Crunching the Post-Election Numbers

My understanding is that there are hundreds of thousands of absentee/mail-in ballots that have yet to be counted in states like California, Washington and Utah. It'll be weeks before we have the full, final election count, but here's where we stand right now.

128,620,303 votes have been counted. That's over 400,000 fewer votes than in 2012. Again, it's still possible that 2016 will exceed 2012's vote total, but compared the number of eligible voters, it still means turnout was down. Not the lowest in 20 years as some reported. But it is down. It looks like Trump will get Michigan so the final electoral college count is 306-232.

The popular vote count in 2016:
Clinton - 61,350,758 (47.7%)
Trump - 60,583,838 (47.1%)
Others - 6,685,707 (5.2%)

The popular vote count in 2012:
Obama - 65,915,795 (51.1%)
Romney - 60,933,504 (47.2%)
Others - 2,236,107 (1.7%)

Obama won 26 states, plus DC. This time Clinton won 20 plus DC. Six-state swing. Those states were Florida, Ohio, Iowa, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan. Plus she lost the 1 Nebraska electoral vote Obama had won. 100 electoral votes.

If she gets 69,000 more votes in Pennsylvania, 14,000 more votes in Michigan, and 28,000 more votes in Wisconsin, she's the next president.

Why Utahns Should and Should Not Vote for Donald Trump

WHY UTAHNS SHOULD VOTE FOR TRUMP
1. He would bring change.
2. His list of Supreme Court nominees is pretty good.
3. He's the Republican nominee, and as such, the GOP-led House and Senate might be able to get more legislation passed.
4. He's not Hillary Clinton.

WHY UTAHNS SHOULD NOT VOTE FOR TRUMP
1. In many ways, he's worse than Hillary Clinton, and she's going to win the election anyway.
2. He's a textbook narcissist and arguably the worst candidate for president in history.
3. It would send a message that Utah puts principle above party.
4. He's not really a Republican. He's a populist nationalist that encourages violence, prejudice, and paranoia.
5. He craves power so he can use and abuse it, and that's not a good attribute in a vindictive man who can be baited with a tweet.
6. He's wildly, flamboyantly dishonest.
a. He said Bush knew about the 9/11 attack beforehand.
b. He said he was always against the war in Iraq when everyone's heard him tell Howard Stern in 2002 otherwise.
c. He tried pushing stories like Ted Cruz's father was behind the JFK assassination and that Cruz is a serial adulterer.
7. He surrounds himself with thugs and bullies.
8. His man-crush on Putin.
9. David Duke and the Alt-Right Nazi fanboys love him.
10. The Access Hollywood tape reveals his mindset when he thinks he's having a private, unrecorded conversation.
11. He advocated for war crimes, like bringing back torture and ordering troops to kill the families of suspected terrorists.
12. The bigger the landslide loss for Trump, the easier it will be for normal Republicans to shoo the Alt-Reich out.
13. The bigger the landslide loss for Trump, the easier it will be to diminish the influence of the conservative entertainment wing (Hannity, Limbaugh, etc.) on the party.
14. If Clinton's as bad a president as some people think she will be, it should be easy for a normal Republican to beat her in 2020. A normal Republican that the party can be proud of.

Politically Speaking - 10/12/16

1. "LOCKER-ROOM TALK" - I believe I have heard similar braggadocious talk in the locker-room along the lines of what Donald Trump and Billy Bush were saying, but everyone in that locker-room were teenagers in the 1980's. (I'm not saying I remember specifics, but it is plausible to me that it happened.)

Trump was 59 and Bush was 33 when that conversation took place.

All of the grown men who are still justifying the 2005 Access Hollywood tape as locker-room talk are saying a lot about themselves. I've never heard that kind of talk as an adult in a locker-room. Many men haven't. Why? Because another guy would only talk like that if that's the type of guy he is, and he feels comfortable sharing it with his audience. So yeah, millions of men don't hear this talk in locker-rooms or elsewhere because they don't associate with men who talk like that, or they carry themselves in a way that guys that talk like that don't feel like they're sharing that they feel entitled to grab women's sexual parts. ("Diagram that sentence, Abbott!")

