Tag: 2016 Election

It’s not about the candidates — it’s about the parties (Part 2)

People who vote for anyone other than Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton — or who don’t vote — will have unwittingly voted for one of these two candidates. So when the polls close on November 8, we still will have made a choice between two ideological extremes, the tenets of which are expressed in the platforms of the Democrat and Republican parties.

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In Part 1, I outlined the only three possible situations that could even theoretically exist on 11/9/16: 1) Hillary Clinton won 270 or more electoral votes and is President Elect, 2) Donald Trump won 270 or more electoral votes and is President Elect, or 3) neither Clinton nor Trump won 270 or more electoral votes, which according to the Twelfth Amendment, has moved responsibility for selecting our next President and Vice President to the House of Representatives and Senate, respectively.  I also pointed out why regardless of which of these is the outcome, the ultimate result will be the same — i.e., we will have made a choice between two ideological extremes, the tenets of which are expressed in the platforms of the Democrat and Republican parties. Furthermore, I outlined why people who vote for anyone other than Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton — or who don’t vote — will have unwittingly voted for one of these two candidates.

Also in Part 1 of this post, I said I would include in this Part 2 a simple table that boils the “planks” from the platforms of the two parties down to their ideological/philosophical positions on ten issues that I think most people would agree highlight the extremes of their two ideologies. Click on this link to display that table:  Party Philosophy Comparison.  To access the full party platforms themselves [which I suggest in the table that you also read], follow these links: Democrat Party Platform; Republican Party Platform.

In this Part 2, I will provide more detail on Situation #3, which is unlikely but not impossible, and also consider in more depth the question I posed at the end of Part 1: “Why would any citizen of this country take an action [or refrain from taking an action available to them] that they know in advance might actually throw their support toward an election outcome they don’t want?”.

Situation #3 is described in more depth in the section A Closer Look At Outcome #3 below. The significance of this scenario, however, in this election, is simply that the ultimate result of outcome #3 will not be appreciably different from either outcome #1 or #2 — i.e., people who vote for anyone other than Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton — or who don’t vote — will have unwittingly voted for one of these two candidates.  So when the polls close on November 8, we still will have made a choice between two ideological extremes, the tenets of which are expressed in the platforms of the Democrat and Republican parties [see links referenced above].

So What Influence Can Non-Trump / Non-Clinton Votes, or Not Voting, Have?

The only possible influence either voting for anybody other than Clinton or Trump, or not voting, could have is to throw the election to the House of Representatives [Situation #3 above].  If these votes are insufficient to produce that outcome, those casting them [or refraining from voting] will have essentially voted for either Clinton or Trump, and there is no way they can predict in advance which one they will have unwittingly voted for.

So back to the question “Why would any citizen of this country take an action [or refrain from taking an action available to them] that they know in advance might actually throw their support toward an election outcome they don’t want?”.  I can think of no other reasons than these: 1) not understanding the current process for electing a president [what we would like that process to be is irrelevant for this election]; or 2) allowing how he/she “feels” about voting for Clinton or voting for Trump to govern his/her voting decision, rather than choosing between ideologies that will determine what kind of country we will be a generation from now. Before moving on to an expanded description of situation #3 [see opening paragraph of this post], I would like to suggest consideration of the following facts I gleaned from a recent article in USA Today [original sources, which I consider credible, were quoted within the article]:

  • More than 92 million Americans who were eligible to vote four years ago didn’t vote. This is more than eighteen times Barack Obama’s margin of victory over Mitt Romney. The highest rate of voter turnout since World War II was 63.8% in 1960. It spiked again to 61.6% in 2008.
  • More than eight in ten say they are following news about the candidates closely [the highest level of interest in a quarter century]. Eight in ten say they have thought “quite a lot” about the election. Three of four say it “really matters” who wins.
  • Two-thirds call the tone of the campaign too negative, and only four in ten are satisfied with their choices [the lowest level in two decades]. Just one in ten say either candidate would make a good president. Four in ten say neither would. “It’s not: ‘How much do I like these people?'” says Jan Leighley, an American University professor and co-author of Who Votes Now? Demographics, Issues, Inequality and Turnout in the United States. “It’s: ‘Does it make a difference between this person I do not like as opposed to that person I do not like?'”

