(In light of insistance on the left that HC won the legally non-existent "national popular vote" I have decided to re-publish this piece by the vanished Larry Johnson. pl)
What the Numbers Really Say About the Trump Victory–UPDATED
By Larry Johnson -
Wednesday, 9 November 2016
Drudge was wrong. Yesterday’s blaring headline that turnout was on pace for 140 million turned out not to be true. In fact, the breathless media reporting about massive turnout is a bit misleading. The total votes cast this year, including third party candidates Stein and Johnson, stands at 123,724,157 million. That about 6 million less than voted for all candidates (including third party) in 2012–129 million.
The number show that Hillary Clinton has 1,322,095 more votes nationally than Donald Trump (as of 8 December).
The difference in the popular vote is entirely because of California. Hillary polled 5,589,936 while Trump trailed with 3,021,095. Hillary had 2.5 million more votes in California than Trump.
However, total votes in California dropped fairly dramatically compared to 2012. There were 2 million fewer votes. That was an exception what was going on in the other battle ground states. If you compare the number of votes in battle ground states this year to the votes in 2012 you see that the vote was basically the same with the exception of Florida, where there was a significant increase:
|
Obama |
Romney |
All Others |
Total 2012 |
|
|
FL |
4,237,756 |
4,163,447 |
72,976 |
8,474,179 |
|
IA |
822,544 |
730,617 |
29,019 |
1,582,180 |
|
MI |
2,564,569 |
2,115,256 |
51,136 |
4,730,961 |
|
OH |
2,827,709 |
2,661,437 |
91,701 |
5,580,847 |
|
PA |
2,990,274 |
2,680,434 |
82,962 |
5,753,670 |
|
WI |
1,620,985 |
1,407,966 |
39,483 |
3,068,434 |
|
TOTAL |
29,190,271 |
|||
|
Clinton |
Trump |
Others |
Total 2016 |
|
|
FL |
4,485,745 |
4,605,515 |
206,007 |
9,297,267 |
|
IA |
650,790 |
798,923 |
57,322 |
1,507,035 |
|
MI |
2,265,935 |
2,278,621 |
172,937 |
4,717,493 |
|
OH |
2,317,001 |
2,771,984 |
168,599 |
5,257,584 |
|
PA |
2,844,705 |
2,912,941 |
142,653 |
5,900,299 |
|
WI |
1,381,923 |
1,409,282 |
106,434 |
2,897,639 |
|
TOTAL |
29,577,317 |
I think it is clear that Trump did generate enthusiasm among those who voted for him. But Trump and Clinton also turned off a lot of voters. A lot of people stayed home, especially in California. The number of voters who “did not show up” looks to be about the same as what happened in 2012 with the exception of California.
Hillary bombed with the African American community and generated little enthusiasm among the Latino community. So much for the “Ola Latina” (that’s Latin Wave in Spanish).
Trump’s victory saves the Supreme Court for tilting sharply to the left and signals to dead beat allies that the United States is no longer going to provide cost free defense assistance. I think those will be two of the significant changes we will see under President Trump.
So, fire away with your thoughts:
I’ve seen the vote differential being measured around 2.5 mil (w/ not all state’s numbers yet official). This was written up in the NYT (suspect source, I know / who isn’t?). What’s your source for the 1.3 mil figure?
I wouldn’t be so sure Trump will keep the SCOTUS from doing much of anything but centralizing power… power is intoxicating & I think he likes that drink. I also think people (of all stripes) are over-sensitive to cultural aspects of SC decisions and overlook the power-centralizing consequence of the Federalist Society’s judicial philosophy. He may throw one selection to the Christianist / anti women’s right wing of his base.
We may also find defense spending to be more a real-time reward & punishment tool of the Office of the President than a means of implementing shifts in long-term policy.
I think it’s interesting that there are those calling for Electors to vote for the good of the nation rather than for who won the vote in their state… via the argument that it is a sacred constitutional responsibility to do so, understood as such our nation’s Founders in perilous times.
The news article below is maddening. It isn’t enough that this Loafer-in-Chief doesn’t realize he was elected because of Affirmative Action-esque political virtue-signaling, but then has the audacity to start blaming his laziness and incompetence on racism by whites. This crap is not new to me, I’ve worked in government in Washington, D.C. and P.G. County. When I tell family members I had GS-15’s come up and ask me, “What do [sic] expenditure [sic] mean?”, they think I’m exaggerating. I’m not. The last 8 years I marveled at just how dominating an emotion that virtue-signaling is. Apparently it trumps the future of your kids and your country. It’s sort of like the EU official whose daughter was recently raped and murdered by the 17-year old refugee and her parents used her funeral to raise donations for refugee causes. How virtuous. /sarcasm
Anyway, here’s the story from the U.K. Daily Mail:
I ‘absolutely’ suffered racism in office, says Obama: Some Americans’ ‘primary concern about me has been that I seem foreign’
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4014260/I-absolutely-suffered-racism-office-says-Obama.html
-President Barack Obama says the color of his skin has ‘absolutely’ contributed to white Americans’ negative perceptions of his time in office
-‘I think there’s a reason why attitudes about my presidency among whites in Northern states are very different from whites in Southern states,’ he said
–
“provide cost free defense assistance”
The U.S. has never done that. If you think Europe/NATO – NATO defends against a threat that would not exist without it. It is a racket for the U.S. defense industry. Likewise in South Korea and Japan.