2. A VOTE FOR 3RD PARTY IS A VOTE FOR (WHICHEVER OF THE BIG TWO I DON'T LIKE) - No it isn't. A vote for who you vote for is a vote for who you vote for. Wouldn't it be nice to not have George Wallace not be the most recent third-party candidate in presidential election history to win a state? Now unlike any year before, this year I live in a state where my vote will matter. I knew as soon as Donald Trump clinched the GOP nomination that the next president would be Hillary Clinton. I can dream about how much hay Marco Rubio would be making with all of the FOIA and WikiLeaks revelations coming out, but since Clinton's opponent is Trump, it all doesn't matter. Trump is that much worse.

So my current stance is that whichever third-party candidate is polling higher in Utah on election day, I will vote for that person. If Gary Johnson and Evan McMullin are statistically tied, I'd still go with Gary Johnson. Then once the election is over, I'll walk back into the Republican den and engage in the unavoidable civil war and hopefully the Alt-Reich will be purged.

3. #NEVERTRUMP - Feels great to have been Never Trump, but it would have felt better to have a candidate I could believe in. Donald Trump signed up a few years ago as a Republican, and he's behaved like every caricature a New York liberal might have of a Republican. Normal Republicans can say "No, we're not racists" and then some Alt-Reichers pop up right behind them to say "Sure we are, cucks!"

(SideNote: Not looking forward to the next four years of every criticism of Pres. Clinton being labelled as "sexist." It is what it is.)

4. REPUBLICANS IN 2020 - South Carolina governor Nikki Haley is looking pretty good to me right now. Marco Rubio, Susana Martinez, people I'm not thinking of... The ones who should not run in 2020?

Mike Pence - I know he's the VP but he is way too stained from the justifications he's had to make and the lies he's had to tell to stay on Trump's ticket.

Ted Cruz - There's a reason Ted was one of the Pied Piper dreams candidates of the DNC in 2015. They knew they could beat him. He's exposed as a calculating self-server that nobody in Washington likes.

Chris Christie, Mike Huckabee, Ben Carson - Anyone who's already run and embraced Trump when there was a chance someone else could win.

5. 2017: THE DE-THUGGING - Hopefully next year, media outlets will be a little more discretionary with who they let on the airwaves. No more Corey Lewandowski, no more Roger Stone, no more of the "Says who?" guy, and it'd be nice if Fox News released Alt-Right entertainers like Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham to go join their own, more extreme, less relevant channel. And I imagine guys like Rudy Giuliani and Newt Gingrich will crawl away, and ratings for Rush Limbaugh will shrink. (It's a dream; don't take this from me!)

6. 2017: THE DE-SMUGGING - I know. I just basically got smug being a NeverTrumper from the beginning, but here's a real pipe-dream for this post-election America. Amplified by social media, people are less "We disagree" and aren't more "I'm right, you're wrong" so much as "I'm right, you're wrong and stupid and evil." Let's all just try to be less smug.

Politically Speaking - 3/29/16

Just wanted to hit some political thoughts this week.

1. Random Donald Trump Quotes I Found After 10 Minutes of Googling

"Nobody has more respect for women than me."
"Nobody reads the Bible more than me."
"Nobody knows the system better than me."
"Nobody's done more for equality than me."
"On trade, there's nobody more conservative than me."
On ISIS: "Nobody would be tougher than me."
"There's nobody better to beat Hillary Clinton than me."
"Nobody builds walls better than me."
"There's no one more pro-Israel than me."
"Nobody knows more about trade than me."
"When I am elected, no one will be tougher or smarter than me."
"There is nobody more against ObamaCare than me."
"There's nobody more militaristic than me."
"Nobody's ever been more successful than me."
"Nobody's bigger than me, nobody's better than me."
"Who knows Howard [Stern] better than me?"
"Nobody can be stronger than me on the border."
"Nobody's stronger on the Second Amendment than me."
"You look at those empty factories all over the place, and nobody hits that message better than me."
"Virtually no one has spent more money in helping the American people with disabilities than me."
"Latinos love me."
"The Hispanics love me."
"I love the poorly educated!"
"Who gets worse publicity than me?"

