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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
I mean, impeachment is what I'm personally hoping for. I may fantasize about an electoral college revolt, but I acknowledge that it's unlikely and would cause some ugly collateral damage.
I am, however, very uneasy with the idea that the fate of the American Democracy rest on the Republicans' willingness to stand up to Trump. And talk about an impeachment is likely strikes me as uncomfortably similar to talk about how he'll never win the primaries or never win the election.
Both are legal and both were designed for people like Trump. It's one thing for electors to be faithless and go against the popular vote but they would be going faithless and align with the popular vote. So how would that illegitimize democracy?
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Just the name. She still makes videos. I highly recommend her Loose Canon series.
No they're not, several states have made it a crime (admittedly one with minimal punishment) for an elector to go faithless, so it is in fact illegal. Now there would be a legal leg to stand on if only electors from states where it is legal defected but I'm not even sure if that's possible, much less viable.
Also can we can it with the idea that the electoral college was invented to prevent a tyrant appearing? It was invented before mass communication as a delegate system because the people wouldn't know who they were voting for for president, it never got changed because small states liked having an advantage, it has nothing to do with preventing the general public being swindled by a charismatic crook.
edited 21st Nov '16 10:49:20 PM by Silasw
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
In that case, I suppose it's a good thing that Trump is an inherently self-destructive human being. Once the pressure gets to him — helped along by more protests — he will probably end up doing something incredibly stupid and dangerous. Enough to give the GOP an excuse to impeach him.
While acting as a faithless elector is illegal in 29 states, it is an open question as to whether actually punishing a faithless elector would be Constitutional, as no such case has actually faced the SCOTUS (they've ruled on forcing electors to pledge to vote a certain way, but not on actually punishing faithless electors). From the sound of the ruling on Ray v. Blair, actually punishing faithless electors would likely NOT be ruled as Constitutional, as electors have an assumed Constitutional freedom under Article II.
And regardless of any of this, even if punishing electors for voting differently from how they're pledged is legally permissible, any votes cast by electors in defiance of this are still valid in one of the greatest structural mistakes of American democracy, seriously, the Founders REALLY dropped the ball here the Electoral College.
edited 21st Nov '16 11:26:37 PM by Balmung
Strictly speaking while it is not theoretically legal for an elector to defect, the punishment for doing so is fairly trivial in the grand scheme of things, though the political career of the faithless elector in his party will almost certainly be finished. The legitamacy of the Elector's vote is constitutionally safeguarded.
Personally I dont think an electoral college upset of the election results would be a horribly bad idea due to its possible illegality. I fear this due to the fact it will cause a massive constitutional crisis. And very possibly blood on the street as the supporters of the incumbant PEOTUS reacts.
Seriously, I think it is very fair to say that an impeachment is both much more likely to happen and would result in a much smaller mess.
edited 22nd Nov '16 12:59:43 AM by TenguSkunkworks
"That’s what scares me," Colbert said. "He owes the checks and balances of Washington nothing. Because they tried to stop him and they couldn't. And he's a vindictive person. Merry Christmas."
This just put a finger right on the sense of dread I've been feeling. Nothing that should have stopped Trump did, and now the only people who might be able to won't do it.
edited 22nd Nov '16 1:09:14 AM by RedSavant
It's been fun.I thought she retired!
The Nostalgia Chick, the characterm retired, indeed. Lindsay, the person, however, did not. She have her own channel
now, and it is quite cool.
Anyway, I do agree Trump getting impeached would be less messy than a electoral college revolt, even though it is less satisfying (it would still keep Pence in power, after all). And, unlike a EC revolt, it actually sounds possible.
Given this classy response to a letter to a Republican EC voter
, yeah, I'm not getting my hopes up for an EC revolt either.
Some voters have also written letters directly to the actual electors, the individuals selected by state political parties to cast ballots is what is traditionally considered the ceremonial vote that takes place on December 19.
