1. The Compensatory" Narrative
I have noticed that the leftist pundits when they strive to explain" Hillary Clintons defeat they rush themselves to add: and Clinton by the way won the popular vote." This should be regarded psychologically as a compensatory reaction to her shameful and not quite narrow-margin defeat. Unexpected? Sure if you think about: the whole Democratic Party the GOP NeverTrumpers the Mainstream Media the confused independents and most of the international community (who were all living in their own parallel realities fed by a vicious MSM). Logical? Of course if you count in: the silent majority" (who has chosen to screw up the pollsters biased questions and vote to save this nation) the disgusted ones (who decided to stay home or vote for the third parties) and a few others of us the non-MSM commentators (who have chosen not to be muzzled by the Establishment elite and its propaganda arm the same MSM).
Procedurally on December 19 2016 (that is on the Monday following the second Wednesday in December of that year" according to the U.S. Constitution Article Two Section 1 Clause 4) the chosen 538 electors of the Electoral College (which is a process not a place) met in their state capitals in order to vote for president.
On January 6 2017 (according to the U.S. Code Title 3 Chapter 1 Article 15) the U.S. Congress met to approve the Electoral College vote. In order to become a U.S. president any presidential candidate needs a minimum of 270 electoral votes (out of the total of 538) in order to be elected president.
The compensatory" narrative infers two premise situations in which Donald Trump can NOT or should NOT become the 45th president of the United States.
2. The Faithless Electors"
I call this the latent or soft version" of the popular vote" issue according to which Trump cannot become president. It was argued that theoretically Hillary Clinton would still get to the magic number of 270 electors if she could get enough faithless electors" (who chose either to abstain from voting or to vote their conscience" and ignore the will of the voters they represent).
One could imagine that encouraged by the results of the current popular vote" some electors might have decided to do just that.
In reality this did not happen because:
(a) there werent enough faithless electors" to make up the difference between the current 290 electoral votes won by Trump and the 228 won by Clinton. She needed a lot of Republican faithless electors" to turn the table in her favor.
(b) only 21 states out of 50 allow faithless electors" to cast their vote (the rest of 29 states penalize them if they chose to do so).
(c) even if a sufficient number of faithless electors" could have changed radically the situation at that moment (and there wasnt any precedent in which they ever swung an election) the pre- and post-January 20 2017 Republican controlled U.S. Congress would have voted to void these votes.
3. Questioning the Fairness of the Electoral College System
I call this the overt or hard version" of the popular vote" issue according to which Trump should not become president. The Founding Fathers created the Electoral College in order to avoid the mob rule" of some populous states like California New York and Texas against the rest of the country. The current system favors the Republicans who are in control of more numerous but less populous states while the Democrats dominate the less numerous but more populous states.
By keep repeating the popular vote" syntagm the liberal pundits and their followers seem to suggest that the Electoral College should be abolished. They do not say this verbatim but the anti-Trump rioters in several American cities appear to fight exactly for that. Of course the issue is not new just ask Al Gore about it. Trump himself blasted this system by tweeting the electoral college is a disaster for a democracy" when Mitt Romney lost the elections in 2012.
The liberal left is pushing the issue even further suggesting through social media that states like California should secede.
A similar movement appears to be taking place in Oregon too.
The U.S. Constitution is silent on the issue of state secession.
In 1860 eleven states attempted to secede from the Union and failed in a loss of the Civil War. In 1863 president Abraham Lincoln approved West Virginia secession" from Virginia. In 1869 the Supreme Court ruled in Texas v. White that individual states could not secede from the Union except through revolution or through consent of the States."
4. The Reductio ad absurdum Argument
Lets put all these aside and pretend for the sake of argument that Hillary Clinton wins by the popular vote" and there is no Electoral College. Here I am giving all the die-hard Democrats this. What would have happened next?
A Confederate North-Eastern States of America" rebellion would have pushed for secession.
There could have been 11 rebel states" (ironic isnt it?) from the southern" Maryland up to the northern" Maine (including DC and Virginia but not New York). All of them small. All of them controlled by Democrats. All of them constantly complaining for their interests being crassly ignored by the Republican Union." And all of them ending up taking their 75 electoral votes with them; see the MAP.
Is this the scenario the Left is prepared to pursue? And if the answer is affirmative then I can only end with Clint Eastwoods catchphrase: Go ahead make my day!"
NOTE - A version of the article was published previously in MEDIUM.
Tiberiu Dianu has published several books and a host of articles in law politics and post-communist societies. He currently lives and works in Washington DC and can be followed on MEDIUM.
