Clinton won both the popular vote and the EC. Trump lost the popular vote. That’s the difference.
Politicians who will be running for reelection in the next couple of years - reelections that will be settled by the popular vote, remember - should not lose sight of that point.
Clinton got more votes that any other candidate in that election.
Yet Republicans never, ever let up about ‘The Majority didn’t vote for Clinton!’ until the '96 election.
Why does Trump get a free pass? Not only did the majority not vote for him, he got fewer votes than his opponent.
Mmm-hmm. Sure.
My point is that anything except the electoral college is irrelevant in the discussion. Yes Hillary won more votes than the Donald. He won more states and counties. Niether won 50% plus of the vote. All is irrelevant to the discussion of Trumps legitimacy.
In 2004 W, beat Kerry by a comfortable margin in the popular vote, and actually from memory won an outright majority. If a few thousand votes in Ohio had gone to Kerry, he not W would have won the electoral college.
Do you think that would have made Kerry illegitimate? I don’t think so.
Then why did you bother bringing up the issue of Bill Clinton’s popular-vote percentage, which by your own assertion is irrelevant?
If you’re going to maintain that popular-vote percentages mean nothing and the only thing that counts is EC victory and consequent assumption of office, fine. But in that case, stop dragging in red herrings about popular-vote percentages in earlier elections.
Nobody is saying the election was illegitimate. Quit punching that straw.
What we are saying is that winning the EC doesn’t mean you are liked, popular, or have a clear mandate from the majority of the population.
A crowd-rabbler like Trump needs to be reminded of that. Constantly.
Nonsense. That the Electoral College is the deciding factor in determining the winner of the presidential race does not mean that it’s the only factor.
This is especially true in the US because the presidential race is not the only race that matters for setting and implementing an agenda. Those upcoming elections (and there will always be another election) will be settled by the popular vote. The many, many, politicians who will need to implement Donald’s agenda need to be very aware that the Popular Vote is not happy.
When the politicians who are responsible for implementing Trump’s agenda go back to their voters, they would be smart not to say, “I know that you didn’t vote for Donald but he won so your voices don’t matter. Now vote for me!”
Obviously not. Next question?
I can pretty much guarantee you Trump knows all that already and it doesn’t matter to him in the slightest.
What he cares about is that he won the presidency. And he did it by deliberately focusing on winning the Electoral College vote and not caring about the so-called popular vote.
And why should he? He won in the way he set out to win and the levers of power are now in his hands. And whatever questionable additional influence or ability to get things done that might result from his having had a true mandate are more than offset by the fact that Republicans control all branches of government right now, plus most state governorships, and that the Supreme Court will likely be making rulings that favor Republican perspectives for a generation or more.
In other words, questions of mandate and marches and crowd sizes are meaningless. He won the Super Bowl and couldn’t care less about arguments over which team had the most fans in the stadium or that people are demonstrating in the parking lot because they don’t like that he won. He goes home with the trophy and the ring and the glory and the power and they go home to sulk. And believe me that suits him just fine.
Sounding a lot like Mitch McConnell there. That’s a bad sign for your personal karma.
Considering the time and effort he and his staff have spent on lying about crowd sizes, I think your certainty about what Trump doesn’t care about is probabyl not warranted.
It so does not bother him that he had to complain about millions of ‘illegal voters’ and insist he won the popular vote ‘by a landlslide’.
Sure thing, S.A, sure thing.
The ‘popular vote’ margin is less than 3 million out of about 128 million votes cast. And most of those came from areas that always vote Democrat anyway. When you combine that with the fact that less than a third of the country identifies as liberal anyway (with the remainder pretty evenly split between moderate and conservative) it’s hardly a slam dunk that the so-called popular (i.e., Democratic) vote against Trump is going to cause much consternation in the next midterm election cycle, especially when the positive or negative fallout of two years of a Trump administration are taken into account.
How, exactly, do you know where those votes came from?
He’s merely playing to his supporters and trying to keep the opposition from gaining the upper hand. Same with disputes over crowd size. How anyone could think a guy that could stand up in front of virtually every power broker in the country and lambaste them the way he did in his inauguration speech is thin-skinned or worried about what people think of him is a complete mystery to me. Donald Trump is and always has been about the least concerned over what people think of him on a personal level as anyone in the country. He says and does what he thinks he needs to say or do and he’s never been constrained in any way by whether or not people approve of it or like him for it. Not. at. all!
He is fearless is taking on centers of political power is undeniably true. As is the fact that he notoriously easy to provoke i.e he is thin-skinned. One does not exclude the other.
OK, so you feel that outright lying and inventing shit to oversome shortcomings is perfectly acceptable in this matter?
Again, another issue he could have ignored or downplayed. Instead, more lies in the face of reality.
Because we’ve seen his late night tantrums. We’ve seen him make attacks on people for days where simply remaining silent would have been a smart move (attack a Gold Star Family, who did that appeal to again?). He had a shitfit when the first protests happened, etc. etc.
His inauguration speech was nothing more than his bullying. A bully is often thin-skinned. Your evidence is wanting.
You went full alternative facts, S.A.
Which is why he mentioned his penis size at a debate. And why he told Comedy Central that they were not allowed to make certain types of jokes about him.
:dubious: Gee, and in order to achieve that it’s necessary for him to spend a significant chunk of a speech to CIA officials dishonestly whining about the media (correctly) describing turnout for his inauguration?
In fact, the media weren’t lying about estimates of crowd sizes. Moreover, it’s not as though Trump doesn’t have more important issues to address with the CIA:
If this is the sort of self-obsessed approach that Trump’s supporters require in order to prevent “the opposition from gaining the upper hand”, it appears that he may pay a heavy price for it in the form of being widely perceived as a shallow, narcissistic, dishonest huckster.
And why he berated his successor for lower ratings…on a TV show!
How you could imagine the buffoon doesn’t care what people think is a complete mystery to me. The evidence is there, and you don’t even have to look for it.