Though traditionally electors vote for the candidate who won the most votes in their specific states, no federal law or constitutional requirement prevents them from voting for any candidate they choose.
But the chances that electors will change their votes based on the letters and petition is remote at best, as demonstrated by a letter received by one voter who appealed directly to electors about making a vote-switch.
The elector, John E. Harper, described Clinton as “a despicable individual” and signs the letter, “Deplorably yours,” in apparent reference to Clinton’s remark describing a portion of Trump supporters as belonging to a “basket of deplorables.”
Harper also concludes his letter with a threat of “legal action” against the voter, Hannah Moskowitz.
well. i got my first response.
no dear ms. moskowitz, either. how rude. pic.twitter.com/U6gudcJ7az
— DON'T SAY COMIC SANS (@hannahmosk) November 14, 2016
Here is the original letter sent by Moskowitz.
— DON'T SAY COMIC SANS (@hannahmosk) November 14, 2016
The elector, John E. Harper, is a former mayer of Rowlett, Texas, a Dallas suburb of about 58,000. Harper resigned in 2011 with two years left in his mayoral term, over a dispute with the city manager — and what Harper claimed were “name-calling and unwarranted personal attacks on my integrity and character.”
Bless his heart. How the fuck do you even get to be an EC voter after being forced to resign as mayor?
edited 22nd Nov '16 1:34:42 AM by Krieger22
I have disagreed with her a lot, but comparing her to republicans and propagandists of dictatorships is really low. - An idiot^I saw another article about the EC that mentioned some New Hampshire or somewhere EC member is a 22-year-old college student. What the heck?
I mean, at least they're not all old white people, but does the organization just pick names out of a hat every year and say 'okay, you get to cast the symbolic votes now'?
It's been fun.The Adam Ruins Everything episode covering voting illustrated nicely just how dumb the EC is. And how messed up voting in the U.S.A. is in general.
Honestly, it's not really a surprise voter apathy is so prevalent in the U.S.A.
One wonders how different the U.S.A. would be if voting weren't such a pain in the ass.
edited 22nd Nov '16 2:09:18 AM by M84
Disgusted, but not surprisedBill Maher on Real Time (8/11/16): “The Democratic Party…made the white working man feel like you’re problems aren’t real because you’re ‘mansplaining’ and check your privilege.”
It began days after the election, when evergreen PC-hater Bill Maher (Real Time, 11/11/16
) lashed out at “political correctness” for Trump’s win, based on what appears to be a gut feeling he had:
''You’re outrageous with your politically correct bullshit and it does drive people away. And Islam. You know? Islam. Democrats, there is a terrorist attack, and Democrats’ reaction is “don’t be mean to Muslims,” instead of how can we solve the problem of shit blowing up in America. And, you know, that’s not a good way to get votes.''
Even by the standards of TV blowhards, little argument was offered. Maher, like the others advancing this trope, just took his pre-existing hang-up—in his case, what he sees as liberal coddling of Muslims—and projected it onto the electorate.
Since Trump sold himself as “politically incorrect,” it logically follows that some original PC leftist sin helped fuel his rise.
Two days later, Vox (11/15/16
) would run a softball interview with Jon Haidt, a noted NYU social psychologist and diversity skeptic
, headlined “Why Social Media Is Terrible for Multiethnic Democracies. ” Vox Editor Ezra Klein teed up by tweeting, “Interesting
: Jon Haidt on why ‘diversity, immigration and multiculturalism’ are ripping apart Western democracies.” Clouded in academic trappings and qualifiers, Haidt advances some fairly toxic victim-blaming:
Multiculturalism and diversity have many benefits, including creativity and economic dynamism, but they also have major drawbacks, which is that they generally reduce social capital and trust and they amplify tribal tendencies.
