I've got family still bitter their side chickened out in the war of northern aggression and still waiting for the South to raise again. Not coincidentally, I've spent much of this Thanksgiving evening getting reacquainted with my good buddy Johnny Walker, so I'm low on patience with democratic virtue. All that said, if only half of the nightmares of the people who votes for Trump were true the world would be a much better place.
I can't say much. I almost participated in my first Black Friday ever this morning. Ultimately I was too hungover so my streak continues. Still hate the world.
Despite how manifestly unqualified Trump is for POTUS, he seems to have been elected legitimately. The largest caveat in my eyes is the potential for voting booth malware that's been suggested by that prominent panel of computer scientists, primarily from U of Michigan. That issue ought to be investigated in those key states if there is evidence to suggest that Russian hackers manipulated the election. I, for one, believe it should be. (Edit to add: donated to Jill Stein'a campaign to demand a recount of election results in key states.) But if Trump won the electoral college, I don't see the route to legitimately nullifying him as being an electoral college revolt. I understand that the framers suggested that the point of the EC is to prevent patently disqualified candidates from attaining office. But Trump is a moronic, blathering huckster. He's not a disqualified candidate. And his campaign was predicated on a typical electoral college result, meaning he purposefully campaigned in Michigan and Wisconsin to gain electors and not in California et al to gain popular votes. The cost of marginalizing and discrediting the tens of millions who voted for Trump is arguably a greater cost than a Trump administration. Now, yes, Trump may be an existential threat. I'm sure Lessig would argue that. Nukes, climate change, setting us back a hundred years. But it's possible none of that may happen. And speaking as someone who's only lived in one civilization, it may be worth preserving the legitimacy of our system, as self-evidently gross as it is, especially if we have other legitimate routes of nullifying Trump. Impeachment, for example. That way the system that oversees the most complicated set of business, agricultural, military, civic, and regulatory entities the world's ever seen remains somewhat intact. That said. I don't 100% agree with my explanation. What if an impeachment isn't legitimate enough in the eyes of Trump voters, and it's just as "elitist" as an electoral college rebuke? Who knows. But my intuition is that the Democrats lost and there are lessons that must be learned. As much as I fucking hate that man. EDIT: I reread Federalist 68, the most relevant Federalist paper on the subject. And any reasonable reading or interpretation of the paper would not contradict a view that the system of electors was instituted for such a situation as we find ourselves in today. But I have a further quibble I can't quiet. "Publius" in the paper says: But Trump may not have won because of any of these listed adversaries of republican government. The reason Trump won is because the voting population is apathetic, uneducated, and easily manipulable. Trump's victory was unaided by any of the nefarious enemies listed. That might be a legalistic and wordy reading, but if the reason that electors ought to vote their conscience is because a candidate won the election due to those specified enemies of republican government, then a vote of no confidence might not be warranted. We deserve a shitty president precisely because we saw nakedly what we were being offered and wanted him anyway.Nothing was more to be desired [in designing an Electoral College] than that every practicable obstacle should be opposed to cabal, intrigue, and corruption. These most deadly adversaries of republican government...
(emphasis mine)
I'm of the opinion that 1) Losing the popular vote is sufficient to consider a candidate illegitimate 2) Even if that wasn't the case, absolutely any tactic to save us from 4 years under an under-qualified, far-right nutjob is acceptable, yes including the obvious reductio argument you're thinking of 3) Marginalizing and discrediting tens of millions who voted for Trump is only a bad thing if it doesn't stick. Seriously, if I could wave a magic wand and make slightly less than 50% of the country disappear I'd do it with no guilt. But I don't really expect the electoral college to save us, nor for recounts to save us, I fully expect that we're going to have to endure 4 years of the will of the troglodytes reminding us that democracy comes at the cost of, well, them, as we do every 8 years or so, to a particularly egregious degree this time. I posted it mostly because Lawrence Lessig saying the thing that isn't going to happen should happen is noteworthy. May fortune save us from procedural obligations to the monsters^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hconservatives among us.
If the EC selects Clinton, it will be a disaster on every level. This will mobilize a right-wing electorate that will march to the poles in 2017 and take every state house and governorship up for grabs. In 2018 there will be a major push in the redder states to take all of the Dem's senate seats coming up for reelection. The Republicans in the House and Senate, feeling the same anger described above, will dig in their heels and make the obstruction of the last six years look like bipartisan compromise. The courts will suffer as nobody and I mean NOBODY will get confirmed, vital agencies will be leaderless and the whole US government will grind to a standstill. And then we get to talk about 2020. Trump is a buffoon who wants to loot the treasury and enrich his Wall Street buddies. He's also a Hollywood guy who has been hanging out with the Hollywood crowd for 20+ years now. He's going to get his Supreme Court guy who will move the country to the right, he will fight the regulatory apparatus, and IMO, not even look at the social issues everyone seems to be freaking out over. You SHOULD be freaking out over the environment, education, and consumer protections he already has his sights on. Unions are in for a rough time as well. The way we fight Trump is to use him as a rallying cry, just like we did with Bush. Rebuild the state Democratic parties, run for the state houses, build an infrastructure in the rust belt and the South, then run a 50 state strategy with all 435 House seats up for grabs. Make the election not about Trump but about the country and fight. Clinton ran a poor campaign, one in which she was expecting a coronation not an election. She did not help push the Senate elections, she barely helped the House, and then called people on the fence about her "a basket of deplorables" which made some of the people who were going to vote for her as the "not Trump" candidate decide instead to not vote for President. She could not hold a big rally in October into November, and there was zero excitement about her campaign outside the diehards. She deserved to lose, as much as I hate the words "President Trump" and as much as I think he is going to be a terrible leader. But hell, maybe he will rise to the occasion and be "mediocre." As an American who likes the country I live in, I don't want my President to be a failure, even if I disagree with damn near everything he stands for.
Republicans have won their last two presidencies because of the Electoral College. I highly doubt the Republican Party establishment will want to abolish it. Our best bet to abolish the Electoral College is the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, and that's a long shot in and of itself.