Steve Schmidt, bless his pointy Republican head, makes a very important point here.
And to underscore the point, let me ask you this: How do we go from having an “election” to having a “president elect”?
The process is actually a bit subtle and somewhat more complicated than one might think. Election day happens, but there is no “president elect” in any official, constitutional, way, for a very long time thereafter.
Though this can vary, the first possible date that we will have a “president elect” in the current election cycle is on January 6th, 2017. Not before.
Of course, what really happens, is that the country’s news agencies, in an uncoordinated yet organically coordinated way, decide which of the states, and thus their electoral votes, goes to each candidate, and if they become certain at some point that 270 or more electoral votes will go to one of the candidates, then they declare that person the winner.
But, what really really happens, as pointed out as Steve Schmidt, is that the loser apparent of the election becomes the first person to address, usually by a phone call, the winner apparent. John McCain called up Barack Obama and called him “Mr. President.” Al Gore called up George Bush and called him “Mr. President.”
Watch the video to see what a former Republican looks like, and to get some interesting perspective on Trump’s claims that the election is being rigged. More importantly, listen to what Schmidt says about the importance of the apparent fact that Donald Trump has no intention of ever calling Hillary Clinton “Madam President.”
And that could be a problem.
Watch the whole thing:
The founding fathers were unwilling or unable to do two things. One was to see centuries into the future, and thus avoid certain ambiguities, missing elements, or general silliness in their founding father’s document, the Constitution of the United States of America. The other was to tie up certain details so that procedure was set in stone, as opposed to followed by somewhat flexible agreed upon convention.
If the Congress is a GOP congress, and they continue to act as they have been acting with respect to the Supreme Court nomination, when January 6th comes around, Donald Trump may well become the president. Or at least, they could try that.
And there would be a Civil War.
The first Civil War was fought over slavery. The second Civil War will be fought over racism and misogyny.
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Any truth to Trump’s ‘rigged’ rhetoric?
Let’s look to what’s happening with voter registration in places like, oh, Indiana… North Carolina… Florida…
Why yes, we can see the Republican elements in government conspiring to rig the election — through fraudulent action against non-existent voter registration fraud.
Trump is right, only he needs to point his finger towards his “former party” as the guilty ones…
Steve Schmidt’s Titanic analogy is apt. Trump suffered multiple fatal injuries this month, or at least his campaign did, and he is going down. Scandals rarely dominate the mind of the electorate for more than a few new cycles, but the Trump sexual assault scandal is different. It is not fading away. It is not being forgotten. Instead, it seems to be festering, and all the antiseptic and antibiotic in the Trump snake oil medicine cabinet is not going to help. Oh, and the fact that he is apparently about to be sued for sexually violating the civil rights of woman named Katie Johnson when she was 13 years old is only going to keep his sexual predator frame nice and shiny.
I am guessing that mainstream GOP Republicans do not want to be known as the “Grab Our Privates” party, and I suspect that they are going to torpedo the Trump frigate the first chance they get. My magic 8 ball further suggests that Trump will be a mere shadow of his former self by 2017. However, his legions of befuzzled fools will still be around, and that should be a real source of concern. To everybody.
I just heard on the radio news that the “Trump” brands are hurting — sales on everything from Trump-branded food products to his golf courses and resorts are showing sinking sales.
Perhaps his greedy family will pressure him to step down and depart politics just to save their hopes for a slice of the billions — while it’s still worth something.
GOP used to stand for the “Got Zero Plans” party.
Now, it stands for the “Grab Our Privates” party.
Good one. I’m sure there are more…
I don’t think the Donald quite appreciates the mess he’s gotten himself and his brand into. But he will.
