaction of the status quo by 40% of the electorate: non-college whites. Things have been getting worse and worse for them, empirically: stagnant wages, higher unemployment, lowered life expectancies, etc. Trump masterfully tapped into that, and while Clinton did her best to match, the twin albatrosses of the TPP and NAFTA hung around her neck.

    This constituency has been seeing “special treatment” for minorities while feeling left out: immigration exceptions, gay marriage, ongoing discussions of BLM, etc. Rightly or wrongly, they viewed all that attention as special treatment, and felt ignored. And they voted for the rapist asshole for salvation, because they saw no point in continuing the status quo.

  35. 35.

    waysel

    November 10, 2016 at 3:10 am

    @(((CassandraLeo))): This

  36. 36.

    Arclite

    November 10, 2016 at 3:24 am

    @Calming Influence:

    I’ve got to give a shout-out to Nate Silver

    Nate’s model showed a high level of uncertainty, thus they were 65-35 Clinton-Trump, and Harry Enten just days before the election pointed out that Trump was well within the polling margin of error. So, yeah, for an aggregator, you could say he model was the best, since he had the highest chance of a Trump victory. As for individual polls, hats off to USC and the L.A. Times?

  37. 37.

    Mnemosyne

    November 10, 2016 at 3:27 am

    @Arclite:

    From what I’ve seen so far, though, Trump got fewer votes than Romney did, but in the same percentages. It really was the successful voter suppression in those “firewall” states that did the trick, because just a few thousand fewer minority voters per state tipped them to Trump. And this was all baked in well before Trumo even thought of running.

    So that’s problem number one. Problem number two is that disgruntled whites continued to be disgruntled, and voted for Trump in the same percentages as they did for Romney. And I do agree with you that their problem is a perceived status loss, not “economic insecurity” or whatever the buzzword was this year. College-educated whites voted for Trump in the same percentages as they voted for Romney.

    I honestly am not sure how to … gruntle these people since they’re upset that they no longer have automatic top social status in our caste system. Democrats keep hoping that making them more economically secure will win them over, but it turns out that they’re perfectly willing to sacrifice that economic security for a perceived social status boost. See Kentucky, where poor whites happily voted for the Republican who said up front that he would take their healthcare away, but he would make sure that the non-whites of KY would suffer more. They were happy with that bargain.

    I am not willing to re-establish the racial caste system that existed before 1965. Now what?

  38. 38.

    Joyce H

    November 10, 2016 at 3:35 am

    Tonight I saw a clip of Trump’s acceptance speech on the news, which I hadn’t watched when it happened – and the main thing that caught my attention was his youngest son standing there looking terrified.

    And I remembered that recent story from a college roommate of Junior, about Dad visiting son in college and clouting him hard enough to knock him to the ground.

    And for the first time in my life, it occurred to me to wonder – if the Secret Service witnesses the President beating his wife or child, what are they supposed to do?

  39. 39.

    Kathleen

    November 10, 2016 at 3:56 am

    @Arclite: Trump’s voters have higher incomes. Hillary’s voters were lower income..

  40. 40.

    Anya

    November 10, 2016 at 3:56 am

    I think before we gripe about the EC, we should look into Clinton Camp’s GOTV. What happened to all the offices she oppened at those states? Why didn’t they know their voters didn’t come out and vote? In 2012, I was in Ohio and the Obama campaign knew if every single voter on their list voted or not. We contacted people and made sure our voters were voting. I remember when the Cuyahoga county votes were coming, the campaign was comparing their list to the list of voters. I literally got to know certain voters because I connected with them so much, I knew about their work schedule and other issues they were dealing with. The Dems need to examine what happened to their campaign? How did Trump’s ragtag team beat our well oiled team in the GOTV?

    In another issue, I’ve been pretty despondant after this lose. Weirdly enough though, I am not that defeatist about the SCOTUS. It will go back to the 5-4 divide. At least for the LGBTQ issues, nothing will change now. Kennedy will vote with the 4 liberal judges. So, at least in that area, it’s not going to be a loss. The worry is when one of the liberal judges retires. Then we’re fucked. I am just hoping Trump consults his sister when it comes to appointment of judges. Let’s hope she has influence on him.