b
“NATO defends against a threat that would not exist without it.” I would agree with that since the fall of the USSR but not before. having inhabited the NATO world I know that it was entirely a defensive alliance without the capability or plans to do otherwise. OTOH the sheer mass of GSFG and the other WP forces argues for something more than a defensive intent on their part. pl
The national election results at the congressional district level would be interesting to see. I can’t find the data for this (yet).
This would allow us to answer the question of what the election result would have been if Maine/Nebraska electoral college delegate rules were used nationwide.
Breaking down each of the districts might also be interesting to see what effect gerrymandering could have on the election, if it were run under Maine/Nebraska rules.
I suspect strongly that Trump would still have beaten Clinton in that case, and that gerrymandering (to the degree reasonable people might suggest exists) played little part. Clinton’s support is too concentrated in its city enclaves.
I think you will find that many Americans will feel as negatively towards the grifter-in-chief as you feel for President Obama.
Nancy K
“grifter-in-chief” That is merely an ad hominem attack for which you have no evidence. Mere name calling. pl
All
In 2012 there were 10 million votes cast in California. In 2016 there were 8 million votes cast but HC won the state by almost 3 million votes. HC’s margin of victory nationwide in the non-existent popular vote was 1.3 million votes. IOW Mike Barnicle, an obvious traditional New England liberal was right this AM on MJ when he remarked that the Democrats truly are a “coastal party.” pl
Yeah places like the Conservative Treehouse predicted the Monster Vote (virginal voters) for Trump. In their self-debriefing after the election, they admitted they were half right and half wrong.
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2016/11/10/post-election-night-data-did-the-monster-vote-show-up/
The monster vote showed up only in particular areas, but they were the vital swing states and the blue states Trump flipped. Michael Tracey put it best when he pointed out that Trump’s brand of Nationalist new rightism lost him votes in sure fire red states in exchange for voters in swing and blue states that would otherwise react with hostility to a market fundamentalist Bible thumper like Ted Cruz.
Trump’s brilliance was that he turned out the right people to vote in the right places. What’s the point of getting an extra 500 thousand votes from evangelicals in Alabama, which you will win regardless, instead of 500,000 socially moderate white Reagan democrats in Ohio or Penn? Now the dems are whining they got beaten playing by the rules of a game both sides agreed to beforehand. Domain specificity escapes the intellectual yet idiot class, as Taleb would say. Had Trump needed to win the popular vote, he probably would have worked out a way to do it. We know now Kushner’s firm was generating data that told Trump exactly where he needed to be, and which demographics to target based upon winning electoral seats.
Thanks to liberal and Hispanic population concentration in their ‘thriving’ coastal centres (https://mpcdot.com/forums/topic/3519-recommended-images-for-the-concerned-citizen/page__st__1960#entry307688), the Democrat plan for an urban, Hart Celler, ‘coalition of the fringe’ hegemony over the rest of America has run up against a structural obstacle. Hopefully Trump will deliver an economically centrist, pro-worker nationalist capitalism which permanently divorces the white working class from the democrats, who have doubled down on their championing of the minority coalition against the white ‘other’. That would deliver an enduring Republican advantage for decades, breathing space for the Historic American Nation to start growing again through birthrates and the suppression of immigration from the global south. The USA is now clearly in post-technocratic tribal struggle. Sanders was attacked as a white supremacist (‘The Unconventional Fascism of Bernie Sanders’) by the dems for merely suggesting his party should talk to whites on their own terms, and not in anti-white terms. Trump of course is not ‘pro-white’ in some dog whistle white nationalist sense that his enemies like to imagine – he was simply not anti-white after eight years of leftist demonization. That’s why white districts in Ohio who voted TWICE for Obama plumbed for Trump.
Another democrat weakness was that the fufu effect did not replace the ‘first black president’ effect. Blacks sunk back into apathy this election without the personal inducement of a black man to vote for. Women didn’t fill that gap. The majority of white women voted for Trump. Hispanics were not motivated to vote against Trump anymore than they would another GoP candidate despite the best efforts of Univision.
Larry, does this fit here:
If Trump wants to stoke the hell out of serious good paying job numbers pronto, Trump is going to have to put his balls on the Buy America Act/Amendments re DOD equipment/internals, ordinance, software & retrofits and make it happen. The MIC bigs have been getting pass for way too long especially on black system components.