*****
1. The Compensatory" Narrative
I have noticed that the leftist pundits when they strive to explain" Hillary Clintons defeat they rush themselves to add: and Clinton by the way won the popular vote." This should be regarded psychologically as a compensatory reaction to her shameful and not quite narrow-margin defeat. Unexpected? Sure if you think about: the whole Democratic Party the GOP NeverTrumpers the Mainstream Media the confused independents and most of the international community (who were all living in their own parallel realities fed by a vicious MSM). Logical? Of course if you count in: the silent majority" (who has chosen to screw up the pollsters biased questions and vote to save this nation) the disgusted ones (who decided to stay home or vote for the third parties) and a few others of us the non-MSM commentators (who have chosen not to be muzzled by the Establishment elite and its propaganda arm the same MSM).
Procedurally on December 19 2016 (that is on the Monday following the second Wednesday in December of that year" according to the U.S. Constitution Article Two Section 1 Clause 4) the chosen 538 electors of the Electoral College (which is a process not a place) met in their state capitals in order to vote for president.
On January 6 2017 (according to the U.S. Code Title 3 Chapter 1 Article 15) the U.S. Congress met to approve the Electoral College vote. In order to become a U.S. president any presidential candidate needs a minimum of 270 electoral votes (out of the total of 538) in order to be elected president.
The compensatory" narrative infers two premise situations in which Donald Trump can NOT or should NOT become the 45th president of the United States.
2. The Faithless Electors"
I call this the latent or soft version" of the popular vote" issue according to which Trump cannot become president. It was argued that theoretically Hillary Clinton would still get to the magic number of 270 electors if she could get enough faithless electors" (who chose either to abstain from voting or to vote their conscience" and ignore the will of the voters they represent).
One could imagine that encouraged by the results of the current popular vote" some electors might have decided to do just that.
In reality this did not happen because:
(a) there werent enough faithless electors" to make up the difference between the current 290 electoral votes won by Trump and the 228 won by Clinton. She needed a lot of Republican faithless electors" to turn the table in her favor.
(b) only 21 states out of 50 allow faithless electors" to cast their vote (the rest of 29 states penalize them if they chose to do so).
(c) even if a sufficient number of faithless electors" could have changed radically the situation at that moment (and there wasnt any precedent in which they ever swung an election) the pre- and post-January 20 2017 Republican controlled U.S. Congress would have voted to void these votes.
3. Questioning the Fairness of the Electoral College System
I call this the overt or hard version" of the popular vote" issue according to which Trump should not become president. The Founding Fathers created the Electoral College in order to avoid the mob rule" of some populous states like California New York and Texas against the rest of the country. The current system favors the Republicans who are in control of more numerous but less populous states while the Democrats dominate the less numerous but more populous states.
By keep repeating the popular vote" syntagm the liberal pundits and their followers seem to suggest that the Electoral College should be abolished. They do not say this verbatim but the anti-Trump rioters in several American cities appear to fight exactly for that. Of course the issue is not new just ask Al Gore about it. Trump himself blasted this system by tweeting the electoral college is a disaster for a democracy" when Mitt Romney lost the elections in 2012.
The liberal left is pushing the issue even further suggesting through social media that states like California should secede.
A similar movement appears to be taking place in Oregon too.
The U.S. Constitution is silent on the issue of state secession.
In 1860 eleven states attempted to secede from the Union and failed in a loss of the Civil War. In 1863 president Abraham Lincoln approved West Virginia secession" from Virginia. In 1869 the Supreme Court ruled in Texas v. White that individual states could not secede from the Union except through revolution or through consent of the States."
4. The Reductio ad absurdum Argument
Lets put all these aside and pretend for the sake of argument that Hillary Clinton wins by the popular vote" and there is no Electoral College. Here I am giving all the die-hard Democrats this. What would have happened next?
A Confederate North-Eastern States of America" rebellion would have pushed for secession.
There could have been 11 rebel states" (ironic isnt it?) from the southern" Maryland up to the northern" Maine (including DC and Virginia but not New York). All of them small. All of them controlled by Democrats. All of them constantly complaining for their interests being crassly ignored by the Republican Union." And all of them ending up taking their 75 electoral votes with them; see the MAP.
Is this the scenario the Left is prepared to pursue? And if the answer is affirmative then I can only end with Clint Eastwoods catchphrase: Go ahead make my day!"
NOTE - A version of the article was published previously in MEDIUM.
Tiberiu Dianu has published several books and a host of articles in law politics and post-communist societies. He currently lives and works in Washington DC and can be followed on MEDIUM.
*****
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