    I think I might’ve reached the bargaining stage of grief.

  41. 41.

    (((CassandraLeo)))

    November 10, 2016 at 3:57 am

    @Jonathan Holland Becnel: she “lost” PA and WI etc. because of Republican voter suppression as enabled by Shelby County, as pointed out above. Trump was actually telling the truth for once when he claimed the system was rigged. He was just lying about whom the rigging favoured.

  42. 42.

    Chris T.

    November 10, 2016 at 3:57 am

    @Mnemosyne: Hmm … I wonder if they would feel the same way if someone proposed to them: “I’ll shoot half of you guys, but I’ll shoot most of those guys!”

  43. 43.

    (((CassandraLeo)))

    November 10, 2016 at 3:59 am

    @Anya: I was contacted several times by the campaign to make sure I voted. I also helped register people for them. As far as I can tell, they had a pretty effective ground game; a lot of people simply weren’t allowed to vote.

  44. 44.

    Arclite

    November 10, 2016 at 4:05 am

    @Kathleen: Link?

  45. 45.

    EBT

    November 10, 2016 at 4:07 am

    @Jonathan Holland Becnel: A socialist jew had 0 chance of winning, but you knew that you trumpkin you.

  46. 46.

    Arclite

    November 10, 2016 at 4:09 am

    @Mnemosyne: I know a lot fewer voters went for Clinton this time around than for Obama. Can you provide links detailing the suppression?

    Also, that might count for some of it, but Clinton’s totals were 5-6M off. It seems unlikely that it accounts for 100% of the people who didn’t vote.

  47. 47.

    Anya

    November 10, 2016 at 4:12 am

    @waysel:

    Comey, voter suppression with a gutted VRA, Wikileaks, Fox News and all the MSM, and Bernie eroding trust in Democrats.

    I agree with this, except for Fox News part (it existed in 08 and 2012). The one thing I will add to that list is Trump’s smear of Bill Clinton, accusing him of rape depressed some of our voters. Some of them didn’t show up because they were so disgusted by the sleaze asspect of the campaign. They hated Trump but Bill going back to the White House was also a bridge too far for them. Trump knew what was coming so he started damaging Bill’s reputation from the start. And the media played that over and over before Trump’s crap came out. The Clinton campaign didn’t address it from the start.

    On that list, I am most angry at Sanders & Comey. Sanders did a lasting damage to eroding trust in democrats. You cannot imagine how many people, average voters who were using Sanders campaign talking points when giving reasons for their apathy. I heard that in Ohio, PA and even in my own circles.

    PS, I am typing in a semi dark so excuse me if the above is gibberish

  48. 48.

    Darkrose

    November 10, 2016 at 4:15 am

    @EBT: What Majorx4 said. Please be safe.

  49. 49.

    Anya

    November 10, 2016 at 4:19 am

    @(((CassandraLeo))): I heard from a lot of people who voted that the campaign contacted them several times. I don’t think they had as much of a grip as the Obama campaign. But I agree, voter supression played a huge part in NC, WI and Ohio. But also agree that media criminalizing the Clintons, wikileaks and the sleazy stuff had a huge impact of turning off voters.

  50. 50.

    Lit3Bolt

    November 10, 2016 at 4:26 am

    @Jonathan Holland Becnel:

    Well, it certainly means that the politics of over-promising, the act of voting as consumerist fantasy, and antiestablishmentism are here to stay for both parties.

    Which celebrity should the Democrats nominate, in your opinion?

  51. 51.

    EBT

    November 10, 2016 at 4:27 am

    @Jonathan Holland Becnel: You think white supremacists like jews? Were you born this way or did you drink paint as a child.

  52. 52.

    Lit3Bolt

    November 10, 2016 at 4:29 am

    @Jonathan Holland Becnel:

    Or that Russia and Wikileaks and the FBI meddled in an election.

    Still waiting to hear on how the Sanders campaign would be immune to this, or voting restrictions.

    You’re making claims and getting your pound of flesh. Are you building a coalition?

  53. 53.