The Supreme Court is where the checks and balances of the US governance structure resolve themselves. Centralization is inherent to its function. It’s the major weakness of ‘higher law’ polities. There’s no structural solution to the liberalism’s power regression problem. Whoever has the power to decide what constitutes law (Hart’s Rule of Recognition) has an advantage no set of checks and balances can properly address. Hence why the founder’s drew heavily from Plato’s aristocratic ethos in The Republic. I would argue what ultimately secured a viable, free, and prosperous Republic in the minds of the founders was a virtuous elite. Since America replaced Republicanism with managerialism (the idea society is a bunch of inputs and outputs elites can manipulate at will for their own ends), the organic morality of your politics collapsed leaving only the legacy brute force of constitutional prohibitions that can be subverted by an amoral political class.
And the founding father’s didn’t intend the electoral college to be a veto on the Overton window moving right btw. Those people are calling for a constitutional coup on the basis Trump obliquely challenges their core assumptions in the way basic bitch GOP ‘conservatives’ do not (who merely trail the Democrat party by a decade or less and function more as a foil than ‘opposition’). Such a move would precipitate the disintegration of the union.
“I would agree with that since the fall of the USSR but not before. having inhabited the NATO world I know that it was entirely a defensive alliance without the capability or plans to do otherwise.”
Kissinger, in 1999, identified the Kosovo war as a key turning point in that regard. He wrote:
“The rejection of long-range strategy explains how it was possible to slide into the Kosovo conflict without adequate consideration of its implications … The transformation of the NATO alliance from a defensive military grouping to an institution prepared to impose its values by force … undercut repeated American and allied assurances that Russia had nothing to fear from NATO expansion.”
And Solzhenitsyn, in a 2007 interview with Spiegel, explained the profound impact of that war on the Russian view of the US and the countries of the US sphere in Europe, and how Russians responded to subsequent US policies:
“When I returned to Russia in 1994, the Western world and its states were practically being worshipped. Admittedly, this was caused not so much by real knowledge or a conscious choice, but by the natural disgust with the Bolshevik regime and its anti-Western propaganda.
This mood started changing with the cruel NATO bombings of Serbia. It’s fair to say that all layers of Russian society were deeply and indelibly shocked by those bombings. The situation then became worse when NATO started to spread its influence and draw the ex-Soviet republics into its structure. This was especially painful in the case of Ukraine, a country whose closeness to Russia is defined by literally millions of family ties among our peoples, relatives living on different sides of the national border. At one fell stroke, these families could be torn apart by a new dividing line, the border of a military bloc.
So, the perception of the West as mostly a “knight of democracy” has been replaced with the disappointed belief that pragmatism, often cynical and selfish, lies at the core of Western policies. For many Russians it was a grave disillusion, a crushing of ideals.”
Is not loafer-in-chief not also name calling?
NancyK
It is. D Source you are admonished not to make ad hominem attacks here. pl
Wikipedia shows a difference of 2.66M:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2016#Results
65,515,369 Hillary
62,853,327 Trump
as of 2016-12-08
Sir,
I would go beyond that and say that the
Democratic elite want it that way. I think
that attitude is a combination of laziness and
feelings of cultural superiority.
Recall that Dean when he was DNC head had a “50 States Strategy”. I remember former Clinton adviser Paul Begala’s responded by saying
something like why should I care about some nose picker in Arkansas. Of course Dean’s strategy, despite having some success, was scrapped after he left the post. To the Democratic elite, such people are not worth appealing to and in a few decades, they won’t matter anyway which
also includes the laziness factor.
What the numbers tell me.
The plan to depress Dem voter turnout was successful, with an able assist from the “liberal media.”
http://shorensteincenter.org/news-coverage-2016-general-election/?platform=hootsuite
Voter suppression (of Dem) was also successful.
http://shorensteincenter.org/news-coverage-2016-general-election/?platform=hootsuite
And whatever this suggests to you.
http://heavy.com/news/2016/11/2016-exit-polls-did-hillaty-clinton-win-presidential-election-voter-fraud-donald-trump-lose-rigged/
Pence and Ryan think they got a mandate. They didn’t. This election was a squeaker.
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/pence-heritage-foundation-regulatory-rollback-232286
http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-medicare-ryan-20161114-story.html
And one final thought. SCOTUS tilting “sharply to the left” under Clinton. All things considered, I’d think “moving closer to the center” is what you really should have written.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-12-15/supreme-court-sides-with-big-business-again-
A comment on Hillary’s margin in California. California has become a one party – Democratic – state. The process began in earnest when the Republican Governor Pete Wilson tried to insure his popularity with an anti-immigrant message. That backfired big time, hurting all Republicans, except those in solidly conservative enclaves. Then in 2010, a proposition was passed to have open primaries where only the top two vote-getters proceed to the general. This generally means that two democrats contest the general and there is little of interest to bring Republicans to the polls in November. Were the national popular vote count to elect the President, Republicans in California would suddenly be energized again. Until then, you have to take the presidential vote total in California with a few large shakes of salt.
