With all the recent focus on “fake” news and how much reinforcement happens in the echo chamber on Facebook, with the heavy bias for the conservative point of view, one would think that the progressives would be a bit more cautious, but alas, that appears to not be the case.
The past few days, my Facebook timeline has been loaded with bogus stories about how two computer scientists claim that the results in Wisconsin, Michigan (which hasn’t certified yet) and Pennsylvania look anomalous, and that we should inundate the US DoJ to initiate a review, with a phone number.
No kidding they look anomalous, they have been solidly blue for decades, and Hillary lost them. But, they weren’t rigged, they weren’t stolen, Hillary felt safe ignoring them because the polls showed her solidly leading there, and there were battleground states to focus on.
However, when I saw the Florida results on election night flip solidly red, knowing that she had polled in the lead there by a solid amount, I knew that she was in trouble through the Midwest Democrat firewall. Alas, as the night wore on, the results flipped, and she solidly lost. Not by a lot of votes, but by enough.
I get that you want to believe that Trump rigged the election, and stole it, but looking at his actual ground game, nobody can honestly believe they could pull it off.
The second round of bullshit is the “convince the electors to vote for Clinton versus Trump”. Seriously, this is fantasy land time. Thinking that the electors to the electoral college will sprout some conscience, and just decide to go against the results from their state?
Yeah, that is about as likely as Jessica Alba showing up at my house in a Ferrari to take me on a date. Actually, I would bet that it is much more likely for Jessica Alba to show up.
This flipping of the electoral college would be a significant constitutional crisis. I get that it is looking like Hillary will win the popular vote by more than 2 million votes cast, and that chafes, but the founding fathers setup the constitution with a specific goal to allow smaller population states to have an outsized influence, to prevent the most populous stages to run roughshod over the rest of the country (cough California cough New York).
Add to this the hysteria about abolishing the electoral college, another favorite theme, that is just not going to happen. Turns out that the smaller or less populous states like their outsized influence thankyouverymuch, and will not participate in the amendment process to abolish the electoral college.
Then there is the cry and hue over the bad things Trump is doing. Conflict of interest, nepotism, settling his fraud case. Surely he will be impeached. Surely these rise to the level of impeachment.
They might, but the only mechanism to remove a president is for the House of Representatives to pass Articles of Impeachment, and refer them to the Senate for trial.
Guess what? Both those houses are firmly in Republican control, so what are the odds that they will impeach and find Trump guilty? Anyone? Bueller?
Yeah, not likely (and frankly, if Trump is impeached, convicted and removed, then the far more onerous Mike Pence would become President. He is a regressive, religious, right-wing nutter of an egregious person. Trump might actually be preferable, warts and all.
So, at the end of the day, Trump won, Hillary lost, the Republicans hold all the cards, and unless the Democrats can get their act together for the 2018 midterms, it will be a long time before we toss of the yoke of conservative dogma.
Instead of Trump destroying the Republican party, it is much more likely that the Democrats are mortally wounded, and are facing a desert.