    EBT

    November 10, 2016 at 4:31 am

    @Jonathan Holland Becnel: Cheering on your own account with a sock puppet works better when you remember to switch accounts. Still, born like this or paint smoothies. Inquiring minds want to know.

  54. 54.

    Kathleen

    November 10, 2016 at 4:32 am

    @Arclite:
    Can’t get link to work. It was on twitter feed of @mgranville1

  55. 55.

    Anya

    November 10, 2016 at 4:32 am

    @Jonathan Holland Becnel: I really don’t want to engage in any of this but what did Sanders do for the Democratic Party? Name one thing?

  56. 56.

    Anya

    November 10, 2016 at 4:39 am

    I still can’t sleep because this election affected me so hard. But I am finding ways of convincing myself that Trump will not change a lot on some issues. For exaple the Iran deal might be saved by Trump’s Putin link. The Iran deal is a multilateral deal which Russia is part off, if Putin is still in favor, I don’t think he’ll get rid of the deal. In any case if he does, he will be issolated from our allies. I don’t think Trump wants to be seen as a loser who’s rejected by the international community.

  57. 57.

    (((CassandraLeo)))

    November 10, 2016 at 4:48 am

    @Jonathan Holland Becnel: By adopting a more progressive policy platform than Obama’s? You have a strange definition of “stabbed in the back”.

  58. 58.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    November 10, 2016 at 5:00 am

    @opiejeanne: Camazotz.

  59. 59.

    Mai.naem.mobile

    November 10, 2016 at 5:10 am

    Clinton’s GOTV – All I can tell you is that I got a text at 730ish PM last Friday to go early vote. The in person early vote closed at 5pm. The early vote ballots were recommended to be mailed by the first or taken in by person. I did get robocalled over the weekend. I got nobody at the door. In 2012 I got Obama people at my door three times(that I caught.) I even told them not to come back to waste time on me because I would absolutely show up. Hell, I even told them my niece volunteered on the campaign and would never talk to me again if I didn’t vote for Obama and they still showed and called multiple times. Keep in mind AZ is a big Mormon state and Romney was pretty much going to take it.

  60. 60.

    Mai.naem.mobile

    November 10, 2016 at 5:11 am

    @(((CassandraLeo))): ignore Jonathan. He’s a troll.

  61. 61.

    Mai.naem.mobile

    November 10, 2016 at 5:21 am

    Also, I went to early vote with my mom on Fri. It was a 2.5hr wait. My mom for longer distances is in a wheelchair. I asked the polling lady if they were making accommodations for disabled people. She said no. I called the voter help line that the AZ Dems provided. The woman on the phone was not interested in fixing the problem for the future. She just kept on saying you can call curbside on 11/8 for your mom. We went round in circles about this. I told her I ll get my mom there on Tuesday but this needs to be fixed for future elections. She just did not give a crap.

  62. 62.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    November 10, 2016 at 5:53 am

    @Mai.naem.mobile: That’s appalling. We helped an elderly woman and her daughter navigate through the early voting lines here and moved the mother from chair to chair while her daughter held the place in line. No one in the line thought we were trying to get her jumped ahead of them. She simply sat until her daughter caught up to her, and by then we had scouted out another chair to move her to. I told one poll observer that I would happily move a chair from place to place myself to get her through the line if he would just let me cross the ropes to get the chair.

  63. 63.

    WaterGirl

    November 10, 2016 at 5:54 am

    It would be nice, while so many people here are hurting, if we didn’t spoil threads by conversing with trolls.

  64. 64.

    NorthLeft12

    November 10, 2016 at 7:25 am

    I seem to recall some blog commenters here wondering why Trump was wasting his time in Michigan and Wisconsin in the last week. I guess we are seeing now that they did have a strategy and did have some data that the Dems were vulnerable there as well as Ohio and Pennsylvania.

    I guess reminding auto workers that Dems stood up for their jobs in 2008/9 is ancient history. The real disconnect I find is with union workers. I just don’t understand how anyone in a union [who actually value working in a union] could vote for Republicans. Remember Republicans? Those guys who implement right to work laws and do everything they can to destroy unions?
    But of course unions are so demonized and marginalized in the US that Repubs see it as a net gain even if they lost the union vote completely.