LJ
I agree that Hillary Clinton lost due to the lack of enthusiasm and a lowered total vote count. In my case, it was due to her corruption and war mongering. But, in particular, the 2016 electoral victory was due to Rust Belt voters who previously voted for Barrack Obama and then switched to Donald Trump. This is “it’s the economy stupid” effect plus the lowering life expectancy of Middle America. Starting in the 1980s, any scheme that makes money for the connected was green-lighted no matter the consequences to the little people. Money migrated to either coast. This is where the headquarters are that outsourced the jobs and evaded paying taxes by offshoring wealth. Identity politics was a means of winning elections while shafting the working class. It worked until it didn’t work anymore. There is no way 35% of the population can be ignored in a democracy. It takes just another 15% to be in the majority. Democrats are suffering from cognitive dissidence. They can no longer can continue to take globalist corporate bribes and be a majority party. The present western neo-liberal-con reign can only continue if they dismantle democracy.
“Grifter in chief?”
Hillary didn’t win.
It may mean SCOTUS won’t tilt heavily to the left, but it also probably means it will tilt heavily to the right. Some pretty old justices now.
Steve
Keith harbaugh
Yes, well, a lot of the stuff on me in Wikipedia is wrong. pl
Larry,
The date of information on the Politico results you linked to is 11/22/2016. Basically, Politico stopped updating their site.
For current totals, the New York Times has results up through today which is pretty much close to what the final totals are going to be:
http://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/president
The difference in the popular vote stands at just over 2.6 million in Clinton’s favor and could rise to 2.7 million as California’s final ballots are finally tallied.
Speaking of California, the total votes cast was actually just over 14 million, and the advantage to Clinton was massive – a 4 1/4 million vote advantage.
Great comment. Unusually perceptive. It’s sadthat virtue is rarely retained over time.
Massive vote suppression operations and vote fraud from Diebold types and other private black box machines. The reckoning will be terrible…
“OTOH the sheer mass of GSFG and the other WP forces argues for something more than a defensive intent on their part. pl ”
It was sheer mass but not quality. The first wave would have had capable tanks and troops. But there numbers were quite limited. I am sure we (the German army I then served in) and its allies would have brought it to a halt pretty soon. Second and third wave – the exploitation force of an assumed Soviet breakthrough – was under-equipped, untrained trash.
But there was of course the “missile gap” (that wasn’t.)
I talked with officers on the east-German and Russian side in the late 80s early 90s. They did not think they would have had a chance attacking (except by nuking most of Germany and getting nuked themselves – which made no sense to them). They were quite afraid of a NATO attack on them and reforger and able archer like maneuvers really had them shitting their pants.
With so little difference in support it is no wonder that the other half feels itself betrayed when a govt elected by such a marginal majority acts like it has overwhelming support and presses issues completely against the will of the majority.
The results are such ‘surprises’, as brexit, Trump and the collapse of the european left.
This proves for us almost outsider observers the fact that decades of neoliberal brainwashing still has not reached its goal. Gotta be the ‘conomy right? Even TV-show, drug and other addicts realize that they are not better off after 20-30 years of continous ‘progress’.
Elites have always been in a position to manipulate ideologies and institutions… nothing different about “managerialism”.
The Overton Window isn’t relevant in the least to the Constitution’s rules for the Electoral College. And if the Civil War & the election of 1876 didn’t precipitate the disintegration of the Union, I don’t think faithless electors changing the outcome of an election would either. After all, we all know it’s not a democracy anyway.
According to the California Secretary of State the results as of Dec.8 are Clinton 8.75 million, Trump 4.48 with 25 of 58 counties going for Trump. An earlier analysis I did when Trump had 4.2 million votes showed that the Trump tally then in California was higher than in Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia combined and exceeded the vote count for Clinton in all of New England. Clinton won five states in “flyover” country and got almost four million votes in Texas while Trump received at least thirty per cent of the vote in every Blue state. The Red/Blue geographic divide is real but greatly overstated.
peter Reichard
Yes, she lost because, as I said, this is a federal republic. pl
ked
Yes it is a federal republic with limited democracy. It always was. It was built that way. Visitors from Europe have asked me after visiting here, “is this not one country?” the correct answer is “not in the way you mean.” pl
b
“They were quite afraid of a NATO attack on them and reforger and able archer like maneuvers really had them shitting their pants.” Yes, that was the idea and it worked. pl
Augustin L
Yes, you lost by ignoring White people and discounting them in what you thought s Brave New World. IMO California should have been recounted to learn how much election fraud occurred there. pl
Edward,
“The plan to depress Dem voter turnout was successful ….”
The Obama administration failed to ensure a free and fair election? Wow. BTW you left out the Russians.
My point was that there are far more “deplorables” in California than people imagine. I have never liked the Electoral College but that is the system we have and so Trump is a legitimate winner and as the electoral and popular votes have agreed about ninety per cent of the time it is kind of a moot point as to which system is better. It is the Senate far more than the Electoral College that protects the small states against the depredations of the large. Growing up in New York I thought the Senate too was unfair and undemocratic but after living in Alaska and Hawaii I got a whole new perspective on the issue.
