I don’t think Americans understand how our political system works.
It’s Monday morning and I haven’t had my coffee.
Tuesday did not go the way most people planned. In the aftermath, I’ve seen overreactions from both sides.
3rd Parties
Democrats blame 3rd Party voters for giving Florida to Trump.
Republicans blame 3rd Party voters for giving Virginia to Clinton.
North Carolinians blame 3rd Party voters (and dubious election practices) for sending the Gubernatorial Race into a recount that may not be finished until November 18th . . . at the earliest. I can only assume the eventual losing party will blame 3rd party voters for their loss.
Assuming these assumptions are true, it’s amazing how significant these insignificant voters are/were.
Democrats
Trump will likely sell out his base just as previous presidents, yet you seem convinced that President Trump will undo the last eight years at the stroke of a pen. If this is true, perhaps you shouldn’t have cheered the expansion of presidential power under Obama; you were warned of the dangers.
The good news is that the House and 1/3 of the Senate is up for re-election in two years. Don’t sit the next one out. If I were you, I’d be getting ready yesterday.
Republicans
You won, but not by a mandate. You have two years (at best, assuming no scandals or impeachment) to prove you aren’t going to mess this up. I can guarantee the Left will be out in force the next election, especially now that younger voters have seen what happens when they stay home. Even if you manage to prove your ideas are best, I think you’ll face quite a bit of backlash. If I were you I’d be getting ready yesterday. The Republican Party may not withstand the next onslaught.
The Electoral College
Already there are petitions to abolish the Electoral College because it is “undemocratic” and “undermines the will of the people.” Well, duh – that’s the point. The electoral college is the “republic” part the presidential election in this, our democratic republic. It ensures that SoCal, S. Florida, and New York don’t speak for the rest of the country.
There are also petitions to have the Electoral College vote via the popular vote. They already do: the popular vote for each state. So you really want your state to vote according to how “everyone else” voted? If all your friends jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge, would you as well?
Both these plans exchange real power for imagined power.
I’m Tired of 2016 Politics, and It’s Going to be A Long Four Years
Running In My Head 
very few of the unwashed masses understand how the political system works in this country. We tried and tried to tell them but I do believe they read at a fourth grade level and so do not understand what they read. That is if they can sound out the big words. sigh
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If the read at a fourth grade level, on what level is their understanding? I want an informed electorate, not just a large electorate.
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I don’t agree with everything you said above (what fun would THAT be 🙂 ) … but I think the bit on the Electoral College vs. Popular Vote is absolutely critical in a number of ways:
– I am getting muscle cramps from eye-rolling about the ‘she won the popular vote’ statements as if it is justification for the unfairness of the EC. Ugh. THINK about it – what it signifies is that she got a huge margin of victory in heavily populated states but failed to gather a majority in an adequate number of states to collect the required number of electoral votes. TL;DR – the EC worked EXACTLY the way it was supposed to. Whether or not I like the outcome (I do not) is irrelevant … THIS is what the founders designed.
– BUT … the estimate that Hillary will win the popular vote by ~2 million after all is counted (close to 2% margin) means that those saying “this is what the majority of Americans wanted” are not correct. This is what our electoral process delivered, but that is a different statement.
– Really, the electoral/popular split really drives home the deep divisions within the country. For even cooler representation, check out the ‘Change from 2012’ graph here (http://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/president)
Aside from that, I think that perhaps the thing that bothered me that most was that while supporters of Trump were absolutely shouting themselves re-faced about ‘getting the full truth’ regarding Clinton – transparency – they required none from their own candidate. None. We know very little about Trump that we didn’t know in 2015, and even that is a self-curated story since private data from a business person doesn’t need to be made public. Personally I wanted all of his tax filings for both himself and his corporate holdings, full disclosure of all investments in and partnerships with corporations and foreign holdings … and of course full access to HIS emails 🙂
I have read entirely too many think-pieces about all of this stuff … and we have seen that the ‘required restructuring’ of the GOP following their 2012 defeat, the one that would make them more inclusive – it never happened, and it didn’t matter. But the stuff from people like Robert Reich about the need for a ‘new Democratic Party’ actually make sense. Think about Obama’s first two years – if the Democrats went at things like the Republicans do, a much larger stimulus would have happened, more comprehensive bank and healthcare reform, and so on … some say they wanted (except for a few) to ‘be fair’. That was stupid and what it meant was – failing your constituency … and your country.
Also what you say about ‘two years’ is very true and telling … I don’t know how many people I have had telling me ‘don’t worry, all of that was just rhetoric, nothing will happen that reflects the bigoted rhetoric’. I think there are a few possibilities:
– Nothing big happens legislatively or otherwise negative and the usual mid-term ‘adjustment’ gives democrats the Senate but not the house.
– Something does happen (like NC’s HB2 as a national agenda) and Dems turn out in record numbers and many of those ‘non-bigoted’ Trump supporters are true to their word and say ‘aw hell NO!’ and a massive shift in power occurs.
One interesting sideline to that is how ~25 House seats are GOP *only* by virtue of the 2012 Gerrymander, the largest in US history. A few districts have been ordered illegal and are set to be redrawn, will be interesting to see what happens/
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Hey, I’m fine with people disagreeing with me so long a we have polite discourse. The whole popular vote argument irks me for a variety of reasons, but the big two are that roughly 47% of eligible voters didn’t vote, and that the candidates campaigned for electoral votes and not the popular vote. I have plenty more to say to both sides (I love being a moderately conservative independent!)
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I’m just amazed that so many people are now aware of the electoral college. Despite the Gore-Bush deal, many people still seemed to think that popular vote decides elections.
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In fairness the youngest of the millennial a wouldn’t be old enough to remember that or have it in their voting memory. Hence my desire for an informed electorate.
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Sadly some of the people are in their 50s and voted in the 2000 election.
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