The academic basis for such a claim aside, Haidt has made a leap from “multiculturalism and diversity” to the specific instance of Trump’s election, based on vague notions of “amplified tribal tendencies.” Who helps amplify those tendencies, and who profits from our history of white “tribalism,” isn’t broached, much less dissected. It’s simply an inevitable law of sociology, and no one—save, of course, the minorities guilty of “identity politics”—are held liable. Haidt continued:
A multiethnic society is a very hard machine to assemble and get aloft into the air, and if you get it just right, you can get a multiethnic society to fly, but it easily breaks down. And identity politics is like throwing sand in the gears.
Politics is always about factions, always about competing groups. At the time of the founders, those groups involved economic interests—the Northern industrialists versus the Southern agrarians and so on.
But in a world in which factions are based on race or ethnicity, rather than economic interests, that’s the worst possible world. It’s the most intractable world we can inhabit, and it’s the one that will lead to the ugliest outcome.
Interviewer Sean Illing lets these highly contestable, downpunching claims go unchallenged, namely the false dichotomy asserted by Haidt—and one very common in this backlash—that economic populism and identity politics are somehow mutually exclusive.
This, of course, isn’t true. Advancing economic populism while understanding that particular groups have specific concerns—such as freedom from discrimination—has always been a mainstay of left politics. Those insisting it has to be either/or likely care about neither, and are content maintaining the status quo.
This was followed by three anti–identity politics pieces published on the same day in the two leading centrist establishment newspapers:
- “The Danger of a Dominant Identity” (David Brooks, New York Times 11/18/16
)
- “Higher Education Is Awash with Hysteria. That Might Have Helped Elect Trump” (George Will, Washington Post, 11/18/16
)
- “The End of Identity Liberalism” (Mark Lilla, New York Times 11/18/16
)
Brooks began by positioning a strawman: that “pollsters reduced complex individuals to a single identity” and assumed they would all vote accordingly:
Pollsters assumed women would vote primarily as women, and go for Hillary Clinton. But a surprising number voted against her. They assumed African-Americans would vote along straight Democratic lines, but a surprising number left the top line of the ballot blank.
The pollsters reduced complex individuals to a single identity, and are now embarrassed. But pollsters are not the only people guilty of reductionist solitarism. This mode of thinking is one of the biggest problems facing this country today.
But Brooks never cites a single pollster that actually did this—likely because none did. Pollsters argued that certain groups would have a greater or lesser tendency to vote for Clinton, not that they any would vote uniformly. Never mind, though—Brooks has a pre-existing grievance with identity politics, and showing it somehow tricked pollsters is essential to contriving this grievance into his piece.
In typical Brooks fashion, he went on to equate anti-racism with racism:
But it’s not only racists who reduce people to a single identity. These days it’s the anti-racists, too. To raise money and mobilize people, advocates play up ethnic categories to an extreme degree.
To fight back, people targeted by racists occasionally “raise money and mobilize people” who, like them, are also targeted by racists. The horror! “Why isn’t there a White History Channel?” inanity has its most influential booster, and he’s a bespectacled “moderate” at the New York Times.
George Will, whose piece is too lazy to examine in depth, does what George Will has been doing for 30 years: He lists off some anecdotes of ostensibly goofy political correctness, then tacks on a half-assed concluding paragraph about how it “might have” led to Trump.
Mark Lilla’s op-ed is much longer and far more pernicious. The Columbia historian doesn’t even bother to attach his statements to sociology, instead speaking in solipsistic terms about his own trip to Europe. Like Haidt, he engages in false dichotomy, presenting Clinton’s appeal to blacks and LGBTQ as somehow dismissive of the “white working class”:
But when it came to life at home, she tended on the campaign trail to lose that large vision and slip into the rhetoric of diversity, calling out explicitly to African-American, Latino, LGBT and women voters at every stop. This was a strategic mistake. If you are going to mention groups in America, you had better mention all of them. If you don’t, those left out will notice and feel excluded. Which, as the data show, was exactly what happened with the white working class and those with strong religious convictions.
Lilla provided no evidence, even anecdotally, that the white working class felt “left out.” It’s just something he asserts, but never connects the dots.