Well put. There were two female Democrats on the ballot this year for the US Senate. Don’t start screaming “misogynist” at me, I’m just stating facts. My opinion of the “open primary” is that it eliminated about 50% of all Republican voters from active participation in California politics by causing a “why bother, my vote is utterly irrelevant” attitude.
Col Lang,
I get the same type of reaction when
I use a plural verb with the “United States”
as in “The United States are going to ……….”
Am sitting here on the beach in Fl for 6 weeks.
Limited net access but I try to check SST
daily.
Best Holiday Wishes to all SST Correspondents
Nightsticker
USMC 65-72
FBI 72-96
You could label this thread “People upset CA doesn’t decide the Presidency”.
Fred
That is the idea behind negative campaigning. To depress turnout on the other side. Tyler understands the concept. I believe that waaaayback when he laid that out as part of the Trump campaign strategy. How surprising that a guy like you who ran for office is unfamiliar with the concept.
D Source…and those negative reactions will not be because of the color of Trump’s skin but because of the content of Trump’s character.
Col. — I’ve worked the polls in CA under very contested conditions. We had poll watchers galore and a candidate that was “just sure” the college kids had cheated him. He was not cheated. CA is very generous about allowing people to “vote provisionally” … each of those ballots is hand-checked and cross-referenced and counted individually to be sure that voter could vote in that precinct.
In our county, we do not use the voting machines used in other places and the process is very transparent.
It would be nice if people would stop bagging on California. We really do have a great state and are more focused on the future than our glorious past. Onward!
Laura
My wife was an election judge in Alexandria, VA for many years. We, here, have gone through a series of election voting changes from paper ballots to machines that were linked electronically to Richmond, to votes that are now “stand alone” machines with paper trails locally. My impression is that the vast majority of voting districts in the US are not vulnerable to networked intercepts or manipulative invasions. pl
David,
It is also rooted in the BiCoastal Dem’s support for Free Trade Treasonism. Midwestern and Great Lakes Democrats who still existed in large numbers up to the time of Bill Clinton began losing voters and influence after being seen to be unable to prevent or reverse the Free Trade Treasonism of the DLC Clintonite Democrats. A few legacy Great Lakes/ Midwest Democrats linger lonely on, such as Dingell and Killdee in Michigan, and Kaptur in Greater Toledo area. But not many others.
Edward,
Hilary is responsible for her campaign losing with a great deal of the cause being her own negative campaigning. You are simply making excuses for that fact.
Laura,
Oh the “we know election fraud doesn’t happen so there’s no need to check it!” argument.
lmbo
Fred
Yes, she lost it all right. But you’re mistaken if you think my list is just a list of excuses.
Larry,
I think Benjamin Disraeli might have something to say on your article. Let’s just start with Florida: the population of Florida increased by about a million people (many of whom are retirees, but I don’t want to do all your homework for you) between 2012 and 2016. I don’t know how you can say anything about the “numbers” given your wobbly research and analysis.
P.S. loved your work in those Nike commercials.
Hiya,
what really tickles my curiosity is what happened to Larry Johnson?
he really did vanish didn’t he, he’d been used as a tv pundit just beforehand too and then literally vanished from the internet,
can anyone shed any light on this, even just to confirm his wellbeing?
Matt
Matt
He is in hiding in Costa Rica on Marcus’ banana finca. pl
Here’s another decimal place on the rough numbers I cited.
Hillary’s margin in CA
I would disagree. The Electoral College does what it was intended to do in preventing the country from being ruled by a few most populated states.
Two words: Trump University.
From the final count, here’s another decimal place on the rough numbers.
Hillary’s margin in CA……..3.4m
Hillary’s margin nationwide 2.9m
Trump’s margin less CA…… .5m
The other 49 states and territories voted by a small margin for Trump.
We owe a debt to our founders who protected us against mobs from large states through the Electoral College and Senate.
IMO in 2016 both candidates were hideous but in different ways.
I apologize for the prior fragment posting, please delete it.
In the 1960 World Series, the New York Yankees dominated the Pittsburgh Pirates in about every conceivable statistical category except wins.
The Pirates were world champions that year.
Moreover (And I am not a Trump fan, nor did I vote for him) those who say HRC should be installed as president because she won the popular vote are asking that the rules for presidential elections set out in the Constitution be overturned, because they didn’t like the outcome. Think about that, for surely if the shoe were on the other foot, who here thinks that Lady Macbeth would give up power?
Although it is rich that HRC, whose entire schtick was based on her supposed competence and experience and alleged expertise, was undone by something that any C+ average remedial high school civics student should know about.
Maybe eeevil Russians stoke her only copy of the Constitution, so HRC couldn’t find out about the electoral college? Or Putin told her not to bother campaigning in Michigan or Wisconsin with the icky flyover people, far more fun to yukk it up in California with her donors?