Words can't express, better than his own, what a dishonest narcissist he is. This is what happens when you surround yourself with shameless sycophants and unscrupulous henchmen your entire adult life.

And here's one former Trump worker who's seen the light.

"Trump never intended to be the candidate. But his pride is too out of control to stop him now. You can give Trump the biggest gift possible if you are a Trump supporter: stop supporting him. 

"He doesn't want the White House. He just wants to be able to say that he could have run the White House. He’s achieved that already and then some. If there is any question, take it from someone who was recruited to help the candidate succeed, and initially very much wanted him to do so. The hard truth is: Trump only cares about Trump."

But hey, now Trump's campaign manager Corey Lewandowski has surrendered to police for misdemeanor battery after initially lying about it. The charge stems from an incident where he grabbed Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields while she tried to ask Trump a question on illegal immigration. It left finger-sized bruises on her arm; she tweeted out the picture. Lewandowski insisted he never touched her, but video footage has surfaced proving 100% that he did.

Breitbart did not stand by their reporter, leading to a slew of resignations from that site, including her own. Whatever you thought of Breitbart before, it is now just a pro-Trump propaganda site, inflaming white nationalist sentiments.

The initial grab doesn't look that bad, but it's always the cover-up. Not only did Lewandowski insist it didn't happen, but Trump himself said he thought Fields made it all up. Then the Trumpsters started a smear campaign on Fields.

2. RIP GOP

For me, Marco Rubio lost the race when at the last debate, he said he would still support Donald Trump as the Republican nominee because Hillary Clinton was worse. While I admire the attempts of #NeverTrump to try and stop him, I don't see how Trump doesn't get the nomination.

If he goes into Cleveland with 1100 delegates, I am sure the vast majority of the non-Trump delegates will go in with the mentality of making sure it's not Trump. I know I would if I was a delegate. (I missed the filing deadline to run to become one.) There are only two outcomes from this. Either Trump becomes the nominee, or he doesn't.

If he does, he goes into the general election as the least popular candidate in modern history. No one is luckier than Hillary Clinton in this regard. She was poised to be the least trusted, most disliked candidate until Trump showed up. If the Dems had picked someone more like Jim Webb, they'd probably be looking at winning all 50 states.

The GOP has a challenge before them. You have so much baggage there, with the Clinton Foundation working as a slush-fund, with her compromise of national security over her private email server, her constant dishonesty, her stunts like refusing more debates until Bernie Sanders changes his "tone," etc. She could be indicted before the Democratic convention.

And yet somehow, in the easiest slam-dunk election in a generation, Trump shows up. Trump is a golem, an Ozymandias laying waste to all before him. Trump exposed the weaknesses in the Republican party - in their platform, in their lack of results, in the echo chamber of conservative media. The white working class is getting left behind. Some tea party activists are more concerned with obstructing and demonizing their own side.

You had GOP donors throw their money at Jeb Bush, who was never going to win this election. It was a vanity campaign defying all logic. You had clowns like Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum crowding the debate stage.

I found the Buckley Club the best compilation site of those who aided Trump's rise, and those who fought it.

But let's say somehow Ted Cruz (the man who said right before Iowa that "Donald Trump is terrific") becomes the nominee at convention. Ted Cruz will be that ideologically pure constitutional conservative that preaches to the choir and no one else. I was really hoping when I saw him in person, I'd see a candidate who could expand his appeal. I didn't. I saw a man give the same stump speech he gives everywhere. The same lines I've heard in interviews and debates. The same televangelist tone, the same red-meat one-liners.

But if it's Cruz or John Kasich or anyone else, Trump will file lawsuits left and right and then runs as an independent. I don't know how he could get on enough ballots - he'd probably co-opt another party to do it. But he would trash the GOP worse than the Democrats, and still, we'd wind up with Hillary Clinton in the White House. Show me a realistic path that doesn't end with Hillary winning the election.

So, really, the best thing the Republican party can do is focus on 2020. Nikki Haley, Brian Sandoval, Susana Martinez, Marco Rubio... The future could be bright once we get this nightmare election season out of the way.