    I grew up in Windsor, Ontario which is just across the river from Detroit, and like Detroit has watched the auto industry dwindle due to the movement of production to Mexico and non-union locations in the southern US. Conservatives never got elected in those days, but now they are having more success. Sad.

  65. 65.

    Jeffro

    November 10, 2016 at 7:34 am

    @Anya:

    I agree with this, except for Fox News part (it existed in 08 and 2012).

    Just a thought: rather than driving up Republican numbers or level of support, Fox News seems to help harden/reinforce the support that’s there.

  66. 66.

    sunny raines

    November 10, 2016 at 8:10 am

    Yesterday, we’d finally have broken the Woman Barrier, if not for the Republicans’ combination of voter suppression and gerrymandering (plus the assistance of a dishonestly partisan FBI director and a foreign autocrat)

    you left out the manipulative corporate media that sells every republican outrage aas no big deal and makes every no big deal Democratic action into an outrage.

  67. 67.

    OGLiberal

    November 10, 2016 at 8:17 am

    It wasn’t Comey or voter suppression. What happened was that a bunch of white dudes who voted for Obama in 2012 switched to Trump because they need a daddy and the more sexist, the better. This should have been offset by white women voting for Clinton because, well, how could they vote for that sexist monster? They were the undecideds, the ones that weren’t included in the plus 3-5 numbers we were seeing in the states we thought she couldn’t lose. In the end, they needed a daddy too and couldn’t bring themselves to vote for that screaming harpy. Exits show that white womem in Michigan voted for Obama in the same numbers in 2012 as they did for Clinton in 2016. Even before the pussy video that shouldn’t have been the case, but after? Women can be sexist too and in PA, WI and MI, I think they were.

    Nationally, the first woman presidential candidate got 1 percent less of the women vote but actually got 1 percent more of the white women vote than Obama. Trump got three percent less of the white women vote but most of those went to “other”, not Clinton. She underperformed Obama with blacks and Latinos, both genders, and Trump overperformed Romney. Black vote was down 1 percent this year and Latino vote up 1 so kind of a wash.

    But, at the end of the day the problem in this country is not voter ID laws or shortened early voting hours. It’s white people…there are too many of them and close to 60 percent are selfish, racist arsenecks or just so stupid that they vote for a guy because he had a reality TV show. And as we just saw, it’s white folks not in the South who are increasingly the problem. Clinton won 3 percent more white voters in NC than she did in MI and her white totals in WI and PA were the same as her white totals in NC. She got 3-4 percent more of the white vote in FL than she did in any of the three rust belt states she lost that she should have won. This isn’t a problem with Dixie. The Dems future is in NC, GA, AZ and maybe even TX. Eff the Rust Belt…give it up now and start working on these states. If you can’t win the Rust Belt with Trump has the opposing candidate, how are going to win them with a halfway sane GOP candidate?

    I’m also worried about the Dem bench, as in, it doesn’t exist. Thought we have 8 years to build it…not the case now.

    I’m still in shock and my wife and i have discussed how we can’t explain the feeling we have right now. It’s not anger…it’s more defeat and despair. My fellow white Americans failed us. F**k them.

  68. 68.

    OGLiberal

    November 10, 2016 at 8:22 am

    @sunny raines: We’d have broken the woman barrier if more woman had voted for Hillary this year than they did for Obama in 2012. They didn’t.

  69. 69.

    Barbara

    November 10, 2016 at 8:49 am

    @BillinGlendaleCA: Yes, but Pennsylvania never implemented that ID provision. Voter ID did not make Pennsylvania go red. Wisconsin is the state most likely to have been affected by voter ID restrictions.

  70. 70.

    Barbara

    November 10, 2016 at 8:54 am

    @Arclite: I think this is right. Clinton was just the last person to be able to credibly respond to a direct hit based on trade agreements. What is bitterly disappointing, however, is that I doubt if Trump has the least idea of how he could or would conceivably make things better for voters in less densely populated areas, some of which count as rural, but many of which are small cities like Reading, PA that used to be industrial hubs but are no more.

  71. 71.