I think the 2016 election for Trump voters was a ‘desperation’ vote…iow a.n.y.o.n.e but another politician or a traditional American hating liberal.
The unaffiliated now determine elections with 39% of the voter registration, making the Dems 32% voters and Repubs 23% both minority parties.
I once said that if Obama wasn’t the public’s revolution he would lay the ground work for one and Trump was the revolution. Whatever Trump does however I don’t see him winning in 2020….the media may not be tired of Trump 24/7 but the public is now getting worn out with the circus and the air has been let out of the Trump novelty.
There is plenty of evidence for calling former President Clinton and his failed Presidential candidate wife a former First Family of grifters: net worth after careers in government service for starters; monetizing the Secretary of State’s office for personal enrichment and to leverage and launder money from foreign governments and fellow wealthy virtue signalers into the Clinton Foundation would be another reason. Somehow the fatuous Jim Comey and his inside cabal of erstwhile investigators missed these clues that were sitting out there in plain view during their charade of an investigation into the mishandling of the e-mails. These two make Elmer Gantry a picker by comparison.
Well, Clinton had more votes than Trump, but that’s nothing new, Americans know well since the 2000 election that the system isn’t a popular vote. Actually, one can see that, had Clinton got 130K more votes in the Rust Belt swing states, she would’ve won. The bottom line is that Trump played according to the rules – which is, you need a majority in Electoral College, not in popular vote -, and Clinton assumed the former would come with the latter, no matter what, and foolishly discarded the blue-collar vote and places in W. Pennsylvania and Ohio. Schumer was stupidly on the record stating that losing blue-collar vote of rural/industrial/mining Pennsylvania was no biggie because they would get a buckload of Philly Republicans disgusted by Trump who would flock to Hillary…
The trick is that we can’t take the popular vote at face value, because at least one, and possibly both, didn’t play to actually earn it, but played to earn the EC votes. Were the US presidential election a popular vote, like in France for instance, Trump would obviously have campaigned very differently; you would’ve seen him in California, Texas and NYC, and most rural US areas would’ve barely seen him; Clinton would’ve behaved differently as well, because populous red state would still grant her a sizable chunk of votes.
This looks to be an incomplete data set tabulated a day or so after the election. Full counts are usually only available a month or so after an elections. Because Mr. Johnson was working with incorrect data, pretty much everything he says is wrong. A few points:
1. Overall turnout was the highest ever.
2. Percentage turnout was similar to 2012.
3. Hillary won the popular vote by 3 million.
4. She won California by more than that.
Source: US Census Bureau via Pew
pj33–you are so correct about the way to reenergize the GOP in California…and, possibly, nationwide. If the national popular vote were to elect the President, EVERY state/county/city would be energized…and the parties would be reinvigorated to organize and provide meaningful and responsive platforms.
We can all dream.
Laura
IMO if the president were elected by national popular vote there would be a constitutional convention and the Union would be dissolved, this time legally. pl
There is something interesting: 9 states swung more Democratic in 2016 than in 2012: CA, GA, TX, MD, MA, KS, WA, VA, UT (source: wikipedia on 2016 election, so take it for what it’s worth, but it does underscore the larger demographic picture, I think.). Most of these changes seem to have come from suburbia, the “respectable” people. Focusing on Clinton’s margin in CA is a bit misleading since, for several decades, Dems always won by big margins in CA, NY, and MA. The “deplorables” business really did capture the growing class divide in the country that the 2016 election really should have bared open–except for the insistence of the “respectables” to keep their heads in the sand. Since the “deplorables” always outnumber the “respectables” in almost any society, the dismissive attitude of the Dem and Rep leaders alike towards these folks will keep biting them in the behind, and perhaps not in just elections either.
Clueless Joe,
I think the election results do bear out Schumer’s belief to an extent: in suburbia of CA, MA, VA, TX, and GA (and among the respectable Utah Mormons), Clinton gained a lot of votes. Heck, she did better in Orange County, CA, the ultimate suburbia, than any Democrat ever, I think. Schumer’s mistake was that there are a lot more “deplorables” than he thought and that, sometimes, they vote. However, the loss of suburbia by the Reps open up interesting possibilities: TX and GA are heavily suburban states, after all, and if the trends continue for another decade or so (probably not, but you never know), things could change radically.
Good point…you have definitely taken human nature into account!
Edward Amame – “Liberal”, “Left”, “Right”, “Progressive”, “Deplorable” – terms we make use of now because they do convey some meaning however imprecise, but stop and consider that the future will not have much time for them.
That will give our heirs a different range of possibilities. At one end of the range, the one extreme, are serfs contented with their lot – or resentful, won’t really matter – herded by a select and very contented elite. The academics will call that the Clinton model. They’ll call it that admiringly. They’d better else they won’t get tenure.
At the other extreme are the lamp posts. If they can take the weight.
