Mourning in America - Trump Year One: November '16 to

It's a small point, but in addition to the demagoguery thing, the "elector" method had some kind of common sense logic to it in an era before mass media: most voters, the Framers thought, would have no idea who to pick for President! Not because they were under the sway of demagogues but because they lived on farms or in small towns and villages, hadn't necessarily traveled farther than the next hill, etc. Maybe they wouldn't have heard of any of the people offering themselves as candidates - but they would know and trust, perhaps, a roving circuit court judge or somebody like that, and trust them to be informed and make a good choice. District-level contests for electors would be a matter (they ostensibly believed) of good character and judgement, not particular matters of politics. This is elitist too, in a different kind of way, and doesn't mean that the system isn't democratic - but it's another part of the picture.

The main thing though is the power of slave-holding planter elites (such as Madison, Jefferson, and Washington) to maintain a disproportionate hold on the government, since the "three-fifths compromise" that topped up Congressional numbers for slave states did the same for electors. The Fourteenth Amendment did away with that but in a sense a great deal of the history of American politics since 1788 has been about elites in some states trying to disenfranchise black voters while still hanging onto the representative numbers they yield. Today's assholes are the descendants of the Southern bloc who used these numbers to stave off federal interference in Jim Crow for decades, who in turn were the descendants of those who used these numbers to make the nation's pre-Civil-War politics revolve around their slave-owning order.

Tillerman new SoS - wow.

Tillerson oops

so a SoS that was the CEO of ExxonMobil, and a president that says we should have seized Iraq's oil fields (“You’re not stealing anything,” Trump said. “We’re reimbursing ourselves … at a minimum, and I say more. We’re taking back $1.5tn to reimburse ourselves.”)

this will be really fun when we inevitably find ourselves invading a country that coincidentally has a bunch of oil

"Between Russian hacking and the nearly 3 million popular vote deficit, isnt this like exactly the situation the EC was designed to prevent?"

not getting my hopes up but I wouldn't be surprised if the EC wound up not electing him. (I don't think this is going to happen, but if it did, I don't know that I'd be that surprised at this point)

I would be surprised.

I both feel it is absolutely the electors responsibility not to allow him to take office and that they will fail to live up to that responsibility. That said, I will not be fully accepting that this nightmare is happening until after they meet.

i'm not getting my hopes up

This exxon sos "top choice" is too ridiculous. Why did he even flirt with the idea of semi-normal choices then?

I don't know how I'd convinced myself that the actual election of Donald Trump was the most fucked up thing I would ever experience when said election was really nothing more than the catalyst for an entire cluster of fucked up things that were sure to follow.

The NYT article on Tillerson is good. It's pretty much just 'yeah, dude has ties to Russia, and here's how Trump can help his Russian business dealings flourish'. It's all so nakedly fucking evil.

If enough electors were to revolt and fail to elect Trump the great irony would be that one anti-democratic aspect of the electoral college would be negated by another, even more anti-democratic aspect of the electoral college.

But it won't happen. If there were as many as five "faithless electors" it would be genuinely shocking. It has been more than a century since there was more than one in any election.

yeah it's just not gonna happen

swift impeachment seems more likely, tbh, and that's not gonna happen either

yup

yup :/

Impeachment will happen -- along with some sort of criminal trial down the line for something -- but it will be too late

He's going to get bolder and bolder and do more and more fucked up things until eventually it can't be ignored

keep dreaming

i just saw that he spent a good amount of time complaining that it was "person of the year" instead of "man of the year"

i know this is the kind of distraction that specializes in but uuuuuuuugh stfu

Time should change it to Woman of the Year just for him.

Not enough people are picking on him. It should be happening all of the time until he has a stroke. I want him to have a stroke so bad.

He was going on about that in yesterday's rally, repeatedly declaring that the women in the crowd all agreed with him that it should be "man of the year".