He went on to glibly dismiss writing that focused on specific communities, mocking stories about transgender people in Egypt:
However interesting it may be to read, say, about the fate of transgender people in Egypt, it contributes nothing to educating Americans about the powerful political and religious currents that will determine Egypt’s future, and indirectly, our own. No major news outlet in Europe would think of adopting such a focus.
Except one European paper, the Guardian, did adopt such a focus last year (in a wonderful piece
everyone should read). Lilla’s screed can’t seem get its straw liberals in order.
Similarly, he laments “high school curriculums” that focused on “the achievements of women’s rights movements” while ignoring “the founding fathers’ achievement in establishing a system of government based on the guarantee of rights.” No evidence is offered of these high schools that have erased the “founding fathers” from history classes, nor is it clear why it’s so urgent women’s rights studies pay due deference to Thomas Jefferson and Co. over the scores of other philosophers who’ve written on the issue of rights.
Others, such as the Des Moines Register’s Froma Harrop (11/15/16
), Reason’s Robby Soave (11/9/16
) and Damon Linker and Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, both at The Week (11/16/16
, 11/18/16
), also piled on—as did “new atheist” personality David Rubin
◊ and popular comedy writer Seth MacFarlane
. These 11 high-status observers agreed: The PC police fueled the Trump backlash.
There’s only one problem: There isn’t really any evidence provided. No studies proffered, no exit poll dissecting, no empirical basis for this conclusion at all. It’s just a vague feeling, something that seems true. There’s a supposed problem—an excess of political correctness and identity politics—but it’s not connected to the topic at hand: the election of Donald J. Trump.
But let’s be generous. Even if, for the sake of argument, one accepts the premise that “political correctness” fueled Trump’s success, what’s missing from the conversation is that few people—the above pundits not excepted—derive their ideas of political correctness from first-hand experiences.
Often the perception of “political correctness” is heavily filtered through Fox News and right-wing radio’s cartoon version
of it. Day in and day out, center and center-right outlets highlight
and distort the most obscure excesses
, typically on college campuses, to feed a narrative to its audience that white men are under siege by conspiratorial liberal forces. But the majority of Trump’s supporters haven’t been to college in decades, nor are they interfacing first-hand with these academic enclaves; rather, they’re presented with anecdotes on television and a bustling market of anti-liberal films
that stoke a vision of a dystopian PC police state.
To this extent, liberals couldn’t really dial down the “identity politics” in an effort to assuage white conservatives even if they wanted to; the Murdochian echo chamber will just move the goalposts and cherry-pick new outrages. Centrists and liberals accepting the premise of out-of-control political correctness as something that can be dialed down have done all of the heavy-lifting for the right wing—and, increasingly, white supremacist forces—without critically analyzing whether the average voter’s perception of “safe spaces” and “thought-policing” is at all connected to objective reality.
Same with immigration, terrorism and a whole host of right-wing soft spots: They are serious issues, to an extent, but they are racialized and then magnified a thousandfold by a partisan media machine that feeds off and profits greatly from white grievance. Playing into its hands by telling the most vulnerable populations to shut up and table their pursuit of rights won’t prevent these panics; it’ll only feed into the basic premise that it’s a problem in the first place—all the while putting the burden of fighting Trumpism on the backs of those most vulnerable to its ugly effects.
A lack of sufficient economic populism on Clinton’s part is a reasonable critique, and one some of these pundits are perhaps hinting at. But absence of populism isn’t evidence that “identity politics” is to blame; it’s evidence that Clinton’s economic outlook is centrist, and would be regardless of whether she said “black lives matter” or targeted messages to the LGBTQ community.
Every one of the above pundits who is blaming identity politics and political correctness for Trump, it can’t be stressed enough, hated identity politics to begin with, and would have regardless of who won. They’re jamming a long-held dislike into a topical and convenient narrative—an act that could be dismissed as cynical self-flattery if it wasn’t, in the face of an upsurge
of reactionary politics, also helping provide ideological cover for racists and demagogues.
