2017 impeachment - because it's never too early

[Ideologue]

Are you making a reference to Hillary winning the popular vote?

If so, this is totally bogus. The rules were clear. Trump played by these rules - and to these rules - to get the most electoral votes. That is why he campaigned in the battleground states. If the election was decided by the popular vote, both he and Hillary would focus on the most populous states. Only an idiot doesn't see that.

Occam's razor suggests that a candidate that wins in a democratic election wins because he is more popular among the electorate.

All I said was that Zanza's post has a factual frailty in it.  Factually speaking, Trump was not more popular among the electorate.  (I assume Zanza is not referring to our 500-some-odd electors as "the electorate," because who would do that?  You?)

"The rules" do not change this fact.  They do (sadly) change the legal outcome of the electorate's choices.  But they absolutely do not change the way that numbers work, and the way numbers work means that more members of the American electorate voted for Clinton than for Trump--a lot more.  Clinton is "more popular" than Trump by this metric.

This does not necessarily make him an illegitimate president.  It does mean that the narrative developing around his election is stupid, and no one should forget how he was elected--not by a majority, nor a plurality, of registered voters, but by the Electoral College.  (I mean, I signed that petition along with a lot of people, but we all know that the EC selecting Clinton ain't happening.  I'd bet on a meteor striking North America, giving Obama the opportunity to stay on as the warlord of the wasteland, before I'd ever bet on that.)

Does it really come down to argument that if "the rules" were in fact different, Trump would have executed a successful plan to get a plurality of the votes cast?  If so, then proceed.  Please, Mart.  I'm all ears on this one.

[The Minsky Moment]

So far though it seems as though Trump is not acting as though he has a massive mandate.  He isn't the most analytical guy but I think he knows that more Americans voted for the other person.  The noises coming out on policy matter so far are heavily slanted to backtracking or compromising on extreme campaign stances.  That could all change fast but so far that is how he is playing it.

Amusingly, the one area where his mandate may prove to have the most weight is in dealing with GOP trads, e.g. on spending.

[Eddie Teach]

the way numbers work means that more members of the American electorate voted for Clinton than for Trump--a lot more.

I don't know that I'd call 47.8% "a lot more" than 47.2%.

[Ideologue]

I mean, it's certainly a hell of a lot more than in 2000.  Anyway, it obviously reflects a value judgment, and my previous assertion of "two million" may be off by about a factor of two (though they are still counting).  And yet, speaking personally, I'd nevertheless consider 800,000 or so people to be "a lot."  (It was still "a lot" at Stalingrad, right?)

[derspiess]

Wonder how many non-citizens voted. Obama assured them they wouldn't get caught.

[jimmy olsen]

First of all, it's Slate I know. But Kaplan is a credible writer.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2016/11/buckle_up_conservatives_are_revolting_against_trump.html

The GOP Civil War Is Just Beginning

Formerly conciliatory Trump skeptics are backing away from the president-elect.

By Fred Kaplan

A mere week after its election-night triumph, the Republican Party is fracturing more deeply and sharply than anyone had anticipated. Donald Trump's simultaneous appointments of Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus and alt-right publisher Stephen Bannon—an establishment moderate and a white-nationalist renegade—to co-equal positions set the stage for what promises to be all-consuming internecine warfare in the White House and beyond.

The split is particularly pronounced in the party's national-security realm, where the latest, clearest—and, to some Republicans, most alarming—sign of discontent is a tweet posted Tuesday morning by a prominent neoconservative scholar named Eliot A. Cohen.

In March, Cohen was a self-proclaimed "ringleader" of a group of 50 former Republican national-security officials who signed a letter in August warning that Trump "lacks the character, values and experience" to be president and "would put at risk our country's national security and well-being." Many of the signatories told friends and journalists that, if Trump won and they were asked to join his cabinet, they'd say no.

