In yet another sign of how divided the Establishment remains, there were five faithless electors who chose a Republican -- and these five split their votes among three people (Colin Powell, Ron Paul, and "Tiny Bites" Kasich). Could they not coordinate enough to concentrate their votes into a single individual, for maximum effect?
It just goes to show how hyper-competitive the elites still are, leading to internal fragmentation. Each Trump hater wanted to broadcast their own unique personal style of hating Trump, to show that the other Trump haters are just a bunch of posers who are not as artisanal in their Trump hatred.
The same mentality kept the anti-Trump forces from posing a serious challenge during the primaries. None of the other candidates wanted to fall on their sword for the greater good of the group, and none of the voters wanted to bite the bullet and cast a ballot for the one agreed-upon rival to Trump.
In contrast to these suicidally selfish Establishment types, the society-oriented figures all coalesced around Trump, whether they agreed 100% or not. Ditto his voters. The populist-nationalist movement is strongly united.
It's a misnomer to call the strategy "divide and conquer," when it is really "conquer the divided".
Even the anti-Establishment Left couldn't agree on their protest electoral vote -- of the two who managed to vote for a Democrat, one was Bernie and the other was some Native American activist at the Dakota Pipeline protest. That is just a trendy topic of the past several months, and will be replaced by something else before long. It doesn't have the brand recognition among lefties and liberals, let alone the wider society, that Occupy Wall Street did, for example.
The rest of the Democrat faithless votes were intended to go to Bernie, which is more coordinated than the "boo Trump" Republican votes. Still, one of two that succeeded is like getting a My Chemical Romance tattoo in 2006. It's actually going to be in the historical record -- some random activist from a trendy protest du jour, rather than the figurehead of the movement during the entire primary season and whose name will be associated with it for the near future.
One takeaway from this is that the Democrat civil war rages on. Trump just had the two faithless electors but Hillary had four and several more that wanted to but couldn't due to state laws. Trump's electoral vote victory margin widened yesterday but it could have widened by that much more. Everyone assumed the faithless electors would come from the Republicans but turns out there were even more from the Democrats.
ReplyDeleteHere's hoping that Democrats continue to fight each other for the next several years, giving Trump the opportunity to build the wall, redo trade deals, enact real immigration reform, etc.
"Artisanal Trump Haters" is my new favorite: Band Name, Response to anything NeverTrump, future pet's names, and nickname for my sister.
ReplyDeleteTrump just had 2 and the entirety of the whole thing was for liberals to voice how UPSET they are and how illegitimate Trump is. Tiny Bites and Ron Paul. Tiny Bites is insulting and I'm not sure what Ron Paul-guy's rationale was as he surprised everyone unlike Tiny Bites-guy.
ReplyDeleteNow Hillary's defectors: nobody saw or predicted that and there were 5!!!
3 for Colin Powell (why a Republican?), 1 Bernie, and 1 Dakota pipeline indian. Others tried to defect for Bernie, but were unsuccessful!
Not at all a story of Trump haters, who appear to not exist except for one very noisy man whom the media tried to make a household name when he announced his intentions a long time ago, but Hillary haters.
Powell makes some sense. Either an attempt to get Republicans to change their votes. Or because Powell has fairly liberal views and they really didn't want to vote Clinton.
ReplyDeleteWhich goes to show how far we're getting from early 2000s. I joined the Democrats when I was 18 almost a decade ago. And it was largely because of Bush and the neocons. Fast forward a decade and the Bush daughters are out campaigning for Clinton. And the Democrat leadership have made it clear they're the war party. Sad!
ReplyDeleteI heard from some reporter, but haven't looked into it myself, that Powell was a nod to a House rep from Washington who has a tradition of voting Powell for leader instead of Pelosi.
ReplyDelete