Sour grapes over electoral college win by Trump

[Don Schneider]

[The following is my email response to someone who made a public plea for Trump electors to defect because Clinton won the popular vote. I don’t oppose abolishing the electoral college, but not retroactively!]

Regarding your call for presidential electors to defect from President-elect Trump, you left something important out of your analysis. I read a tweet by Trump recently that I must confess actually makes sense and has merit. In regard to the sour grapes about his losing the popular vote, both candidates knew the rules going in and both predicated their campaign strategies accordingly. If it had been a popular vote wins the election scenario, then Trump would have spent money and time in California and New York in the hope of reducing his deficit there. As it was, he had no chance whatsoever to win either so it made no sense to invest his time and money in them. Of course, Clinton would have spent more time and money in states like Texas, Missouri and Georgia. The upshot is that it can’t be actually determined who would have won if it were strictly a popular vote scenario from the beginning.

You are in effect calling for the rules to be changed after the game is over. I would have expected a man in your position to have a tad more integrity.

Regarding your invoking Alexander Hamilton in support of your views, I love how liberals now cling to Hamilton. The only thing that saved Mr. (“the cream will rise to the top”) Hamilton--the aristocratic pretender extraordinaire fretting over the political wisdom of us deplorable masses--from being knocked off the sawbuck in favor of the politically correct Harriet Tubman by Jack Lew was the unlikely success of the rap ‘n’ roll Broadway musical. A little politically correct rhymin', jivin' musical repertoire and voila! instant rehabilitation for this founding father (er, "person"?) oppressor of the downtrodden. Aaron Burr, eat your heart out!

[Camo]

Completely agreed with everything other than the last paragraph. I hate Trump as much as anyone and would be happy to see him impeached but he did win the election under the rules they've operated under for a long time, and Hilary supporters can't deny their hypocrisy here as they'd fully accept the result if she had just won the electoral college, same to Trump's supporters who would be kicking up a storm if he won the popular vote and lost the election. And as you pointed out the whole election hinged on the electoral college so that's how both sides campaigned, things would have been different if it was just the popular vote. Personally i think Trumps best strategy in that scenario would be to try and get a bigger turnout in the states that do support him rather than court places like Cali and NY, same with Hilary and the states you mentioned. I'm probably totally wrong there though.

[Yoda]

Yup, he won under the rules. No issue with that.

However, it's silly to pretend (not that you are) an electoral college win is indicative of general support for his policies the way a popular vote victory would be. And the fact that he keeps talking about it suggests that, as with most things, he's pretty sensitive about this.

[Camo]

Yup, he won under the rules. No issue with that.

However, it's silly to pretend (not that you are) an electoral college win is indicative of general support for his policies the way a popular vote victory would be. And the fact that he keeps talking about it suggests that, as with most things, he's pretty sensitive about this.

Do you support the Electoral College, Yoda? I remember this conversation being had here just after he was elected but i can't remember if you did or not and was just wondering.

[Don Schneider]

Yup, he won under the rules. No issue with that.

However, it's silly to pretend (not that you are) an electoral college win is indicative of general support for his policies the way a popular vote victory would be. And the fact that he keeps talking about it suggests that, as with most things, he's pretty sensitive about this.

The entire point of my post was that the reason why the present system works to the advantage of the GOP is the current political situation. Since the Dems have a lock on California, New York and Illinois, that means that Republican candidates for president don’t campaign in those states as such would be counterproductive even if such would increase their popular vote. This would divert time and resources from states in which the Republicans are competitive. Additionally, the Trump vote in these large states might well have been suppressed as Trump voters knew that they would be casting losing votes even if Trump won the national election (which is one reason I favor going to a popular vote system despite reservations on other counts; i.e., this, along with the U.S. Senate, are just about the last vestiges of the now virtual fiction that we are a union of sovereign states as our nation’s very name would indicate).

[Yoda]

Do you support the Electoral College, Yoda? I remember this conversation being had here just after he was elected but i can't remember if you did or not and was just wondering.
Yeah, I think it's still a good idea. Or at least, not a ridiculous idea. The United States' diversity is a big part of its strength, and maintaining that diversity means that the Federal government has to preside over a lot of very disparate interests, so it's reasonable to have some checks that incentivize broad geographical support, as opposed to really concentrated support in just one type of state/city.

The entire point of my post was that the reason why the present system works to the advantage of the GOP is the current political situation. Since the Dems have a lock on California, New York and Illinois, that means that Republican candidates for president don’t campaign in those states as such would be counterproductive even if such would increase their popular vote.
Yeah, this is something Trump said afterwards, too, implying he would/could have won if the popular vote were a prerequisite for victory. I don't know if I believe that. I suppose it would be closer, but enough to counteract a 3 million vote deficit? Seems unlikely, to me. After all, it works both ways: Dems don't bother to campaign in their strongholds, either, even though they could theoretically run up the score even higher.

