In a few hours 538 electors from all different backgrounds, states and counties within America, will determine who America’s next president is. As this process is generally considered a formality, Trump has already formed a presidential cabinet, and Hillary Clinton has already conceded the elections and faded away from the spotlight. However, these 538 electors do not have to vote for the person their state selected. They can choose to vote for anyone else or abstain altogether. It is this possibility, that has caused those against a Trump presidency to hang their hopes on.
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Republicans! Help us stop Trump
Trump has 36 more electors than the required threshold of 270 to win the presidency. So, for this Hail Mary to work, an unprecedented number of electors would have to defect. It is a long shot, but for those who view a Trump presidency as a variant of the apocalypse, it is their last hope. And indeed, there have been many faithless electors in the past, so there is a precedent in the idea, just not the quantity. The most important question though is whether any of these faithless electors in the past have caused a change in presidency, and the answer is no. The idea that a handful of electors will change who becomes president is purely theoretical and even in theory, extremely hard to achieve. Yet, liberals and progressives the world over are using all methods possible to flip electors. This has caused some odd, yet interesting change in the principles of liberals and progressives.
For example, for weeks after the elections the hip thing to do was to rail against the electoral college. Every teary-eyed Hillary supporter had a good scream and shout about the fact that Hillary won the popular vote, but lost the electoral college. Even Obama referred to the electoral college as a vestige of an earlier era. Hillary’s 2.5 million lead over trump was taken as a sign that Trump had no mandate and was the illegitimate heir to the presidency. To people less bias, it was a sign that Trump played the game according to the vote that matters. In fact, for the last six months of the campaign, Trump practically set up shop in the rust belt states. He didn’t bother with the far more populous states like California and New York, because he knew he had no chance at winning them and they were not swing states. Hillary, on the other hand, did very little in the rust belt states. She sent her surrogates, like Bernie Sanders, and she did an 11th hour effort aided by a bunch of celebrities to get voter turnout. But as a solo act, Hillary’s presence was a fraction of Trump’s. She played the field poorly and in the end, it showed.
But that was a whole two weeks ago. Now that liberals and progressives have scrubbed up on their knowledge about the workings of the electoral college, they realize that it could still benefit them and they have become big fans. So naturally, another line up of celebrities (if you can call them that – I only recognized two of them) did a video urging Republican electors to vote for someone other than Trump. They don’t really demonstrate why Trump is unfit, but they will give you their respect if you vote for Kasich instead. Because everyone knows that Martin Sheen’s respect is all anyone desires. So, in summary, electoral college was bad, but now it’s great!
A group of lawyers have even created a consultant firm called ‘The Electors Trust’, as a means of assisting Republican electors to vote their ‘conscience’ (i.e. against Trump). So far, only one elector has openly and publicly stated his intention to vote for someone else. But this has not stopped many outlets to profess that there is a far greater number. The _independent states that as many as 30 electors could defect, while Politico_ puts the number at about 20. Interestingly enough, they both have the same source, an ultra-liberal law professor from Harvard who made a brief run for the Democratic presidential nominee in 2016. So, no bias there.
It was actually the founding father Alexander Hamilton that created this mechanism within the electoral college. This is why faithless electors are sometimes referred to as Hamilton electors. Of course, Hamilton belongs to that group of people that are usually the subject of progressive scorn. You know, white dead males (which is even worse than live white males). When it comes to other subjects, like the first and second amendment, liberals believe the founding fathers views no longer fit the times. But now, Hamilton’s view totally fits the time. You see, there is no consistency. At one point the views of the founding fathers are out of date and need to be revised, and at another point that are the best views ever. It just depends on whether their views benefit liberal causes or not.
Nothing against Trump, it just totally looks that way
Of course, we also had so many other ways of trying to prevent Trump from becoming President. I remember quite fondly the recount stint. This will go down as the high point in Jill Stein’s career. She ordered a recount in three states because there was talk of election fraud. Only talk though. That is why two states rejected the order because there was no compelling evidence of fraud. I remember when people, especially Hillary, scorned Trump for talking about election rigging without evidence. But once the Clinton campaign saw this as a chance to take out Trump, they joined forces with Jill Stein. And thus, out of all the states in America, a recount was pushed in the three states that were narrowly won by Trump and also had the net effect of giving him the presidency. But Jill Stein assures us that that is merely a coincidence. She is only interested in voter integrity. One state did do a recount, and it turns out trump won by an additional 131 votes. So, not quite the outcome progressives hoped for; which may explain why the recount effort is no longer spoken about.
For Russia’s love of Trump
While the recount push was going down, the CIA was creating a report which would show Russia’s involvement with the DNC leaks. The CIA, FBI and the White house are now all unanimous that Russia helped Trump win by interfering in the elections. And by the elections, they actually mean the campaign. The elections, as Jill Stein’s recount help prove, did not show any obscurities. But, it does seem to be true that Russia hacked into the email accounts of high ranking DNC members. And by hacked, I mean phished. In reality, Podesta was just an idiot and gave his password out to an untrustworthy source. I’m surprised that he didn’t also give money to a Nigerian prince, that’s how stupid he was. Out of those emails however, the public saw how the DNC rigged their own primaries to favour Hillary over Bernie. We also saw how Donna Brazile leaked information to assist Hillary in the debates. In fact, we saw the same bad behaviour that Russia is now being condemned for, but this time it is against Hillary, not for her. Of course, it should be noted that many progressives were very pissed off that the DNC pushed Bernie to one side. So not all of them are swimming in hypocrisy, just a lot of them.
Nevertheless, the DNC rigging its own primaries is not as bad as Russian interference. So, it does make sense that Hillary would complain about Russia’s effort to stitch her up and ensure that Trump won. But then again, Hillary doesn’t mind a bit of foreign interference in elections. In fact, she proposed rigging the Gazan elections in order to favour the PA over Hamas. To quote her “We should have made sure we did something to determine who won”. In the audio tape, she sounds as if this type of behaviour is fairly normal. Which is probably true. America has a reputation for interfering in the elections of other nations and I doubt it got that reputation for nothing.
But if the Democrats are not successful in their last effort, I hope they finally take some time out for reflection, where their woes are not all pinned on something else. You never know, they may come to the same conclusion that everyone else has; Hillary was just a terrible candidate.
Note: Trump was terrible too, just less terrible…apparently.