I hate America

Trump's approval rating would have to stay under 30% a while before the Republican congress would dream of impeaching Trump. And even then they'd only do it because they could count on Pence to continue signing off on their radical right agenda.

from FB:

"I'm starting to think that the GOP's master plan this election was to get behind Trump just to get into the White House, then when the time is right, use their majorities in the House and Senate to impeach him and put GOP hardliner Pence in the hot seat. Either Trump will do something illegal (colluding with Russia, conflict of interest with his businesses, etc.), or they already have dirt on him they're just waiting to use when he's in office. It would explain the about-face the GOP leadership has taken in dealing with Trump, if ultimately, they know they're just biding their time until they give him the boot."

that would be a dumb plan. i'd imagine people would just become disgusted with republicans after that sort of ordeal. (that said, i don't trust my powers of interpreting how the american people think anymore.)

yeah actually sort of fine with that scenario. Pence is an unpopular christo-crat and would be beaten like a rug in 2020. Trump? who the fuck even knows.

There are tens of millions of racists, sexists, homophobes and other xenophobes who would be okay with that. As long as the guy on top isn't taking away the nobility of people's misery, they don't care who it is.

pence is a pretty textbook shithead republican and id wager the legislature might prefer working with one of their kind as opposed to legit wildcard in trump. also if trump goes so goes bannon and kushner and the competing narratives of power are replaced by a unified gop vision

preibus obviously has trump's ear and is an instrument of the party but the other advisors are motivated by different things and won't, i would assume, be easy to control

those idiots in the republican leadership are in over their heads, reince included

i don't think they have any sort of plot, they are just all about trump bc he is going to cooperate with their radical antigovernment agenda. but he is a legitimate psychopath with criminal intention and the wolves he has brought into the whitehouse are going to make karl rove look like atticus finch.

lol

*is bringing. it hasn't happened yet.

starting to think that the GOP's master plan

I'm not buying it. Everything keys off Trump's popularity with the base. Conflict of interest with his businesses won't cause even a blip in that. Not even colluding with Russia. At this point, I suspect even a video of him in bed with a 13 year old probably wouldn't kill him off. He just needs to keep up flattering the worst prejudices of the base and symbolically pissing on the heads of people they hate.

I don't see it happening. While I'm certain the GOP leadership, i.e. McConnell would actually breathe a sigh of relief should Pence become elevated to the presidency, leadership is too frightened of the base to actually scheme to get rid of Trump. Plus, that's not how politics works.

I'm reminded of what I've read of the Harding years: a decent moron of a man, condescended to by his former Senate colleagues, presides over worst corruption since the Grant years, dies in office, elevates Calvin Coolidge, who is much more the GOP's man.

except Trump is not decent

Plus, that's not how politics works.

Everything I thought I knew about how politics works went out the window last month.

they're not going to get away with this. this administration of thieves and extremists he is putting together is going to do something that will discredit the GOP for good. i don't know what. and as sleepingbag has pointed out my prognostications are not so reliable. but it will be something and it will be bad.

i could be wrong... stuff could just slide into shittiness while the media and larger society re-calibrates its expectations. he could trash the country and leave office without fanfare, with a 30% approval or something. but that's not what i think will happen.

I'm just going to expect that everything I don't want to happen will, and the more I fantasize about something going horribly wrong for him/them, the more they'll succeed. Just basing that on the trajectory since he announced his candidacy.

Defeatism is not useful

you say that, but give it a shot, you never do know

Sorry! Just venting. I would love for a scenario Treeship is describing to play out. It's really amazing though how immune he is to every disaster that seems to be lined up for him. Like Mr. Magoo.

he is putting together is going to do something that will discredit the GOP for good.

My ears are deaf from the death knells rung for the GOP since 2006, 1974, 1964...at best we can hope for smaller GOP congressional minorities and a Dem president in 2020.

this guy is like a cartoon mobster though. we never had a gop president like that before.

treeship you need to lie down, bud, i say this sincerely

if anyone is going to "stroke out" it is going to be you. relax.