    OGLiberal

    November 10, 2016 at 8:54 am

    @Arclite: I think third party hurt a lot this yeae, though nobody seems to want to admit it. In WI, MI, FL and PA Clinton lost by 1 percent or less. In each, the Johnson-Stein combo got 3-4 percent. In all, third paties had a higher percentage of votes this year than in 2000. I think most of those folks were of the “both are terrible” belief. But my guess is if forced to pick one or the other, most would have gone Clinton. Stein is a narcissistic lunatic but if Johnson has done the honorable thing and dropped out, like i think Bill Weld wanted him to do, we’d have president-elect Clinton.

    And I’m sure but can somebody please explain to me without bringing up voter suppression or Comey or the media how 59.7 million Americans could vote for an obvious buffon who is erratic, tempermental, incurious, unknowledgeable, sexist, racist and just unfit to hold about any job where he doesn’t own the businesd. Says a lot about our neighbors, huh?…because a lot of them voted for that.

  72. 72.

    John

    November 10, 2016 at 9:23 am

    @OGLiberal: There are a number of reasons that people voted for Trump. First, he won all of the racists and religious bigots. That includes a not insignificant number of blacks and hispanics more afraid of “radical Islam” and LGBTQ rights than of the far more tangible and real threat posed by Trump himself. Second, he won all of the misogynist vote. Again that includes a not insignificant number of minority voters who would rather bear the risks of a Trump presidency than let a woman run things. A not insignificant number of very stupid voters chose Trump exclusively because he is a television celebrity and they were actually voting for the fake character he played on The Apprentice. A lot of Trump voters actually believe the myriad contradictory and implausible promises he has made, despite his history of lying to everyone about anything. Ignorance, fear, and hatred, combined with false hope and wishful thinking, are what led us to this disaster.

  73. 73.

    OGLiberal

    November 10, 2016 at 9:25 am

    @Barbara: In 2012 Romney won Berks County by 1 percent. This year Trump won it by 10. I live and vote in NJ but spend a lot of time in Lackawanna county – we have a vacation trailer there. Was confident Clinton would win there. And she did, but only with 50 percent and by about 4 percent. Obama won it with 63 percent and by 27 percent. There are virtually no minorities in the county and it’s mix of rural and urban (Scranton and the suburbs). So I doubt this huge swing was due to racism. It’s a sad county with not much of anything in the way of industry outside of tourism and warehouse distribution centers. (Where the trucks go to drop off/pick up stuff and bring it to stores) This used to be a booming coal region but that died many years ago…like in the 50s/early 60s. And nothing replaced it. So I don’t see how NAFTA or TPP would have relevance here. This is Casey country, Biden country, Clinton’s dad was from here. So why the swing. Did Trump make them feel free to vote their inner racism? Are we just a lot more sexist than we think, perhaps more sexist than racist. Both candidates paid a lot of attention to the area so not like Trump was camped out here while Clinton ignored it. What gives and what is wrong with white people that they swing 13 points when voting for a white woman with roots in the region v. a black dude from Hawaii during tougher economic times?

  74. 74.

    John

    November 10, 2016 at 9:33 am

    Also, I just want to post my prediction for the events that will unfold in the coming months. First, Trump will lose his Trump University case. On January 2, the new Congress will be sworn in. By the following week, one committee or another will begin hearings to investigate Trump’s involvement in defrauding investors. This investigation will quickly expand to cover Trump’s past involvement with organized crime elements. The committee will pass on an impeachment recommendation which will be adopted by the full House and will be considered no later than March. Trump will be impeached in April or May with many Democrats in support and the trial will commence in the Senate by June. Because Trump is a giant narcissist, he will refuse to resign and he will be removed from office, again with significant Democratic support, by the Fourth of July. Then the Republicans will get their dream president, Mike Pence.

  75. 75.

    John

    November 10, 2016 at 9:43 am

    @OGLiberal Yes, we are a LOT more sexist as a society in general than most people think. It is acceptable to argue in our public sphere that the demonstrable pay gap between equally qualified men and women is justified. Can you imagine anyone arguing that it’s okay to pay someone less for the same work based on the color of their skin? Even on Fox News, that person would be pilloried. A huge chunk of men AND women have a problem with the idea of a woman being in charge. A huge part of that is based on paternalistic religious belief. Another large part is based on cultural machismo. For many men, their self-image is held together by their absolute knowledge that they are better than any woman. For some working and lower class men, this knowledge is the only thing that gives them any comfort.