Regardless, it's a counterfactual. All we can really say is that, yes, he won fair and square, but no, he can't use the electoral college to claim broad popular support for his policies.

[Camo]

You kinda died mid-sentence there Yoda :laugh: It's cool, i got my answer.

[Yoda]

Sorry, submitted the post before I was done by accident. Went back and edited.

[Don Schneider]

Yeah, this is something Trump said afterwards, too, implying he would/could have won if the popular vote were a prerequisite for victory. I don't know if I believe that. I suppose it would be closer, but enough to counteract a 3 million vote deficit? Seems unlikely, to me. After all, it works both ways: Dems don't bother to campaign in their strongholds, either, even though they could theoretically run up the score even higher.



You might be wrong about that. According to this article from Politico—one of the post-election postmortem pieces that deal with why Clinton lost, this one focusing on the state of Michigan—states that (seemingly inexplicably and most ironically!) the Clinton campaign was actually concerned that while Clinton would win the electoral vote and thus the election her assumed victory might be marred by Trump winning the popular vote! (I’m not making this up!) As s result, resources were diverted from Michigan (which they assumed was in the bag) to Illinois and Louisiana in an attempt to run up her popular vote in the Chicago and New Orleans areas:

“But there also were millions approved for transfer from Clinton’s campaign for use by the DNC — which, under a plan devised by Brazile to drum up urban turnout out of fear that Trump would win the popular vote while losing the electoral vote, got dumped into Chicago and New Orleans, far from anywhere that would have made a difference in the election.”

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/michigan-hillary-clinton-trump-232547

[Yoda]

Yeah, I read that article at the time. Obviously, the Clinton camp believed a lot of things that ended up not being true, so I don't think the mere fact that they were worried about something is evidence that it was particularly plausible. They didn't even think or act as a singular entity: I'm reading a book about the Clinton campaign now, and there were a lot of consultants involved, and the lack of coordination and agreement among them appears to be one of the reasons for the loss. It's pretty easy to find someone fairly high up in the campaign worried about anything, even while someone else in the campaign was worried about some completely different (or even mutually exclusive) thing.

[mattiasflgrtll6]

We have 3 ****ing Trump threads.




Why.

[mark f]

He has a split personality.

[Don Schneider]

We have 3 ****ing Trump threads.




Why.

This one deals with a particular aspect of the election and shouldn't get buried in a long, generic Trump thread.

[Camo]

We have 3 ****ing Trump threads.




Why.

There was like 4 or 5 during the election. Personally, i don't see the problem with him trying to separate this from the erratic Trump thread, it's difficult to keep that thread focused on one subject and i think this is something worth discussing. At most this would get a comment or two there before it turned to something else, not saying every topic deserves its own thread but i think this is fine for now at least.

[Don Schneider]

Thank you, Camo. You're a gentleman (and smart too!) :)

[Camo]

Thank you, Camo. You're a gentleman (and smart too!) :)

Yeah.. think i killed the thread too :cool:

[cricket]

Not that it means much, but if Clinton won by 3 million votes, that means Trump would only have to steal 1.5 million to make it a dead heat. Only meaning that it was even closer than it sounds.

[Yoda]

Given that both candidates had very high unfavorables (particularly with the opposite party), I can't imagine that many votes could have been "stolen" that way. If they were both campaigning for the popular vote, that would've mostly entailed increasing turnout for people already inclined to vote for them, rather than trying to persuade people to switch their votes.

Obviously, it's a counterfactual and any claim about it is technically unfalsifiable. But Trump doesn't have any evidence whatsoever for the claim that he would've won the popular vote if he'd been trying to (as if he wasn't already). There's just as much reason to think the gap would've been larger.

[Camo]

Not that it means much, but if Clinton won by 3 million votes, that means Trump would only have to steal 1.5 million to make it a dead heat. Only meaning that it was even closer than it sounds.

Think that's an interesting way of looking at it, personally i still think he'd have struggled at least somewhat if he was going for the popular vote trying to get more vote turnout in the states that support him would've been his best bet.

1.5 Million Votes is alot, that means 1/60 people in America would have to vote for Trump (it's actually alot more i'm just going off America having 300 Milion citizens even though it's more like 320 now). When you take out all of the sure votes for both Trump and Hilary it is not as simple as a 1.5 Million difference, that takes out at least 100 million Americans and seriously complicates the numbers. I think it's simple to think about but truthfully it's really complicated when you start adding necessary variables.

[cricket]

You guys are both right. It's just that I hear people where I'm at saying that Clinton would've won if they went by popular vote, and obviously there's no way of knowing that. Also, people think of the final vote tally like it's a basketball game; down 14, score 7, and still 7 down, when it's actually down 14, score 7, tie game.

[matt72582]

President Trump, PLEASE -- no more winning!