In the dead centre between these two extremes stands Trump. He’s your centrist President. Look after him. If you don’t, he could be your last centrist President.
If it were a popular vote we’d have personalities like Oprah Winfrey and Donald Trump running for president. I prefer the Electoral College, South Dakotans deserve the same level of voter power as New Yorkers.
I do have some comments on Johnson,
how he has been treated at Wikipedia, and
the use of the “conspiracy theory” pejorative by the left wing.
1. Back in March 2017 I tried to edit the Wikipedia article on Johnson.
You can see the results of my edit here,
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Larry_C._Johnson&oldid=771683709 ,
and the diffs between that version and the previous and next versions by clicking (near the top of the page) on “(diff)” for either “Previous revision” or “Next revision”.
As it turned out, my edit lasted for less than 2 hours, before it was reverted.
The person who reverted it had much more standing in Wikipedia than I,
so I let the matter drop.
But too bad Johnson and the GCHQ theory were so prematurely dismissed.
2. The media in general, and Wikipedia in particular,
were clearly trying to undermine the GCHQ/Napolitano/Johnson assertions by calling them a “conspiracy theory”.
I thought that was terribly unfair.
It is no longer classified, if it ever was, that the “Five Eyes” do work intimately together.
If you want an open source description of some of that,
see Michael Hayden’s memoir Playing to the Edge.
(That GCHQ categorically denied the theory is a big “so what”.)
So why stigmatize the GCHQ/Napolitano/Johnson assertions as “conspiracy theories”?
They are plausible, if not currentlyconfirmed.
(It is disgusting, BTW, how the left gleefully accuses intelligence agencies of lying when they deny leftwing accusations,
but fall all over themselves to assert as unimpeachable fact what the IC publicly says when it supports leftwing theories.)
3. Further, the media and Wikipedia were clearly trying to discredit Johnson, e.g., here.
In his website, “No Quarter” ( noquarterusa.net ?) Johnson offered a plausible, to me, defense against the attacks on him,
but for some reason that website was taken down.
Seems a shame to me.
4. The left seems to use the pejorative “conspiracy theory” to discredit any theory they want,
further, Wikipedia is in control of the left.
Evidence:
For an example of a real conspiracy theory that passes muster at Wikipedia, see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groundswell_group
On the other hand, consider my attempt to challenge Wikipedia’s assertion that
the theory that Seth Rich was murdered in retaliation for leaking to Wikileaks
is a “conspiracy theory”:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Murder_of_Seth_Rich&oldid=799316736#Why_the_%22conspiracy_theory%22_pejorative?
That “Talk Page” entry lasted all of 2 minutes before it was deleted,
and I received a “Discretionary Sanction” for posting it.
The conclusions are:
a. the left wing controls Wikipedia, and
b. the left wing smears anything they want to as being a “conspiracy theory”.
shepherd
I called Larry in Costa Rica and he says you are right but the data was valid at the time. pl
Well here’s one woman who won’t be running for political office…..and she’s right….lol
Stormy DanielsVerified account
Groucho @Stewey444
@ StormyDaniels ‘please run for office in 2020, preferably for the Republican nomination for President.’
5:12 PM – 10 Mar 2018
Stormy Daniels Retweeted Groucho
‘Fuck no! That’s a dirtier job than the one I already have…’
catherine
Sigh, not even she has a job she likes. pl
I think you are right in that the 2016 election was a cry for desperation, but if Team D had simply grabbed a random female waiting for the bus and nominated her after coaching her to recite Team D talking points, that random woman would have won by double digits.
Keith Harbaugh
My wiki article has been manipulated for a long time by editors who wished to diminish me enough to demand its removal. It still exists because of the actions of several wikipedia editors present among us. I would agree that the editorial process is dominated by a cadre of leftist and Ziocon people who monitor the encyclopedia constantly looking to emasculate their supposed opponents. pl
I also have a comment on Larry Johnson.
I always like and respect Larry, a passionate and patriotic guy. Too bad, he made a mistake with a non-existent Michelle Obama recording, which must have been because he trusted someone too much. His reputation was damaged after that.
In a similar way, Bill Binney bet the farm on the Forensicator’s analysis on the DNC hack/leak. That turned out to be a really bad judgement. That analysis was shoddy, amateurish, and full of holes.
i was struck by the all others totals
underscores importance of negative attitude by so many towards clinton and trump
obama Romney all others votes total 367,277
clinton trump all others votes total 853,952
an increase of 486,675 votes for someone other than the candidates of the two major parties and one of the two most likely winners
twice as many people in 2016 voted against the major party candidates than did in Obama Romney election
Larry jumped the gun on the Calif. totals which came in rather late because there were so many mail-in ballots. When all was said and done HRC had 4.3M more votes than DJT in CA. Very lopsided. Nationally, HRC was just under 3M above DJT. CA. was so lopsided that if she had won CA by only 1M votes DJT would have had a higher vote total nationwide. Since then CA has become even more “special” and many high income folks, including 2 neighbors, packing for other states. They see the writing on the wall.
