Andrew Prokop Against The Electoral College Gambit To Stop Trump
Some good points, some really bad points. As for the latter: some faithless electors have had racist motives! Ergo we shouldn't encourage electors to be faithless! Oh, Vox...you can't just throw in the magic r-word any old where... As for the former: as others have noted, it really isn't clear how throwing the election to the House will help. House Republicans are...well...you know what they're like.
I agree that there is a price to be paid if this tactic is tried. But here's the risk of not trying: a President Donald Trump facing off against Vladimir Putin and an expansionist Russia. Bush taught us that the President matters. No Bush, no Iraq. It really is that simple. And, frighteningly: Trump is no Bush. The most important thing about Trump is: we can't have anything like certainty that he won't destroy the world. That's something that should be sending very single one of us to the moral and political equivalent of DefCon 1, IMO.
I agree that there is a price to be paid if this tactic is tried. But here's the risk of not trying: a President Donald Trump facing off against Vladimir Putin and an expansionist Russia. Bush taught us that the President matters. No Bush, no Iraq. It really is that simple. And, frighteningly: Trump is no Bush. The most important thing about Trump is: we can't have anything like certainty that he won't destroy the world. That's something that should be sending very single one of us to the moral and political equivalent of DefCon 1, IMO.
posted by Winston Smith at
8:38 AM
4 Comments:
It's not going to happen.
The Democrats are taking a huge high road by joining in such acceptance and support of trump, as far as I can tell. I think that should be lauded, actually. I wish the public would recognize the extreme difference being manifested between the two parties.
Whereas trump was threatening to consider the election fraudulent if he lost, the Democrats have thrown absolutely no such tantrum. None, as far as I can tell, has even hinted at it. Clinton, Obama, and even senators, have encouraged his support and the acceptance of these results explicitly on the basis of trust in our Democratic process.
Unfortunately, the efficacy Electoral College rested on the presumption that the officials constituting the College would be individually responsible, honest people who were not merely figurehead puppets of the system. That is not how it has played out.
We're stuck with trump, I'm afraid, and the only hope is that he doesn't go completely insane. He has already walked back a bunch of his words by lauding Clinton and Obama quite strongly in ways that his supporters have got to be angered about. I actually expect he won't do many of the things he promised to do (such as elect that special prosecutor and send Clinton to jail), and I am interested to see how his base reacts to the discovery that he has duped them all just as those politicians before him against which they railed so strongly with his election.
It'll be interesting. He could actually turn the crazies towards moderation if he so chooses, and he may do that if not only for the practical benefits which would incline him towards success.
Remember: if his only aim is self-aggrandizement (and it seems very strongly that it is), he may well turn out to be a decent President who does popular things without regard to party affiliation, as he has shown a lot of disregard to that thus far.
He claimed it before, and I think it's probably true, that he was putting on a show for the election which he intended to drop when he gained office. The interesting part will be how his conned base will react.
I could be wrong, of course, and he could just go completely off the hinge, but until I see it, I doubt it for some reason. I wouldn't expect someone on that trajectory to immediately have walked back his burning critiques of Clinton and Obama with his first words upon becoming the President elect.
"The Democrats are taking a huge high road by joining in such acceptance and support of trump, as far as I can tell. I think that should be lauded, actually. I wish the public would recognize the extreme difference being manifested between the two parties."
Don't hold your breath for that, Mystic. The media is hard-wired with 'both sides do it'.
So on the one side we have Al Gore basically defying a large part of his party by conceding and then certifying the 2000 election in the Senate; the Dems falling in line behind Bush after 9/11 (even though that was a disaster at least partially of his own making); and now Obama and Hillary, in statesman-like fashion, wishing Trump well and hoping he succeeds, while calling for a smooth and peaceful transition of power.
On the other hand we had the Brooks Brothers riot; McConnell and company declaring, on the verge of basically a second Great Depression, that their primary concern was making Obama a one-term president; GOP governors and statehouses putting up roadblock after roadblock to minority voting; and the congressional GOP discarding just about every norm and practice that had been developed for the smooth functioning of government.
And by the way, the GOP has just been rewarded for all of those scorched earth tactics.
I have some policy differences with the Democrats, but they can at least definitely be described as a functioning political party. But the GOP has become, as Mike Lofgren said, an apocalyptic doomsday cult.
And it seems impossible to get that into the MSM bloodstream. And either the median American doesn't have the time or inclination to discover it himself, or just doesn't care.
I agree with LC on this.
Well, I agree with tM, too...in the sense that I admit that it's admirable that the Dems are like they are.
But I also think they're bringing a peace-pipe to a gunfight. Admirable...but not smart.
To combat the nihilistic doomsday cult, it's gonna take something else.
I don't think there's any disagreement actually Winston. I just read Mystic's comment as hopeful about what will happen, and crediting the Dems with behaving honorably. Just expressing my thoughts about how likely that is, given present-day dynamics.
Which, by the way, I admire them for doing, and think they should do even if they don't get any *credit* for it.
And I do think they need to get tougher, but not quite sure how they should do that. Any ideas?
I believe the country functions best with a center-left party and center-right party (given the constraint of a two-party system). We kind of have the center-left party right now (as long as they hold off the PCs), along with a carnival freak show on the other side.
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