Where I Stand on the Current Candidates - March 2016

1. MARCO RUBIO - Rubio's been the one I've supported because I agree with him on the issues the most of the four remaining men. I think he would be a transformative president. I love the thought of a Rubio/Haley ticket. Poll after poll shows he would beat Hillary Clinton in a general election, better than Cruz or Trump would fare.

I like most of his tax plan, I like that he supports Congressional term limits and balancing the budget. I don't like that's he's taken a much more hawkish tone since the Paris attacks and wants to beef up the Patriot Act.

He's won Minnesota and Puerto Rico, but the other 18 contests so far have gone to Trump or Cruz. At least Rubio can claim he's the only won to get more than 50% of the vote in any one contest.

Rubio really threw himself on the Trump grenade. It's diminished him, but it also did slow down the momentum of Trump. Unfortunately for Rubio, Cruz is the main beneficiary from it. I saw someone mention that Rubio lost the prisoner's dilemma. Rubio and Cruz seemed poised to go after Trump after their last debate, but Cruz stabbed Rubio first. Cruz is campaigning hard in Florida, not because he think he can win, but because he believes he can do enough damage there to stop Rubio from winning.  If Rubio loses Florida, a winner-take-all state, it's over.

2. JOHN KASICH - If Rubio loses Florida, but Kasich wins Ohio, it's a new day. Kasich may be playing a longer game than anyone. He doesn't have the money of Cruz or the free air-time of Trump so he keeps pinpointing certain states to focus on, and lets the vast majority of chips fall elsewhere.

Kasich actually has a pretty good track record. He was a Congressman for a while and was part of the 1990's Congress that actually balanced a budget. He went back to work in the private sector for a while, also would guest on Fox News sometimes. I remember him guest-hosting the O'Reilly Factor more than once. Then he ran for governor of Ohio and he's shown reform there, making him one of the more popular GOP governors in the nation.

Kasich's the last governor standing, and generally it's a governorship that provides the best training for becoming a president. I like that he's trying to keep things optimistic. I like that he's for limiting the scope of the Patriot Act. He strikes me as the best of the four who could actually get Congress to work together. But if he loses Ohio, it's over.

3. TED CRUZ - I feel like my life as a Republican would be easier if I liked Cruz, but when almost everyone who has ever worked with him despises him, that's a warning sign. He comes across to me as opportunistic and phony. I don't get inspired from listening to him speak, I get annoyed. I don't want my president to sound like a nasally Jimmy Swaggart and smile like an alien trying not to blow his cover.

Once Cruz was elected, he has done a lot in the Senate to obstruct and undermine, but not win. It may win with his brand, but he hurts everyone else and doesn't seem to care. The real character signal for me is the way he blasted Mike Lee. Lee is the closest thing he has to a friend in the Senate, and his willingness to throw Lee under the bus shows he has no loyalty to anyone but himself. And then he turns around and says anyone who doesn't support him is "the establishment" or "the elites." Strawmen.

Cruz says reporters are telling him they have exposes on Trump that they're not going to run until June or July. But Ted won't say who. Does anyone really believe reporters would confide in Cruz that way? Cruz makes my skin crawl.

But ... according to ISideWith, I actually agree with Cruz more than Kasich. And he's better than Trump.

4. DONALD TRUMP - Trump's reaching working-class voters in a way that the other three aren't. After fifteen years of war, too big to fail, and stagnant wages - on top of conservative media types more concerned with enriching themselves than actually solving anything - a lot of people feel left behind too. They'd like a Republican who's as anti-mainstream as possible to blow things up. A lot of working-class voters on the left feel the same way, where they see the embodiment of crony capitalism / DC corruption in Hillary Clinton as a front-runner, and so the rise of Bernie Sanders.

One thing that drove me nuts about Romney's 2012 campaign was his disproportionate emphasis on helping small business owners over regular workers.

So Trump comes along. He's a strongman. He shows toughness. He gets a lot of support from people who like that he "tells it like it is" even though he lies more than anyone else running on both sides.  He talks circles around questions without answering them. He's a narcissistic vulgarian who hasn't shown much of a moral code in his life. When he gives speeches, you don't hear much about love of country. You hear about polls and how people love him. The slogan "Make America Great Again" has the implied "I Will" in front of it.