  76. 76.

    OGLiberal

    November 10, 2016 at 10:00 am

    @John: Agree with all. One thing not mentioned in your response is women. You would think that with an obvious, blatant, vocal and proud misogynist running for office, they would vote in higher numbers for Clinton. In 2008, the guy who beat the woman who was to break the glass ceiling and running again a war hero with a brown-skinned daughter and a woman running mate got 56% of the women vote, 53% of the white women vote, 96 percent of the black women vote and 68 percent of the Latino women vote. In 2012 that same guy, running against a decent won 55% of the women vote, 42% if the white women vote, 96% of the black women vote and 76% of the Latino women vote. In 2016 Clinton won 54% of the women vote, 43% of the white woman vote, 94% of the black woman vote, and 68% of the Latino women vote. Trump did do worse than McCain and Romney with the women vote, by 1 and 2 pts, respectively. But with the first women major party candidate running against a pig, shouldn’t he have done much worse and should’t she have done better than Obama? The difference in 2016 was that 4% of women went third party but shouldn’t she have won enough women to overcome that. Nobody was expecting her to improve much with AA or Latino women – she had them already. It was the white women who were supposed to be so offended by this pig that they just couldn’t vote for him and the fear of him being president would lead them not to stay at home or vote third party but to vote for the only woman who could stop him.

    Looks like they didn’t. Thanks. Have fun explaining this dude to your kids, white moms. Even if just half of you voted for Clinton we wouldn’t be in this position. But guess that’s what you wanted so, enjoy.

    PS – Yeah, she lost ground with black and Latino women, 8% of whom voted third party. But they represented 13% of the electorate. White women represented the single largest chunk of the electorate at 37%.

  77. 77.

    Hoodie

    November 10, 2016 at 10:27 am

    @OGLiberal: Seems to me that a lot of the factors people have identified (e.g, voter suppression, third parties) are mostly marginal effects. I guess in the aggregate they could add up, but I still get back to the fact that this race should not have even been close. Trump is probably the singularly least qualified presidential candidate we’ve had in recent memory. I remember people guffawing when Ronald Reagan got elected, but he at least had been governor of California and a long-time fixture in the GOP.

    The polls really tell the story plainly; non-college-educated white voters overwhelmingly went for Trump. College can certainly make one a more informed citizen, but attendance is not per se indicative of a greater ability to grasp issues. I know a not insignificant number of college educated voters who went for Trump, and not attending college doesn’t make you stupid. I think it may be more important as a social barrier. Currently going through the college experience with my own kids, it’s become increasingly apparent to me that it is a core element of the middle class and upper middle class identity. Kids obsess over which college they’ll attend because there is so much status associated with it. Even people who do not attend college develop fixations about things associated with college, e.g., football and basketball. Lack of college tends to exclude people from being in on things, and thus feeds resentment arising from feeling left behind, especially if you’re white.

  78. 78.

    Pogonip

    November 10, 2016 at 10:35 am

    @EBT: You should feel (reasonably) safe at home if nowhere else. Can you afford to move?

    I trained with a guy who studied aikido for 7 years (that was the only dojo in his town!). It will take 5-10 years, depending on how much time you have to practice, to get to where it’s practical for self-defense. Aikido and aikijutsu are long-term commitments. And of course neither is much good against a guy with a gun. I’d suggest a small “purse pistol,” if legal in your jurisdiction, and a can of bear spray if not. Good luck!

  79. 79.

    Gavin

    November 10, 2016 at 10:43 am

    <10% of Trump voters were racist. The majority of them were simply done with neoliberal economic policies of the elites that wrecked their lives.

    The canary in the coal mine? My own state's election of Scott Brown.. the votes for him correlated nearly perfectly with the neighborhoods hit hardest by the foreclosure disaster. Not un-ironically, Brown was the end of Obama's veto-proof majority in the Senate, and the time until then represented Obama pivoting from his campaign promises and once again being 100% establishment — not prosecuting bankers, Geithner as T secretary, etc. The change people wanted was economic, not race.

