Yes, It Was Very Close

Now that a week has come and gone since the election, the numbers of votes are beginning to be finalized.  As it stands now, over 131 million votes were cast with Hillary Clinton having won the popular vote by around 1.5 million votes.  But, Donald Trump won the election because he won the Electoral College 290-232 (with a possible 16 more EVs to come once the mess in Michigan is sorted out).

Both sides are reacting predictively as a result of this outcome.  The Trump people continue to “high five” each other for getting a very flawed, inexperienced candidate into the most powerful job on the planet.  Christian conservatives are also taking bows – given the numbers showing a large percentage of support for Trump.

On the Clinton side of things, they want to “burn the place down” because their candidate, while winning the votes of most of the voters, has lost the election.  They either don’t understand or have utter disdain for the Electoral College system as it now exists.  (Some are still smarting from the 2000 election when essentially the same thing happened.)

On both sides, wild claims and counter claims are now circulating throughout the world of social media.  In an effort to help true patriots and concerned Americans see through all the smoke and avoid looking like ignorant fanatics and fools, I add to my previous analysis of the election outcome.

Last Wednesday evening, I wrote the following article for The New Americana - Let’s Separate Numbers from Hype, Shall We?  Although quite a bit more is now known from the election’s numbers, my basic points are still correct:

Donald Trump won a closely contested race.

Hillary Clinton failed to turn out her voters to the same extent that Barack Obama was able to do.

Essentially, it came down to 3 states which determined the election – Pennsylvania, Florida, and Wisconsin.

 

 Much has been made about how wrong the polls were prior to the election, but they really weren’t that far off.  They all showed the race tightening.  Many of the outcomes of the states, vote-wise, were within the pollsters’ margins of errors.  Yes, they missed some critical states slightly, but such was the close nature of this election.

Let’s look again at the important numbers:

Trump won PA, FL, and WI by around a total of 209,000 votes – around 1% in each state.  These 3 states have a total of 59 electoral votes to award.  If a little more than half of these 209,000 voters vote opposite in just these 3 states, Hillary Clinton wins both the popular vote and the Electoral College  - 301 – 231 (without factoring in Michigan either way). 

Again, if around 58,000 Floridians, 34,000 Pennsylvanians, and 12, 000 Wisconsinites vote for Hillary instead of Trump, the election outcome would be reversed.

Now, the reason these 3 states are critical is the fact that most of the other states went the way they were predicted – either red or blue.  Iowa and Ohio went for Trump, but they have been flipping back and forth between red and blue for the past few elections.

Pennsylvania has been blue since the 1980s.  Florida tends to swing back and forth.  Wisconsin has been a blue state until the “Walker Revolution” has transformed it.

In Wisconsin, it has been reported that around 40,000 Milwaukee voters didn’t show up for this election who did vote four years ago.  If Hillary would have gotten those voters out again, she would have won the state.

In Pennsylvania, Half of Hillary’s vote deficit came from just two cities – Philadelphia and Scranton – where her numbers were over 35,000 shy of Obama’s from 2012.

We could analyze Hillary’s turnout failure ad infinitum, but let’s just say she was nowhere near as popular with Democrats as Obama has been.

So, how small was the Trump EC victory?  If we take these 209,000 votes and divide them into the 131 million votes cast, we see a Trump victory that is around 16 hundredths of 1 percent (.0016).

Those who are boasting about a huge landslide for Trump are just not dealing with reality.  Yes, it was dramatic.  Yes, it was unexpected.  Yes, millions have breathed a sigh of relief that America has been spared more of “Clinton, Inc.” infesting the White House again.  But, a landslide?  Not hardly!

Analysis has been done comparing Trump’s Electoral College victory to that of recent and all of the previous Presidential elections.  Here, in graphic form, it is laid out:  http://thefivepilgrims.com/2016/11/16/an-electoral-college-landslide/

From this chart, two very clear things emerge:

First, Trump’s margin of EC victory puts him in the 22^nd percentile of all American Presidential elections.  That means he performed better than 21% of other winning candidates.  But, he performed worse than 78% of other winning candidates.  In other words, Trump sits near the bottom of the chart of Presidential electoral successes.

Second, even if we don’t want to go too far back into American History to make a comparison, going back only 10 elections to 1980, Trump’s is ranked 8^th out of the 10.  Only George W. Bush performed more poorly.

The kook fringe out there is attempting to assert that Trump also won the popular vote as well.  Again, this is far from reality.  Every credible source of vote totals has Hillary growing her popular vote lead to around 1.5 million votes.  It has risen steadily since election night due to the rest of the west coast vote trickling in.  Yes, Trump’s numbers have risen in the past week as well, but he hasn’t kept pace with Clinton who is still getting votes counted from blue states that she was expected to win handily.