More than once in the most recent debate, he said he'd order the military to kill family members of suspected terrorists, even though it was illegal. Sure he walked it back the next day, but that evening, he felt really good about planning to commit future war crimes. He's the American Benito Mussolini.

Now what does that mean, really? He appeals to the authoritarian, nationalist side of a lot of people. He's about the cult of his personality. His high-tariff trade-war plan would kill the economy. He's demonstrated he doesn't really understand the details of the federal budget. If people think Obama made America lose some stature and/or credibility around the world, that's nothing compared to what Trump will do.

Even now, as he says he's funding his own campaign, it's a shell game. He's funding loans to his campaign, but as donors come in, he's going to reimburse himself.

Back to the conservative media types. At least Trump's exposed a lot of hypocrites, the craven attention-seekers who care more about spotlight than principle. I'm no purity-test guy, but good grief. When Trump says he will order the military to do illegal things and they don't bat an eye, what is going on?

So here's to his enablers and suck-ups: Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham, Joe Scarborough, most of Fox News, and most of Breitbart. Shoutout to Fox Business Channel, soon to be renamed Trump Business Channel. Mazeltov to Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, Matt Drudge, and everyone at Right2Rise. Applause to the decisions boards of CNN, ABC, CBS, and NBC for his wall-to-wall coverage. Kudos to Chris Christie, Mike Huckabee, Newt Gingrich, Jeff Sessions, and Paul LePage for bowing to the Strongman.

As for the Democratic race...

1. BERNIE SANDERS - At least he's honest. His wild aspirations for a socialist America would get stopped by a Republican Congress.

2. HILLARY CLINTON - Probably the most vulnerable Democratic nominee since Jimmy Carter ran for re-election, and yet the GOP can't get its act together.

Chris Christie Has Sold His Soul

I can't say I've ever liked Gov. Mike Huckabee. If I had any respect for him, it was tossed away when he and Rick Santorum went to Trump's rally during the primetime GOP debate. Mike & Rick, already on the return road to irrelevance, turned themselves into Trump's bumbling henchmen.

Chris Christie was something different. He is still the governor of New Jersey. He was very influential of the Republican Governors Association in 2014 and helped get a few Republican governors get elected. Now he has thrown his career away, and for what? I think Commentary's Noah Rothman said it best:

"Standing beside Donald Trump and endorsing the most unfit man to seek the presidency in my lifetime for the highest office in the land, Christie’s base careerism and disregard for the nation were exposed. Gone was the prosecutor who had ruthlessly fought corruption in New Jersey. In his place was a man defending Trump’s handling of the scam operation Trump University, which pitilessly bilked thousands out of their savings. Gone was the man who had scolded conservatives for indulging to bigotry by presuming an American Muslim jurist had to be an advocate for Sharia Law. Instead, there stood a figure linking arms with a demagogue who had proposed banning any Muslim entry into the United States – a proposal Christie had called “ridiculous” – and who dubiously cites the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 as constitutional precedent. Gone was the “straight talker” who “tells it like it is.” In his place is a man endorsing a serial compulsive liar who seems constitutionally incapable of honesty about himself, his record, or his beliefs, and who tells outrageous and slanderous lies about the heroes of his country and of his party. Gone was the conservative reformer who promised the necessary overhaul of the country’s entitlement programs. Instead, the diminutive figure debasing himself in the shadow of a reality television star now defends the unsustainable status quo in perpetuity and with no regard for fiscal realities. 

"For another few fleeting moments in the intoxicating light of the cable news cameras, Chris Christie has sacrificed every principle for which he once stood. Christie will spend the remainder of the campaign season aggressively compromising his integrity and shouting down anyone who refuses to abide the intolerable stench of hypocrisy that now accompanies his presence. This is a man who pounded the table when the facts were with him. Imagine the spectacle we will be forced to witness now that they’re not."

How would the TSA handle Donald Trump's "Ban all Muslims" policy?

TSA: State your name.
Terrorist: My name is Ach...drew Jones.
TSA: Achdrew Jones?
Terrorist: Yes.
TSA: Religion?
Terrorist: Mus...thodist. Methodist.
TSA: You're Methodist?
Terrorist: Yes.
TSA: Thought you were going to say Muslim.
Terrorist: No, no. Methodist.
TSA: You can board. Next! State your name.
Dave: Dave Chappelle.
TSA: Religion?
Dave: Muslim.
TSA: GET HIM!! SWARM, SWARM!!!