After Trump won, some of them reconsidered, including Cohen. In a Nov. 11 article posted in the American Interest, titled "To an Anxious Friend," Cohen wrote that several friends and colleagues had asked him what they should do if Trump offered them a job—and he concluded, with caveats, that they should take it.

"It seems to me," Cohen wrote, "that if they are sure that they would say yes out of a sense of duty rather than mere careerism; if they are realistic in understanding that in this enterprise they will be the horse, not the jockey; if they accept that they will enter an administration likely to be torn by infighting and bureaucratic skullduggery, they should say yes." He added, "Each of us has something to offer in restoring a temper of decency, responsibility, and civility to politics. There is plenty of work for all of us to do, and we would do well to get about it."

Cohen was praised in the Twitter-sphere for his "wise counsel" and public duty. And then came this tweet from Cohen on Tuesday morning:

Eliot A Cohen  ‎@EliotACohen 

After exchange w Trump transition team, changed my recommendation: stay away. They're angry, arrogant, screaming "you LOST!" Will be ugly.

10:07 PM - 15 Nov 2016

I should note, I've been friendly with Cohen for many years. We disagree on many issues, but I regard him as a serious analyst and wise historian. (His book Supreme Command is one of the best studies of civil-military relations; Military Misfortunes, an edifying analysis of failure in warfare; Conquered Liberty, a surprising and entertaining chronicle of our nation's early frontier battles with Canada and how they shaped the American way of war.) His annual seminars on military history, taught to officers, have earned him wide respect inside the armed forces' more intellectual circles. He is sober-minded, sophisticated, not prone to outbursts. In other words, this tweet, in its tone and substance, is uncharacteristic—and for that reason, many of his ilk are taking it seriously.

Cohen told the Washington Post that he'd written the tweet after submitting names for possible national-security positions at the request of a longtime friend who's a senior official on the Trump transition team. His friend's response, Cohen said, was "very weird, very disturbing ... It became clear to me that they view jobs as lollipop things you give out to good boys and girls." His friend, he added, seemed "unhinged."

Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and a neocon who signed a similar anti-Trump letter by 122 national-security experts (and agitated against Trump on his Twitter feed until last week), wrote an op-ed for USA Today after the election, arguing—as Cohen did in his American Interest piece—that #NeverTrumpers shouldn't hesitate to counsel Trump, if just "to save him from himself." However, when I asked Boot this morning about Cohen's retraction, he emailed, "Eliot's tweeting is a matter of concern because it suggests Trump people will stay in their bunker. Heaven help us if they staff the entire admin only with Trump loyalists."

Another Republican who signed the letter, a former senior official who asked not to be identified, said Tuesday that he too had been encouraging fellow skeptics of Trump to serve if they were called (as long as they weren't required to renounce their views—"no need for loyalty oaths"), but that Cohen's email punctured his hopes. Another source of "discouragement," he said, was the announcement that Mike Rogers, the former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and before that an FBI agent, had left Trump's transition team over disputes with the campaign loyalists who seem to be dominating the show.

There is also widespread weariness over reports that the next secretary of state might be Rudy Giuliani, a man with no experience in foreign policy and possibly the least diplomatic personality in American politics, simply because he stood by Trump unwaveringly in good times and bad.

Fasten your seatbelts; it's going to be a bumpy four years.

[Savonarola]

Why were O'Malley, Chafee, or Webb not credible candidates? They won high office before.

Webb suffered from the same problem as Scoop Jackson before him; he's a party of one.  He can be elected Senator from a purple state, but he wouldn't have done well among the sort of Democrat who votes in the primary.

I think SNL captured O'Malley's problems the best when they had his doppelganger say "I did such a good job as Mayor of Baltimore that there were two television shows made about my tenure: "The Wire" and "Homicide, Life on the Street.""

Chafee came across as a lightweight in the debates.  I don't know enough about his tenure as either Senator or Governor to say if that was a fair judgement or not; maybe Tim has some insight there.

