The 2016 Presidential Election Trainwreck

[Maximus]

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[Northwestcoug]

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I'm so glad Trump is surrounding himself with smart advisors who will temper his worst impulses.

Mitt, please keep your dignity intact and avoid even the appearance of groveling to get the SoS position. This is a train wreck that you will have no control over.

[Walter Sobchak]

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Dang, dude has SU-like chops. Just starting to appreciate these.

[myboynoah]

Mitt, please keep your dignity intact and avoid even the appearance of groveling to get the SoS position. This is a train wreck that you will have no control over.

This.

So far so good.

[Maximus]

I'm so glad Trump is surrounding himself with smart advisors who will temper his worst impulses.

Mitt, please keep your dignity intact and avoid even the appearance of groveling to get the SoS position. This is a train wreck that you will have no control over.

Every single appointment has been a worst case scenario. besides the SC governor I guess. How long until she is fired. 1 or 2 years?

[Uncle Ted]

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LOL, what a dumbass... The non-citizen/illegals turn-out only added 834,318 votes to Clinton's popular vote margin:

Is it plausible that non-citizen votes account for the entire margin of Trump’s popular vote loss to Clinton?

[...]
Donald Trump recently suggested that his deficit in the popular vote to Clinton might be due entirely to illegal votes cast, for instance by non-citizens. Is this claim plausible? The claim Trump is making is not supported by our data.


Here I run some extrapolations based upon the estimates for other elections from my coauthored 2014 paper on non-citizen voting. You can access that paper on the journal website here and Judicial Watch has also posted a PDF. The basic assumptions on which the extrapolation is based are that 6.4 percent of non-citizens voted, and that of the non-citizens who voted, 81.8 percent voted for Clinton and 17.5 percent voted for Trump. These were numbers from our study for the 2008 campaign. Obviously to the extent that critics of my study are correct the first number (percentage of non-citizens who voted) may be too high, and the second number (percentage who voted for Clinton) may be too low.


The count of the popular vote is still in flux as many states have yet to certify official final tallies. Here I used this unofficial tally linked by Real Clear Politics. As of this writing Trump is 2,235,663 votes behind Clinton in the popular vote.


If the assumptions stated above concerning non-citizen turnout are correct, could non-citizen turnout account for Clinton’s popular vote margin? There is no way it could have. 6.4 percent turnout among the roughly 20.3 million non-citizen adults in the US would add only 834,318 votes to Clinton’s popular vote margin. This is little more than a third of the total margin.

Is it plausible that non-citizen votes added to Clinton’s margin. Yes. Is it plausible that non-citizen votes account for the entire nation-wide popular vote margin held by Clinton? Not at all.
[...]

https://fs.wp.odu.edu/jrichman/2016/...ss-to-clinton/

[Uncle Ted]

Just when you think it is over...

Clinton Files Motion to Join Recount Lawsuit in Wisconsin

Hillary Clinton‘s attorney filed a motion Tuesday seeking to join the lawsuit filed by Jill Stein in Wisconsin. According to Dane County court records, Hillary Clinton is now listed as an “intervenor” in the case. The lawsuit was originally filed on Monday by Stein after the Wisconsin Elections Commission declined to require that county leaders undergo the recount of votes by hand. Instead, the Elections Commission said that the recount would move forward but each county would decide themselves whether to proceed by hand or through an electronic method. So far, Donald Trump has not filed a similar motion to join the case.


“We must recount the votes so we can build trust in our election system,” Stein said in a statement.


Attorneys for Clinton also filed a memo supporting a hand recount because they said that the method will ensure the most accurate results, according to local reports.
[...]

http://lawnewz.com/high-profile/brea...-in-wisconsin/

[PaloAltoCougar]

As to Trump's claim of an electoral college landslide, of the past 57 presidential elections, only eleven were by percentage margins narrower than his. If his victory is a landslide, how does one characterize the 45 other victors who won by larger, sometimes vastly larger, margins?

[BigPiney]

As to Trump's claim of an electoral college landslide, of the past 57 presidential elections, only eleven were by percentage margins narrower than his. If his victory is a landslide, how does one characterize the 45 other victors who won by larger, sometimes vastly larger, margins?

Yuge!!!

[New Mexican Disaster]

As to Trump's claim of an electoral college landslide, of the past 57 presidential elections, only eleven were by percentage margins narrower than his. If his victory is a landslide, how does one characterize the 45 other victors who won by larger, sometimes vastly larger, margins?

It's huge in the same sense his hands are huge?

[Commando]

lol. Reagan's victory in 84 was a landslide. Trump's win was marginally greater than George W's and that's it. Trump is dumb.