Adam Johnson is a contributing analyst for FAIR.org. You can follow him on Twitter at @AdamJohnsonNYC.
@Tengu: Impeachment of a sitting president is reserved for "high crimes and misdimeanors" and requires a majority in the House and a 2/3rds majority in the Senate (the latter following what is essentially a trial). That means not only does Donald have to get caught at something impeachment worthy during his term but is would have to be something that convinces enough Republicans to break party ranks and vote against him.
Impeachment has a history of being abused for political motives and though there have been two impeachments in our history, neither has passed the 2/3rds vote needed to be convicted at trial. The one time a sitting president, Nixon, did get caught in doing stuff serious enough that impeachmet would have been certain, he resigned before it got to that point.
edited 22nd Nov '16 4:16:57 AM by Elle
Going back to the media-bashing by Trump, I feel people are missing what could be (or maybe not, maybe I'm just being paranoid) a potentially crucial facet of it as a political strategy. Sure, it's obviously petty and childish, but it could also be a calculated ploy to disenfranchise the already-untrustworthy main media in favor of modern social networking platforms he can control more directly. If he persisted with it as a theme of his presidency, it could give him enormous street cred with younger voters and maybe even help swing enough for reelection, if the Democrats are stupid enough to push forward an opposing candidate that can't challenge him effectively on the point. Being the favored corporatist candidate certainly didn't help Clinton one damn bit.
But as concerned as I am for how he could use this to manipulate people, I refuse to feel sympathy for the mainstream media. If this actually hastens their slide into obsolescence I can only hope the Democrats find ways to equally benefit from it. If the news companies were doing their damn jobs, we would never have come to this point in the first place.
Furthermore, I think Guantanamo must be destroyed.From that elector letter:
And wow, his response was incredibly unprofessional.
edited 22nd Nov '16 6:04:43 AM by Pseudopartition
@ Elle
I know, lol
However I do still believe my point stands. Realistically I feel it is much more likely that twenty republicans will break ranks and impeach Mr Trump should he be guilty of a major misconduct than enough electoral college would turn faithless elector to change the outcome of the election.
While Mr Clinton's impeachment failed (I should point out with a significant number of republicans breaking ranks and voting against), Mr Nixon’s resignation was almost certainly caused by the perception that his impeachment was extremely likely to pass. Personally I would be happy with either result, since Mr Trump would be gone, and in a constitutional way.
edited 22nd Nov '16 7:26:55 AM by TenguSkunkworks

@ Elle Yes, but isn’t that what impeachment is for? There are perfectly legal ways to get rid of presidents without resorting to extra/quasi-extralegal means.
An impeachment would have much more legitimacy than a reliance on “faithless electors” I think.
@ Ogodei I agree that military coups can potentially remove very bad governments from office (most of my friends here actually think the military did the right thing in their latest intervention).
I do say however, that this sets a bad example on a global level. Most of us here I notice are progressives like myself, and one thing I think people in the west need to understand is that most “populists” who rely on the less-educated/poorer majority are not right winged nuts. In most nations left winged parties rely on these grassroot votes.
If the American left does not accept the results of the electoral mandate, I fear that the elites (educated, typically conservative, prosperous minority) will follow their example and remove elected leaders chosen by the voice of the less educated majority. This will not help the progressive cause at all.
@ Draghinazzo I agree that Mr Trump as PEOTUS does pose novel challenges to American democracy, but there are checks and balances to counter that. Much of the older, more moderate republican old-guards still remain in congress and the senate, I am pretty sure they will counter his more insane ideas.
Besides I will be very surprised if Mr Trump does not get impeached within his first term.
@henry42 Interestingly, no! Fascism is inherently abhorrent to all civilised men, but it is not strictly speaking illegal. I think it should be though :P
edited 21st Nov '16 9:59:02 PM by TenguSkunkworks