    And that's exactly what drove people to Trump… Clinton's abject failure to represent the actual economic will of the people. I'm from Ohio — what do you think was talked about? Yep, the economy.. and nothing else. Clinton supports all the trade deals that continue to hollow out the country — and so REGARDLESS of what else she stands for, she loses on that and on that alone.

    http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=17643
    This is correct. D establishment is screaming because its coalition since Bill of: Big Finance plus Identity Politics is now revealed for the sham it always has been……. because it delivers zero benefit for actual workers.

    The problem? The money in the Democratic party now makes it next to impossible to devise populist policies that would appeal to the voters who voted Trump in this election. Not shocking – the globalist corporate Wall Street Dems are actually anti-labor. Also, anything appears to be justifiable to avoid concluding that rigging the primaries was bad….

    It's a mistake to conclude that Trump will never succeed —- simply on the economic issue alone, he could actually do good. I privately asked the dozen union workers I saw outside of meetings at my job on 11/9 who they voted for. Union prez promoted Clinton, and to a man they voted Trump. For the economic reason alone. Yeah yeah, small sample size, I know.

    I am very sympathetic to what people who voted for Hillary ASSUME/BELIEVE/THINK they were voting for. But strip-mining the country for corporations is just not an option moving forward. Yelling about all the horrible people is more cathartic and satisfying emotionally than looking at the issues critically and coming up with plans to actually win more voters.

    How did blacks and Latinos actually vote MORE for Trump than for 2012 Romney? Note that in no paper has there yet been a story about the extreme difficulty of getting an reliablesample for use in a poll. [EG, will you use land lines, how will you know people are telling you the truth, etc]

    Abandoning the working class by the Clinton Dems in favor of the coalition of the 10% and identity-focused groups won’t work in the long term, particularly since Bubba kicked not only the white working class but also the Blacks with his crime and welfare policies. Add 0bama’s record numbers of deportations of Latinos.. and these chickens came home to roost this election.

  80. 80.

    OGLiberal

    November 10, 2016 at 10:45 am

    More on demographics of this election here:

    http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/09/politics/clinton-votes-african-americans-latinos-women-white-voters/

    From and Obama coalition perspective she lost 5% of the black vote but Trump only got 1% more than Romney. She lost 6% of the Latino vote but Trump only did 2% better than Romney. With women she did 1% worse than Obama in 2012 but Trump actually did 2% worse than Romney. She lost 5% of the young vote but Trump got the same as Romney.

    Third party, folks. It wasn’t people fleeing to Trump or voting in smaller percentages – women and blacks were 1% percentage point below 2012, Latinos were 1% up and young voters remained the same. It was that people went third party instead of Clinton. However, as I argued above, there should have been more more repulsed at Trump that it would overcome any percentage of them that voted third party. And GOTV with Latinos should have been better than to only increase their percentage of the electorate by 1%, especially given what this guy was saying about them.

  81. 81.

    Mnemosyne

    November 10, 2016 at 10:50 am

    @Barbara:

    Pennsylvania’s Voter ID law was supposed to not be enforced because a judge had stayed it, but poll workers demanded it anyway. It may not have been legal for PA poll workers to turn people away for not having ID, but it’s too late now.

  82. 82.

    Mnemosyne

    November 10, 2016 at 10:58 am

    @Gavin:

    <10% of Trump voters were racist. The majority of them were simply done with neoliberal economic policies of the elites that wrecked their lives.

    The majority of Trump voters think President Obama is a secret Muslim. In Michigan, my friend’s brother says that his friends voted for Trump because they’re angry at Obama and Hillary for supporting Black Lives Matter.

    But I’m sure they’re only angry about Black Lives Matter because they’re so economically insecure …

  83. 83.

    Gavin

    November 10, 2016 at 11:20 am

    @Mnemosyne:

    Cmon.. please stop with the strawmen, that’s just not helpful. Doubling down on identity politics drives people away even if it feels better to the person saying it. Also, too.. my friend’s brother’s friend says you’re wrong.. so there’s that!