And by the way, for anybody who thinks there are no dishonest practices involved in our elections, consider at least these two recent revelations: 1) a recent Washington Post article revealed that a World War II veteran who died in Virginia in 2014 registered to vote in September 2016; and 2) there is a huge drive underway in Arizona to get masses of Latinos registered to vote.

A Closer Look At Outcome #3

I said above that I would get into a little more depth as to why the ultimate result of outcome #3 would not be appreciably different from either outcome #1 or #2 — i.e., we still will have made a choice between two diametrically opposed ideologies, the tenets of which are expressed in the platforms of the Democrat and Republican parties.  First, let’s look at the process itself.

As outlined in the Twelfth Amendment, if no candidate receives a majority of Electoral votes, the House of Representatives elects the President from the 3 Presidential candidates who received the most Electoral votes. Each state delegation has one vote. The Senate would elect the Vice President from the 2 Vice Presidential candidates with the most Electoral votes. Each Senator would cast one vote for Vice President. If the House of Representatives fails to elect a President by Inauguration Day, the Vice-President Elect serves as acting President until the deadlock is resolved in the House [Source: Archives.gov].

So back to what outcome #3 actually means in the context of the decision that we will have made after the above process has been followed. … If the outcome on November 8 is #3, it will be because of one or more unusual factors in this election.  Those factors are numerous, and are reasons for doubting “tradtional” ways of predicting election outcomes, but the bottom line is that either a Democrat or a Republican will be POTUS, more than likely a Republican.

If this situation occurs, a very interesting choice will have to be made by each of our Representatives and Senators — to cast their vote for either: 1) the person scores of millions of people in their party voted for; or 2) another person a majority of the politicians in the Legislature feel they can align with.

Unless this election also results in a huge shift in the percentage of Democrats in the House [which even Democrats aren’t predicting], the next POTUS, under situation #3, will be Donald Trump unless Democrats can convince 30 Republicans to join with them to elect Hillary Clinton. Despite the rhetoric among some Republicans and the number of them who are distancing themselves from Trump, it is highly unlikely that they would go so far under these circumstances as to actually cast this vote for Hillary Clinton. I suppose it is also remotely possible that the POTUS elected under this scenario could be Gary Johnson — assuming he receives at least one more electoral vote than Jill Stein — but it is difficult for me to imagine a House majority going in that direction.

In the highly politicized and polarized environment that exists today, there is some possibility that “back-office, smoke-filled room” bargaining among Representatives and Senators [e.g., in “gaming” quorum rules applicable to this process] could produce some other outcome. The probability of that scenario unfolding is extremely remote in my opinion — almost nil — so I’m not “fleshing it out” as I did situation #3.

Overall Conclusion for Parts 1 and 2

Bottom line: 1) this election is a clear choice between two ideological extremes, the tenets of which are expressed in the platforms of the Democrat and Republican parties; and 2) if votes for candidates other than Trump or Clinton are insufficient to result in a Twelfth Amendment process for selecting the President and Vice President, those casting them [or refraining from voting] will have essentially voted for either Clinton or Trump, and there is no way they can predict in advance which one they will have unwittingly voted for.  Never in my lifetime has an election had this much weight in determining what America will be a generation into the future.

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Charles M. Jones

It’s not about the candidates — it’s about the parties (Part 1)

Does the title I gave this blog post sound crazy? I’ll attempt in this post (Part 1) and my next post (Part 2) to make it sound not only NOT crazy but perfectly sensible in the context of making an informed decision about “who” [or more importantly, “what”] to vote for in this election [or whether to vote at all].

Does the title I gave this blog post sound crazy? I’ll attempt in this post (Part 1) and my next post (Part 2) to make it sound not only NOT crazy but perfectly sensible in the context of making an informed decision about “who” [or more importantly, “what”] to vote for in this election [or whether to vote at all].

First, if you think it’s possible that on November 8 [election day] any candidate other than Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton will get the 270 electoral votes required to make him/her our next president, all I can do is ask you to study the matter further. If you do that, you will find that you are wrong [almost any credible source of information on election history and the current mechanism in place to elect a president will help you get to that point, including my past blog posts and several of the pages on this web site].