[jimmy olsen]

I mean, it's certainly a hell of a lot more than in 2000.  Anyway, it obviously reflects a value judgment, and my previous assertion of "two million" may be off by about a factor of two (though they are still counting).  And yet, speaking personally, I'd nevertheless consider 800,000 or so people to be "a lot."  (It was still "a lot" at Stalingrad, right?)

The gap is over a million now and still climbing. DGuller is going to have to eat his words.

http://time.com/4572295/hillary-clinton-popular-vote-lead/

[jimmy olsen]

The only other Democrat that could have changed the outcome of the primary was Biden. When he chose not to run then Hillary became the far and ahead favorite.

Struggling to think of anyone else who could have changed the dynamics of the primary.

Warren could have done it too. She and Biden are the only ones who could have really shaken up the race by entering.

[katmai]

Wonder how many non-citizens voted. Obama assured them they wouldn't get caught.

[jimmy olsen]

Why were O'Malley, Chafee, or Webb not credible candidates? They won high office before.

Webb suffered from the same problem as Scoop Jackson before him; he's a party of one.  He can be elected Senator from a purple state, but he wouldn't have done well among the sort of Democrat who votes in the primary.

I think SNL captured O'Malley's problems the best when they had his doppelganger say "I did such a good job as Mayor of Baltimore that there were two television shows made about my tenure: "The Wire" and "Homicide, Life on the Street.""

Chafee came across as a lightweight in the debates.  I don't know enough about his tenure as either Senator or Governor to say if that was a fair judgement or not; maybe Tim has some insight there.

Fair judgement. He's a shadow of the man his father was.

[Ideologue]

Tim: and no matter what, you have to consider that an abysmal failure of democracy as it is usually understood (e.g., by Zanza's post).  Maybe it's not a failure of American constitutional democracy in specific.  But then again, the EC was created for exactly this situation, but (of course) what they will actually do is cast their votes for the unfit demagogue--which means that all the EC is, or really ever has been, is extra votes for sovereign states.  Awesome.

P.S. I don't think anybody the Dems could've plausibly run would've won.  Maybe Biden.  Maybe Obama 2, Obama's secret clone.  I mean, obviously I voted for Sanders in the primary, and thus I must've thought he could win at the time.  But in retrospect, I dunno.

[The Minsky Moment]

First of all, it's Slate I know. But Kaplan is a credible writer.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2016/11/buckle_up_conservatives_are_revolting_against_trump.html

TrumpGOP is going judenrein.  Mnuchin is hanging by a thread.

[Eddie Teach]

Chafee came across as a lightweight in the debates.  I don't know enough about his tenure as either Senator or Governor to say if that was a fair judgement or not; maybe Tim has some insight there.

Lightweight or not, he was a Republican who flipped so had very little chance in the primary.

[DGuller]

There was an interesting article in NRO that argues CLinton's win in the popular vote is (mostly) meaningless.

The point was that both candidates knew that the election was going to be won in the Electoral College, and both candidates tailored their campaigns accordingly.  There was a reason they spent so much time in places like Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania - these were swing states, where just a relative handful of votes could make a massive difference.

If the election was held purely by popular vote though, the campaigns would be very different.  It would be about maximizing turnout no matter where.  No one is going to bother with New Hampshire, for example.  Instead CLinton will do event after event on the west coast, trying to drive up turnout.  Trump would do event after event in Texas trying to do the same.

It would be a very different kind of election, and nobody could say for sure what the outcome would have been.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/442170/hillary-clinton-popular-vote-victory-meaningless

Of course.  It's same in auto-racing, where championship points systems have a tendency to change rather frequently.  You always have those arguments that "so and so would've won the championship under the old points system", which conveniently ignores the fact that everyone knowingly competed under the new system.  That doesn't mean that some systems aren't more legitimate than others in general, but no system will ever be legitimate when imposed after the fact.