They may point to the fact that the total votes in this election are growing higher than ever before. That is turning out to be true, as it should; given the continuously growing U.S. population.  But, as the following analysis also proves, this year the percentage of eligible voters is actually down amidst the higher number because that number should be even greater: 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/11/15/more-votes-were-cast-in-2016-than-in-2012-but-that-doesnt-mean-turnout-was-great/

In fact, this analysis shows that the percentage of Republicans who turned out stayed pretty much the same as in the past.  Democrat voters were down.  But, 3^rd party voters were considerably higher - around 7 million votes.

One other important point which must be made concerns the 81% of evangelicals voting for Trump claim.  As I reported previously, this number was up 2 points from Romney’s support in 2012.  But, the following analysis challenges the 81% figure as accurate.  It raises some important considerations:

http://www.christianpost.com/news/81-percent-evangelicals-vote-trump-eric-teetsel-joe-carter-171542/

The conclusion of this research is that the actual figure is that around 46% of white evangelicals voted for Trump.  This does not take into account Hispanic and African-American evangelicals and how they voted.  Most probably, if anything, including them would drive the percentage of votes for Trump down somewhat.

My point in all of this is to separate fact from fiction.  Yes, Donald Trump did win the election.  Yes, he will take office in January, 2017, barring unforeseen circumstances.  And yes, Hillary Clinton’s political career is over, at least for now.

But, what these numbers do show is that we continue to have a deeply divided country.  Governing will not be an easy task, regardless of who won the election.

Unfortunately, it appears Mr. Trump still hasn't "gotten it."  He recently took to his weapon of choice - Twitter - to discount Hillary's lead in the popular vote:

Trump has shot back, tweeting Wednesday: "If the election were based on total popular vote I would have campaigned in N.Y. Florida and California and won even bigger and more easily."

Trump is delusional if he thinks that just by campaigning harder, he could have won New York and California.  And, since he did win Florida, campaigning harder there might have added a bit to his popular vote numbers, but it wouldn't have given him any extra Electoral Votes to win "even bigger and more easily."

If this arrogance continues after January, he will have a very difficult task ahead of him.  He simply can't dismiss the fact that far more people in America voted against him than voted for him.  His percentage of the popular vote now stands just under 47%.  And, Hillary Clinton is on pace to finish the election with as many as 2 million more votes than Trump (maybe an addition million or so depending how much still is out in California and Washington).

It would have been far easier for Trump to govern if he had also won the popular vote.  But, now he will be continuously hounded as not having a “mandate” from the people to govern.

Hopefully, the course Barack Obama has had America on for the past eight years will now change.  It has to change if we are to survive.

But, that change will not come quickly or easily.  The left will not go away now that the election is over.  Those proclaiming the demise of the Democrat Party are just as naïve as those who proclaimed the demise of the Republican Party after the 1992 and 2008 elections.

If the Trump Administration wants to achieve governing successes, it must be humble but confident in its vision.  People will come around to a conservative vision of America as long as Trump believes in it as well.  If he compromises his promises from the campaign, he will give the Democrats new life in 2018 and 2020. 

The way to significantly change the course the nation is on is to move forward with the vision, as fast as the people will accept.  Changing hearts and minds must happen if change is to be permanent.  Being as draconian as Obama was with his agenda will lead to only temporary gains at best.

But, the first step in this long process is being honest about what happened in the election and being honest with the American people.  We are now a divided people.  Only the truth will bring unity and the healing of our divisions.

“It’s Settled.” “It’s the Law of the Land.” - Myths Oozing Out of Washington’s Swamp

When asked recently by a 60 Minutes interviewer about his support for “same-sex” marriage, President-elect Donald Trump responded with the typical – “let’s use the Supreme Court for cover” response that has become all too familiar in the world of “Washingtonspeak.”

Trump declared. “It– it’s irrelevant because it was already settled. It’s law. It was settled in the Supreme Court. I mean it’s done.”

Tell me, where have we heard that phrase before?  Well, let’s just look, shall we.

For years, whenever the issue of abortion has come up, the fallback position of the pro-aborts is that there is no discussion to be had.  After all, since 1973, “It’s the law of the land.  The Supreme Court settled the matter.”

This typical ploy of winning the argument by default has been the pro-abort’s strongest attempted argument for the indefensible – the killing of an innocent pre-born child.  As medical science has improved steadily since Roe v. Wade became law, more and more of the so-called “scientific arguments” used to justify abortion have fallen by the wayside.

Now, devoid of such “facts” the pro-aborts have nothing left to say, except to point to the dubious SCOTUS ruling that sought to end the debate about abortion in America by declaring one side of the argument not legitimate.

The result, of course, has been decades of strife and battles for the lives of millions of unborn children.  The voices of millions of Americans have been ignored by a tiny, tiny cadre of oligarch-wannabes wearing black robes.