7 May 2016
http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2016/05/06/beware-democratic-party-optimism/#comment-633017
Trump hotels and golf clubs, which in the U.S. are concentrated in cosmopolitan blue states, are losing customers.
http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2016/10/16/the-current-trump-clinton-electoral-prediction/#comment-637993
The most comprehensive summary of Trump’s predicament is here:
https://newrepublic.com/article/137864/donald-trump-citizen-pain
Recent articles, some of which are linked to above, show that Trump Media would have little chance of success and that his brands are being boycotted and are losing revenue. The falsified businessman who always wins has become the loser who always whines.
Trump is now in such bad shape that even if Republican efforts at voter suppression are successful, he’d still lose. And it should be remembered that the Democrats are far better organized and that they are recruiting legions of lawyers to challenge Republican obstruction. According to the Times, Trump’s appeals to his supporters to monitor the “rigged” election are as organizationally disorganized as everything else he does:
But as Mr. Trump casts doubt on the integrity of the presidential election, there are no signs of a wave of Trump poll watchers building. Like much else about his campaign, his call to “get everybody to go out and watch” the polls seems to be a Potemkin effort, with little or no organization behind it…
“There’s a real disconnect between the intensity of the buzz at the national level and anything we’ve seen on the ground,” said Al Schmidt, a Republican who is the vice chairman of Philadelphia’s election board. “We haven’t received a single call from somebody outside of Philadelphia looking to be a poll watcher.”
…His call to monitor polling places betrays an ignorance of election laws in most states, which require poll watchers to be registered in the county or precinct where they operate.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/19/us/politics/donald-trump-voting-election-rigging.html?_r=0
My belief is that Trump will be so resoundingly defeated that the narrative of a stolen election will find difficulty gaining traction among all but his most deluded supporters, and I don’t think there are enough of them to cause serious problems. I believe that Trump will quickly become as insignificant as Sarah Palin. (But I also believe that the Republican Party is in serious trouble.)
http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2016/10/16/the-current-trump-clinton-electoral-prediction/#comment-637993
All of which is not to say that you can relax and sit out the election or waste your vote on Johnson or Stein. We’ve already heard McCain’s Supreme Court comment.
(I promise you that we will be united against any Supreme Court nominee that Hillary Clinton, if she were president, would put up,” McCain told WPHT in Philadelphia. “I promise you. This is where we need the majority.
https://www.salon.com/2016/10/17/john-mccain-republicans-will-block-any-supreme-court-nominee-of-hillary-clinton/)
It’s essential for you to make an across the board Democratic victory as overwhelming as possible.
Empirical evidence suggests that the third sentence overrides the first. Several Republicans tried to distance themselves from Trump the weekend after the Access Hollywood tape was released, but by the following Tuesday they were all back on board with the nominee, the few exceptions being the ones who were never with Trump in the first place. The reason is because most GOP officeholders fear Trump’s supporters, who are the Republican base, and fear that they would be primaried at the next opportunity if they aren’t on board (or that their base would fail to support them in November and they would lose this election).
Mr. Schmidt assumes without evidence that any would-be poll watchers would go through formal party mechanisms. The base doesn’t trust the party elite: the latter have been promising the former an agenda on which they haven’t delivered. The House has not even attempted to impeach Obama, abortion is still (in principle) legal, etc. And many of these potential volunteers may not be aware that there are procedures that must be followed to become an official poll watcher.
My main concern at this point is Trump supporters showing up at polling places, armed, in order to intimidate potential voters. People who won’t take “no” for an answer. There may not be any formal organization to it, but I expect that some Trump supporters will try it.
My polling place is at a school, so Federal law prohibits carrying firearms there without a concealed carry permit. Unfortunately, I live in an open carry state, and the state Attorney General has issued an opinion that state and local law enforcement cannot enforce the Federal law. I’m also in one of the state’s most diverse and bluest towns, and a university town (i.e., many students voting), so I expect my polling place to be high on the list of polling places in my state for such yahoos to target.
GOP will continue, in part because “At least he’s not a Democrat” is considered acceptable excuse for voting for someone.
THAT, if and where it may happen, may just be the straw that breaks the camel’s back and gets the 2nd Amendment rewritten.