Part 1

I often hear remarks like “I can’t bring myself to vote for ‘that man’ / ‘that woman’ “, and there is frequent reference in the media to Never Trump and Never Hillary constituencies and the historically record-setting unpopularity of both of these candidates.  I’ve mentioned in previous posts that people in these camps need to realize that this election is not about them and how they feel — it’s about the future of America.

Let’s look at all situations that could even theoretically exist on November 9 [or a few days / weeks later if there is a 2000-like situation, but in any event, fairly soon after November 9], and what the ultimate outcome would be in each situation.  The possible situations are the following:

  1. Hillary Clinton won 270 or more electoral votes, regardless of whether or not she won the popular vote. She will be sworn in as POTUS at noon on January 20.
  2. Donald Trump won 270 or more electoral votes, regardless of whether or not he won the popular vote. He will be sworn in as POTUS at noon on January 20.
  3. Neither Clinton nor Trump won 270 or more electoral votes.  This is extremely unlikely, but not impossible. It has not occurred in the last 192 years, and has occurred only twice in our entire 240 year history [1800 and 1824]. There was controversy around the electoral vote counts the 1876 election, too, but the process for resolving that controversy was not the same. In this situation #3, the responsibility of selecting our next POTUS falls on the House of Representatives, and the responsibility of selecting our next VPOTUS falls on the Senate. The details of this outcome will be covered in Part 2 under the heading A Closer Look At Outcome #3.

If either #1 or #2 is the outcome, we will have made a choice between two diametrically opposed ideologies, the tenets of which are expressed in the platforms of the Democrat and Republican parties.  As I said above, it is extremely unlikely that situation #3 will be the outcome — but since it’s not impossible, I’ll take a closer look at it in Part 2.  I’ll proceed at this point, however, under the assumption that the outcome is either #1 or #2, because the ultimate result of outcome #3 will not be appreciably different from either outcome #1 or #2 — i.e., people who vote for anyone other than Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton — or who don’t vote — will have unwittingly voted for one of these two candidates.  So when the polls close on November 8, we still will have made a choice between two ideological extremes, the tenets of which are expressed in the platforms of the Democrat and Republican parties.

In Part 2 of this post, I will include a simple table that boils the “planks” from the platforms of the two parties down to their positions on about ten issues that I think most people would agree highlight the extremes of the two ideologies. Every citizen of this country should become familiar with these party platforms, because in this election, we will be deciding which of these two platforms we align with as a country, and therefore what direction we want to take going forward.

If the candidate you voted for is elected on November 8, you can be happy that our chosen path aligns with his/her [and one would think, your] party’s platform.  If you unwittingly [see A Closer Look At Outcome #3 in Part 2] voted for the candidate that was elected but do not align with his/her party’s platform, you were among those who caused that candidate’s party to prevail, so you bear part of the responsibility for that outcome and will need to live with it even though it was not your preference.

If the candidate you voted for is not elected, you will need to live with movement in the direction of the winning candidate’s party’s platform even though you [one would think] disagree with it.  If this is the outcome, it would behoove all who fit in this category to do everything they can to make the next president a one-term president.  In at least one respect [composition of the Supreme Court], the potential impact of the 2020 election outcome will be much less significant than the outcome on 11/8/16.  By 2020, composition of the Court will definitely have shifted considerably in the direction that is in alignment with the 2016 winning party’s ideology, and it’s quite possible that it could already be set in that direction for a generation [thereby making the 2020 election ineffective from this perspective].  Nonetheless, at least you could say that limiting his/her term to one would be better than acquiescing to eight more years [from now] of current policies and direction.

So the question I would ask is “Why would any citizen of this country take an action [or refrain from taking an action available to them] that they know in advance might actually throw their support toward an election outcome they don’t want?”. I’ll get into that in more depth in Part 2, and I’ll also get to the expanded description of Situation #3 I promised above.  For now, I’ll close this post with what mathematicians write when they have demonstrated a hypothesis to be correct — Q.E.D. [an abbreviation for the Latin phrase quod erat demonstrandum, which means “That which was to be proven”].

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Charles M. Jones

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