Now, lest we just blame liberal justices for their draconian tyranny, we also must look at who else has used the Court’s ruling for political cover from an issue they don’t want to have to take sides on.  I’m speaking about two groups primarily. 

First, so-called “moderate” Democrats who claim to be “personally opposed to abortion, but support the Court’s ruling.”  What hogwash!!  They just don’t want to lose votes from either side and want to have it both ways.

The second group of politicians who are guilty of playing fast and loose with the facts are the RINOs (Republicans In Name Only).  These squishy moderates don’t want to ever talk about social issues.  These are just too embarrassing and “yucky” to bring up at country club dinner parties. 

They also hide behind Roe v. Wade when pressed.  “Well, there’s little I can do about it.”  “It’s the law of the land” is their well-rehearsed response.

Once again, SCOTUS is the hedge they hide behind to avoid being real leaders in government and society.

If we fast-forward a number of decades, we remember the more recent history of the passage of Obamacare in 2010.  Not one single Republican voted for it, yet it barely passed by one supposedly “pro-life” Democrat.

Now that we’ve had a few years to live under the hideous regulations, limited access, and out-of-control spiraling costs, we are hearing a louder and louder cry from America to get rid of this socialist utopian nightmare.

But, prior to now, all efforts have failed to have it die a merciful death.  SCOTUS even got involved at one point to salvage its existence.  Now, all the left-wing progressives are using the standard cry of “it’s the law of the land” once again to justify its continued existence.

So then, it should be no surprise that Donald Trump is now using this tired old maxim to justify his flip-flop on marriage.  He is surrounded by politicians and Washington insiders who have been feeding him talking points throughout the campaign.  Why would we think they would stop now that Trump has to prepare to actually govern?

The truth is that Trump is a social liberal, through and through.  Those of us who attempted to warn voters about this fact were usually shouted down by mobs of cultists screaming for a border wall.

But, let’s look at this excuse that these contentious social issues are “settled law of the land.”

Using that logic, let’s go back in our history, say to about 1857.  The United States Supreme Court had just issued a 7-2 decision ruling that African Americans could not be given U.S. citizenship.  They had no standing to sue in court.  Essentially, it reinforced the notion of slaves as property.

The case, known today simply as Dred Scott (after the former slave who sued for his rights), was decided legally according to the laws in force back then.  So, shouldn’t efforts to overturn it have been considered illegitimate given that Dred Scott was “the law of the land”?

Nope. Americans had more common sense and far more moral courage back then.  It was vehemently opposed by Republicans and other abolitionists.  Lincoln ignored the ruling when he became President.  And, it was one of the catalysts that led to the Civil War, which ended American slavery once and for all.

For Trump to now hide behind the Obergefell “same-sex” marriage ruling and call it “settled law” is for him to show gross moral cowardice in the face of this generation’s Dred Scott.

The issue of same-sex marriage is not going away.  Many, many Christian people will not kowtow to “5 Harvard lawyers wearing black robes.”  After all, how un-American is it that such a tiny, tiny group of left-wing elitists should have the power to dictate to over 300 million people what we have to believe and how we have to live?

Let’s face it, the radical homosexual lobby has become the “gaystapo” of the era – suing and destroying Christian churches and businesses at will.  Why, we’ve even seen a RINO federal judge put Kentucky Clerk – Kim Davis – in jail for standing on her faith in the face of tyranny.

No way!  Mr. Trump, if you really want to be America’s leader, you have to take a strong stand on these controversial issues.  You can’t hide behind the prepared words one of your handlers gave you to say.

The excuse, “It’s settled.  It’s the law of the land.” hasn’t worked for abortion.  It hasn’t worked for Obamacare.  And, it won’t work for “same-sex” marriage. 

Mr. Trump, if you strongly believe in “same-sex” marriage and all of the other weirdness that is now accompanying it (men in dresses in girls’ shower rooms for instance), you owed it to the voters to be honest; especially to the millions of evangelical Christian voters who supported and believed in you.

But, by playing this political game, you are simply confirming what your Primary opponents accused you of being – “just another say anything to get elected” politician.  Maybe they were right all along?

Leadership devoid of integrity will make you rather “Clintonesque” – you know – just like “Crooked Hillary”!

Is that the legacy you want for your Presidency?  Do you want to go down in history as the Republican Bill Clinton? 

Who knows, maybe that isn’t something you really care about?  But, if you want to politically survive for the next four years, have any chance of re-election, and have any kind of positive legacy, then I urge you to re-think your answer on this most important issue.

Just like “it’s the law of the land” didn’t cut it with Dred Scott, that same mantra today won’t cut it concerning Obergefell. You can’t “drain Washington’s swamp” by oozing out the same putrid slime.