By Beau Elliot
So the election is over, and the Trumpster is president-elect. Predictable, that in this weird beyond weird election season, we’d wind up taking up residence in Weird City (a Greg Brown phase that I shamelessly stole).
But across the nation, shock that Donald Trump won. Shock, shock, shock. Well, at least it’s not Shock & Awe, which, as we remember, didn’t work out so well in either phase.
I wasn’t shocked. I possess an anti-shock machine, which, generally, you can only get from the U.S. military. I, however, didn’t steal from the U.S. military; a friend built me a shockless machine, a Rube Goldberg apparatus that spins shock into so many ludicrous positions between Rube and Goldberg that eventually shock gets bored and falls asleep. Shockless.
I blame Jeb Bush. He had the money. He had so much money he was backstroking in millions of dollars. He also had the family name. And he was bilingual.
(Not sure exactly how much being bilingual means anymore in America. Used to be, intelligence, too, meant something in America, but, oh well, that’s so old school now. Perhaps it’s so ancient school. People hundreds of years from now will rediscover intelligence in a language that looks like hieroglyphics to them. Good luck finding a Rosetta Stone.)
But Jeb Bush, who should have won the GOP nomination, backstroked himself right into nowhere. (What’s the weather like out there, Jeb?) And then, here came the Trump machine, grinding its bulldozer way into the 1890s and early 20th century and into the hearts of Americans.
Well, certainly not all Americans.
Hillary Clinton won (and is continuing to win) the popular vote by 630,00 or 700,00 votes or so. Some believe she might win that vote by 1 million to 2 million votes.
But the polls, you say. They were so wrong. So, so wrong.
Not really. If you paid attention to Nate Silver, the founder of Fivethirtyeight, he had warned for at least two weeks before Election Day (particularly after the James Comey letter 11 days before the election) that the Trumpster had a path to winning the White House, because of the narrowing polls and particularly because of Clinton’s polling weakness in the swing states.
Or as Silver put it on the morning of Election Day:
“Clinton’s coalition — which relies increasingly on college-educated whites and Hispanics — is somewhat inefficiently configured for the Electoral College, because these voters are less likely to live in swing states. If the popular vote turns out to be a few percentage points closer than polls project it, Clinton will be an Electoral College underdog.”
Well, yeah. Nationally, polls had her up 3 percentage points; she’s probably going to wind up at 1-2 points better. And the Electoral College loser.
As Silver has pointed out, if Clinton wins 2 percentage points more, she wins 307 electoral votes and the White House.
Which brings us, inevitably, to the Electoral College. Twice now in the last five presidential elections, the winner of the popular vote has lost the so-called College. So when most of the American voters speak, they don’t get heard. Or, rather, ignored.
Why, we wonder, are 21st-century American voters saddled with a relic of the 18th century, designed in large part by slave owners who didn’t want a direct election of the president?
So we could have a white, old, president who revels in misogynist, bigoted blustering and appoints a senior adviser with a friendly attitude toward white nationalists?
Apparently.
Gives a whole new meaning to “White House.”