Sean Hannity Loves Donald Trump

I did something I haven't done in a long time. I watched Hannity. I used to keeps tabs on him, and it's pretty obvious that he's there to give talking points. O'Reilly could go off on weird stuff at any time, Rush sometimes surprises me with his take on things, but Hannity is a reliable automoton with his spin on whatever the subject is.

So I watched Hannity last night because I heard he and Ann Coulter were singing Trump's praises. He started with guest Newt Gingrich, where they both talked about why Trump is a credible candidate. Hannity was spoonfeeding for the slower folks at home that Trump gave a speech earlier this week with a lot of specifics. Lots, I tell you.

Then Coulter came on and they started defended Donald Trump's position.

Charles CW Cooke was the other guest, and Hannity or Coulter would not let the guy finish a sentence without interrupting him and blasting him with Trump talking points. Hannity and Coulter tag-teamed him for the whole segment, and Coutler said stuff that was flat-out untrue. Cooke, if you read his writing, is a credible conservative. Coulter, if you read her writing, is a carnival sideshow. And Hannity sided with the sideshow. My favorite line from Cooke was that she was changing her position on issues based on whatever Donald Trump said last.

Remember when Donald Trump said he had a call with Roger Ailes and he said he felt like Fox News would be fair to him now? Well, Sean Hannity is the good little soldier wearing the "Trump 2016" button now.

Trump's Iowa Supports Slips; Still #1

Donald Trump showed weakneeses at the August 6 debate, but still leads polls.

The first post-debate Iowa poll is out, and it does show some movement, some hints for where voters are leaning in that state.

Gravis Poll in Iowa August 4

1. Trump - 31%
2. Walker - 15%
3. Bush - 10%
4. Jindal - 7%
5. Cruz - 6%
5. Huckabee - 6%
7. Carson - 5%
7. Kasich - 5%
9. Fiorina - 4%
10. Rubio - 3%

PPP Poll in Iowa August 10

1. Trump - 19%   (-12)
2. Carson - 12%   (+7)
2. Walker - 12%   (-3)
4. Bush - 11%      (+1)
5. Fiorina - 10%  (+6)
6. Cruz - 9%       (+3)
7. Huckabee - 6% (-)
7. Rubio - 6%      (+3)
9. Kasich - 3%     (-2)
10. Paul - 3%       (+2)

Bobby Jindal actually looked like he was making headway in Iowa, but one has to wonder if his inability to stand out at the kids-table debate has sunk his campaign. Maybe it's too easy to declare campaigns "sunk," but I don't see Jindal going anywhere.

InTrade Watch on 2012 GOP Hopefuls

1. (1) Mitt Romney - 23.9%
2. (2) Tim Pawlenty - 15.3%
3. (6) Jon Huntsman - 12%
4. (3) Mitch Daniels - 11%
5. (6) Mike Huckabee - 7.5%
6. (6) Sarah Palin - 5.2%
7. (5) Donald Trump - 4.4%
8. (10) Newt Gingrich - 4.1%
9. (4) Michelle Bachmann - 4%
10.(-) Herman Cain - 3%

Rising: Jon Huntsman, Mitch Daniels, Mike Huckabee, Herman Cain
Falling: Mitt Romney, Donald Trump, Michelle Bachmann, Haley Barbour

Haley Barbour dropped off because he announced he won't be running for president.

The first GOP presidential debate arguably helped Herman Cain the most, who went from "has no chance" to cracking the top ten here. Ron Paul, Rick Santorum and Gary Johnson did not, and Tim Pawlenty slipped a little.

Mitt Romney's still top dog, but it seems like a lot of voters are anxiously looking elsewhere. Flavors of the month rise and fall, and Trump and Bachmann had their fun but now they're sliding off. Huntsman and Daniels will have their turn.

Donald Trump on Republicans

"I really believe the Republicans are just too crazy, right?" - Donald Trump on Meet the Press, 1999.

That's not the only quote Trump may need to walk back as he toys with the idea of running for president again.