    The point of this conversation should [eventually] be about crafting both policies AND message that is a broad enough coalition.. because the reality is that the D party as currently constructed simply doesn’t get the job done.

  84. 84.

    OGLiberal

    November 10, 2016 at 11:28 am

    @Hoodie: Certainly don’t associated a college degree with smarts or logic or common sense. And I also think that it doesn’t necessarily indicate that you are poor or working class or somehow economically “anxious”. I think what college does is it exposes you to other races, religions, people not from your hometown, etc. If you don’t have that it’s easier to hold on to your prejudices or, if not blatantly racist, be scared of the unknown others. My hometown was very, very, very white and working class. Most of the folks had parents or grandparents with roots in places like Hell’s Kitchen or Newark or Jersey City – before “those people” came in and ruined them and they had to leave. A lot of that got passed down. My parents didn’t have those roots so that was never passed down to me. But most of the folks who got out, especially those who went to college (which wasn’t many), put that all behind them. Even the ones who went back after college saw things differently. Most of those who stayed held on to their prejudices and fears, even if most didn’t go around saying the n-word.

    Many of the Trump high-school only voters were flat out racists. But some were just folks who were scared of the other because their only exposure to the other is watching Fox news hyperventilate about scare BLM protestors. Trump tapped into those fears and, in fact, legitimized them, to the point that some white folks.

    However, as for why this race was lost by Clinton, there were fewer white voters this year (by 2 percent) and while she got 2% less than Obama did in 2012, Trump got 1 percent less than Romney. So at a national level, not much of a difference.

    States tell a different story. Here’s the difference in the white vote gap between 2012 and 2016 in key states – the number represents how much bigger that gap was between white voters for Clinton v. Trump as compared to the white voter gap between Obama and Romney. (in both years, the Dem lost whites by a decent amount – sometimes a lot – in each state, but Obama didn’t lose as bad)

    PA: +1
    MI: +10
    WI: +8
    FL: +8
    NC: -7

    So in MI, WI and FL there was a significant drop in the white vote for Hillary. In NC she actually did better than Obama but and also did +7 better with women. But she was -11 with voters 18-29, -9 with black voters and -17 with Latino voters. Trump got 4 percent more black voters in NC and 7% more Latino voters. PA is a bit difficult to figure out. She did take a big hit with the 12-29 voters there. Obama won them by +28 v. Romney while Clinton only got +9 v. Trump. 5% of them when third party but I can see exactly where they all came from because she only did slight worse than Obama with whites in PA. She did take a hit with Latinos in PA, getting 6% less than Obama and Trump getting 4% more than Obama and “other” getting 2% more in 2016 v. 2012.

    So in key states, except PA and NC (where it wasn’t close, regardless), it was white folks.

  85. 85.

    Pogonip

    November 10, 2016 at 11:43 am

    @Gavin: One would hope Democrats are rethinking the wisdom of identity politics, if only from a practical level: even if all the whites with no college ARE evil puppy-kicking nun-raping baby-candy-stealers, there are an awful lot of them… An awful lot of votes…

    Not to mention that when identity politics takes over it can lead to Rwanda or Bosnia.

  86. 86.

    EBT

    November 10, 2016 at 2:06 pm

    @Pogonip: Not only can I not afford to move, once Ryan and McConnell kill the social safety net I can’t afford rent.

  87. 87.

    tones

    November 11, 2016 at 8:08 pm

    @OGLiberal: they voted for Bush for the same exact reasons.

  88. 88.

    Devin Baty

    November 11, 2016 at 9:30 pm

    100% of the elections I’ve voted in have been undemocratic, but 40% of the results have not reflected the popular vote.

    I’m in favor of pursuing all options to elminate the Electoral College, but right now what appeals most to me is ballot initiatives giving voters the say over their states joining the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact before the 2020 election.

    This of course would require a massive effort, in my state of Ohio it would require gathering over 180,000 signatures, with a specific threshold in at least 44 of 88 counties. My feeling is that to accomplish this across multiple states the path of least resistance is to partner with a gruop with a long reach.

    I’ve started a petition on MoveOn.org asking MoveOn.org spearhead the effort. Please consider signing. http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/employ-the-power-of-moveonor

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