[BlueK]

For me, it's not apathy. I was horrified at Trump's victory, but he's our duly elected president and I'm willing to give him a shot. I'd do the same with Hillary if she had won, which she obviously didn't.

Of course, to be technically correct he's only duly elected after the electoral college votes, who Constitutionally at least, are still all free to vote for whomever they want. There is one more chance for this strange election to get even stranger, albeit it unlikely. But there has been some talk about electors going rogue this time.

If this were to happen I'm sure the phrase "constitutional crisis" would be thrown out there by lots of people. The problem with that is I don't see how that phrase is appropriate when the Constitution is actually being followed to the letter. It seems more aptly applied to situations when one branch or another is trying to ignore something in the Constitution or when a couple of the branches are fighting over who has authority over what, or when the Constitution has nothing to say about something. But in this case The Constitution says nothing about how electors are supposed to vote, nor about the people being those who elect the President (of which Hillary got more of those votes anyway). Although I admit an electoral college surprise would cause a political uproar. Hold onto your hats. There is still plenty of time for Trump to do or say something wacky that could push this scenario forward.

http://www.newsweek.com/can-trump-be...college-526453

[imanihonjin]

Of course, to be technically correct he's only duly elected after the electoral college votes, who Constitutionally at least, are still all free to vote for whomever they want. There is one more chance for this strange election to get even stranger, albeit it unlikely. But there has been some talk about electors going rogue this time.

If this were to happen I'm sure the phrase "constitutional crisis" would be thrown out there by lots of people. The problem with that is I don't see how that phrase is appropriate when the Constitution is actually being followed to the letter. It seems more aptly applied to situations when one branch or another is trying to ignore something in the Constitution or when a couple of the branches are fighting over who has authority over what, or when the Constitution has nothing to say about something. But in this case The Constitution says nothing about how electors are supposed to vote, nor about the people being those who elect the President (of which Hillary got more of those votes anyway). Although I admit an electoral college surprise would cause a political uproar. Hold onto your hats. There is still plenty of time for Trump to do or say something wacky that could push this scenario forward.

http://www.newsweek.com/can-trump-be...college-526453

If the electors don't vote for trump and end up giving the election to Hillary, I would seriously be concerned about the future of our country. What would that do to undermine any legitimacy of the election? Serious violence would result and a new unimaginably large wedge would forever divide our country.

It would not be good.

[BlueK]

If the electors don't vote for trump and end up giving the election to Hillary, I would seriously be concerned about the future of our country. What would that do to undermine any legitimacy of the election? Serious violence would result and a new unimaginably large wedge would forever divide our country.

It would not be good.

They wouldn't necessarily vote for Hillary either. In fact, it's unlikely they would do that even if they went rogue. There aren't enough votes for Hillary to win, so the democratic electors who would have nothing to lose could conceivably make a deal with only a few of the republican ones to vote for a different republican.

As far as legitimacy goes, that argument only works if you assume the the president is directly elected, which technically is not true. And in that case, Hillary actually got more of those votes so the logic of that should be that the electors ought to vote for her if they wanted to respect the popular vote. Or...you are actually saying the electoral college is just a mathematical formula applied to the states' vote. But the problem with that is that the Founders clearly didn't intend for the electoral college vote to be a mere formality or a footnote as it has become. Not saying this is what would be best for the country. But it would be something the Constitution would have no problem with.

[Color Me Badd Fan]

They wouldn't necessarily vote for Hillary either. In fact, it's unlikely they would do that even if they went rogue. There aren't enough votes for Hillary to win, so the democratic electors who would have nothing to lose could conceivably make a deal with only a few of the republican ones to vote for a different republican.

As far as legitimacy goes, that argument only works if you assume the the president is directly elected, which technically is not true. In in that case, Hillary actually got more of those votes so the logic of that should be that the electors ought to vote for her if they wanted to respect the popular vote. Or, you are actually saying the electoral college isn't real -- it's just a mathematical formula applied to the states' vote. But the problem with that is that the Founders clearly didn't intend for the electoral college vote to be a mere formality or a footnote as it has become. Not saying this is what would be best for the country. But it would be something the Constitution would have no problem with.

The electors, at least in most states, aren't free to do whatever they want. While the constitution doesn't compel them to vote in any given way, state laws and, in some circumstances, contracts with the political party that picked them as an elector control what they do. I suppose there might be a few free electors out there, unbound by state law or contract, but there's a better chance that Obama simply chooses not to vacate the office on inauguration day than more than a few electors decide to thwart the popular vote in their respective states.