Concerning the issue of the elections, I would wish to put some attention on 2 things concerning alleged Russian interference which seem to be slipping past peoples attention.
First: Given what is known as a prior of Russian capabilities, proclivities etc. how would one expect them to interfere in the US elections should the decide to do that?
Much ado has been made about “Bots”, “Fake News” and other such things.
Well the SVR has generally been fairly HUMINT centric in general (although they would certainly have an indigenous cyber component as well), it is reasonably well known what the SVR wants to be (an organisation made up of Issaev/Stierlitzes). So, let us actually explore how a “Stierlitz goes to Washington” could have looked like.
It is quite likely that, following the US interference in Russian elections (well, they were invited by the Yeltsin government, so it wasnt exactly standard regime change) the SVR will have analyzed US pioneered manipulation methods quite intensivly. In a bit of a throwback to the old Reichswehr (which developed a very solid and robust theory of tank warfare despite not having a lot in terms of tanks) the Russians may have well understood what the Americans have done in 1996 at a higher level then the Americans themself did. Practicioners of such political technologies would certainly be of interest to the SVR, and a campaign to infiltrate organisations to practice such techniques would have very much been in the SVRs remit. Such an infiltration would pursue several goals. 1: Keep tabs on who is the crosshairs of such organisations. 2: Understand and learn technologically superior US/western methods of manipulation, with the aim of becoming capable of utilizing these techniques, perhaps after some further refinement, to the benefit of Russia/the SVR, 3: Sabotage and/or misdirect the ire of such organisations.
Inserting deep agents into f.e. Cambrigde analytica etc. would have been quite feasible (private organisations generally speaking arent exactly capable of vetting at the SVRs level) and could prove highly rewarding.
Now, I posit that the SVR is as smart as I hope it is, and understands that its understanding of the USA is far from perfect, and that its capability to actually affect American poltical affairs is limited. At most, the SVR could/should hope for some ability of tilting some scales a bit.
Given that US politcs are quite mercurial, the standrd as sane thing for the SVR would simply to be against whoever is the most hostile to Russia.
As such, SVR would have been inclined to back Obama vs. both McCain and Romney, Sanders against Hillary and also Trump against Hillary.
The mechanism of such backing would have simply been to use its politechnologists in the USA to support the Democrats during the Obama era, and use the same politechnologists to sabotage the Democrats during the Clinton campaign. If one reads “shattered”, the number of people who suddenly held the idiot ball in perpetuity during Hillaries campaign, while having been highly competent assets to Obama before, seems to be a bit on the high side.
I would btw. argue that sabotaging Clinton by being ineffective would have been the easier part. Being a really bad boss is easier then being a good one as too.
For some reason, noone seems to be paying much attention to this type of thing.
Another issue would perhaps qualify as the con of the century, if it is what is going on.
It is fairly widely known that Russian authorities are highly concerned about what they perceive as the US regime change machinery. If one takes Russian pronounciations concerning this at face value, then the US regime change apparatus in a 10 foot tall juggernaught that regime change crushes one country after another. The Russians would be habitually uninclined to match US regime change strength face to face (or NGO to NGO), as a fair “regime change fight” would obviously be to their disadvantadge.
What however if the Russians perceive, due to the combination of ignorance, ineptitude and russophobia in the high corridors of US decisionmaking, an opportunity of conning the US regime change apparatus into attempting to regime change the USA? Either the regime change works, and the USA will be massively weakened because of it (empirically speaking, modern US regime change operations greatly reduced the capabilities of the regime changed countries) or the American attempt to regime change the USA fails, the American government will be quite irate at the regime changers and significantly clip their wings. The Russians would likely regard both outcomes as overall positive developments.
While risky and perhaps overly imaginative, this type of approach would fit quite well with what is known about the preferences of the Russian leadership.
Well yes, LJ did comment about Michelle Obama and he was wrong to claim a tape existed when in fact it did not.
But it was the tone of his argument that bothered me:
“Will Barack Throw Mama From the Train?”
Perhaps more significant, and contrary to your view of LJ, this was NOT his first, last or only false comment.
LJ claimed that John Kerry had raped Vietnamese women, and the claim was based on a recording of Kerry’s statements which was DELIBERATELY altered. The original interview audio of a 1971 debate was altered to piece together words that Kerry spoke at different times during the debate, falsely making it sound as if he said, “I personally raped for pleasure.” When the falsehood was exposed by a reader of Johnson’s blog, Johnson deleted the article without apology.
So I think USA can well do without LJ. Costa Rico sounds like a fine place for him.
An addition to the remarks in comment #66 on “conspiracy theories”:
I just ran across an article which discusses the development of views of such things:
“American Pravda: How the CIA Invented “Conspiracy Theories”
by RON UNZ, 2016-09-05
http://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-how-the-cia-invented-conspiracy-theories/
Actually, the article is less sensational than its title suggests.
A sample from the article: