Voting

I'm going tomorrow, although I'm not particularly excited about it. Fuck Hillary and fuck Trump. Ugh. Also, fuck the FBI and DOJ ass-kissers who refuse to do the right thing and throw Hillary behind bars where she belongs.

I'm casting my vote for Jill Stein, and no matter who wins, I'm hoping to see a record number of third party votes. The Dems and GOP sure dug deep to nominate the absolute worst of humanity this time around, and we shouldn't be rewarding them for it.

Predictions?

I'm guessing Hillary will win, because she spent too much money, time, and effort rigging the primaries for her own benefit to not be rigging the general. I'm guessing Trump will whine pretty obnoxiously about it, too, although, I'm still not convinced he actually wants the job.

 

Tell that to the intelligence workers who are right now behind bars for doing less than she has. XD I'm sick of people making excuses for her, or blaming it on a "vast right-wing conspiracy". She was wrong and if she were anyone else, she would have at least faced some sort of sanctions. James Comey said as much in July. In some of the Wikileaks Podesta emails recently released, it was revealed that she allows her maid to print off and handle classified documents. Even Petraeus got a fine and two years probation when he let his mistress handle his classified docs, but she's too good even for that. Yeah, there are worse things, but that doesn't mean what she did isn't also bad. The only reason she has even a chance this election is because the establishment dems and the media have done such a good job making Trump into the boogyman.

The president is not a dictator. On issues like foreign policy where the president does hold more sway, I actually prefer Trump, because I do think he is less likely than Hillary to get us into more wars in the middle east, and I prefer his more isolationist policy to her warmongering. I would prefer that someone more liberal (if you consider Hillary liberal, which I barely do) were appointing Scalia's replacement to the Supreme Court, but the fact is, Obergefell v. Hodges was decided with a court that was 5 conservative to 4 liberal-appointed, Roe v. Wade has survived since 1971 against conservative-leaning courts, and I'm sure there are similar decisions I can point to. These rights aren't going to be magically taken away even if Trump were to appoint the absolute worst, far-right justice to the court. Even if, say, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, or another of the liberal-leaning justices were to also retire or die (and I don't think they would choose to retire if Trump were president unless they were forced into it by health reasons), we're not going to just start shipping people off to conversion camps or whatever else people are afraid of. And if the government does try, well, that's what the Constitution is for. We have the right to overthrow a government that doesn't represent us. I would also prefer to flip the Senate, or, better, get some Greens, Libertarians, and independents in there and clean house of some of these politicians who have been in DC too long, but with Hillary topping the ballot, I don't know if flipping the Senate is a reality. Certainly the House will stay in GOP control, thanks to all of the gerrymandering. Just as important as politics on a national level are the state/county/city level. A state law is likely to have more impact on your life than what they do in Washington, DC, imo. People need to vote in all local elections, not just during presidential years. Failure to do so is how Kentucky ended up with Matt Bevin.

Long story short, I'm not sure that this election is as do-or-die as we're being led to believe. And I'll be glad when the election is over and hopefully one of these two are gone forever. /two cents

 

Information is classified for a reason. Yes, allowing someone who is not cleared to handle classified material handle it is wrong and illegal. Maybe it's at the level of "fine" moreso than "serious jail time", but still, it's not proper protocol, and the freaking Secretary of State should have known this (and in fact, I'm sure did know this, for all that she pretends that she "doesn't recall" or "forgets" things). Trying to say otherwise is ridiculous. Having a private email server in and of itself is not wrong, but keeping classified information on an unsecured server is mishandling that information. Using a separate email address to get around Freedom of Information Act laws requiring all emails pertaining to her secretary position to be turned over to the government is again, if not jail-worthy, shady as fuck and not the sort of behavior we should expect out of our leaders. I'm not going to argue this anymore. It's pathetic seeing people trying to defend Hillary over this.

And I never said our judicial system is perfect; in fact, it's pretty clear that it isn't. But the fact that the law is being applied so differently to Hillary compared to lesser ranked and less wealthy/powerful intelligence workers should be alarming.

Anyhow, here is a link to The Guardian's live election updates, for those interested who aren't keeping an eye on it elsewhere (I always watched the primary results here because of the cute sprites >_<). Currently, Trump is ahead in the popular vote by about 1 million, and has 137 electoral votes to Hillary's 104. Democrats have picked up one seat in the Senate and two in the House.

Edit: at 9:44 pm CST, Trump 168 electoral votes v. Hillary 131 (Trump 2 million ahead in popular vote), Senate and House still at +1 and + 2 Dems.

Edit: at 10 pm, CST, Trump 201 to Hillary 190. Ohio and Florida both went to Trump. Trump still ahead in popular vote by about 2 million, Hillary just got a big bump in electoral votes because of CA reporting.

Edit: at 10:15 pm, CST, Trump 216 v. Hillary 197. North Carolina goes to Trump.

Edit: at 10:38 pm, CST, Trump 232 v. Hillary 209. Still a few states left to call. Trump still ahead in the popular vote by about 1.6 million, the Senate and House are still the same- Dems picked up one seat in the Senate, 2 in the House (not enough to flip either, although there is still a chance for the Senate, I think).

Edit: at 11:42 pm, CST, Trump 244 v. Hillary 215, Trump has 1 M popular vote lead. Democrats have picked up 4 House seats, but Republicans have held onto their majority. Senate race is 47 D to 48 R, with Dems picking up 1 seat and a few races left.

Edit: at 12:45 am, CST, Trump 264 v. Hillary 215. Trump wins PA. Wisconsin, Michigan, and Arizona are currently leaning Trump. He only needs one of them to push himself over 270 electoral votes. Hillary would have to win every single state that hasn't called a winner in order to reach 270, and half of them are leaning Republican. It's safe to say it's over. Democrats have picked up 5 House seats, but Republicans are well past the amount needed for the majority. Senate race is 47 D to 49 R.

Last edit of the night: at 1:37 am, CST, Trump wins Wisconsin, secures 276 electoral votes. GOP keeps control of Senate (currently 47 D to 51 R) and House (174 D to 233 R).

If only there had been a democratic candidate in the primaries who polled in the double digits ahead of Trump. Oh wait...

 

Well, in two years, get everyone you know off their asses and go vote in the midterms. If the left mobilizes and makes sure there are challengers to these incumbents, they can be tossed out and maybe democrats and left-leaning independents and greens can retake the Senate and House. Vote in every election, even the local school board ones. Gotta infiltrate from the ground up.

Also, this is no one's fault by Hillary's and the DNC. The people have been shouting for change and are wary of the establishment, and the DNC chose their most connected, most establishment candidate (one who has lots of flaws and one who the people find severely unlikable and untrustworthy, and who doesn't have a great track record), and when she can't even win a primary on her own, they constantly put their thumb on the scale to cheat her way to the nomination. The democratic superdelegates were created for exactly this purpose (weeding out an unelectable general election candidate), but instead of doing their jobs, they actually tipped the favor early on towards that unelectable candidate. Hillary's campaign has also been basically nothing but identity politics- vote for her because she's a woman, vote because she's not big, bad, scary Trump, supreme court. She never gave anyone who wasn't already fawning all over her a reason to put aside any dislike they may have for her and actually vote for her. She took the electorate for granted, and was pushing more of the same Obama policies when those aren't working out so great for a lot of people. She lost states like Wisconsin and Michigan that have voted democratic since the Reagan years. But oh yeah, she was the most electable. #ShouldhavebeenBernie

 

In addition to that, he was also a liberal democrat for the majority of his life. I know people can change their political views over time, but I admit I do find it hard to believe he truly believes some of the shit he's been spewing. I think some of his behavior has been an act to pander to the Republican base. I'm hoping that he ends up being serious about the job and at least tries to be a good president. There's a quote going around Facebook from a former president (can't remember who) that says something along the lines of "you'll never know how a man will handle the responsibility of the presidency until he is handed it," and maybe, for all of our sakes, Trump will handle it better than we think. If not, there's always impeachment and removal from office. All eyes are going to be on him, and a lot of people are going to be waiting for him to slip up.

I haven't yet watched any of his speeches from last night (or today if there were any), but apparently he said that the first thing he's going to focus on is pushing an infrastructure bill. And I can't find fault with that. Our roads, bridges, and things need a lot of work pretty much across the country, and contracts to do the work should help create a lot of jobs. After that, who knows. I hope that the GOP at least comes up with an alternative to the ACA before dismantling it (one that people like myself can actually afford), and I hope that we don't get involved in any more wars. But I don't know. Keeping my expectations low and waiting until the midterms.

 

Did Hillary even win the national popular vote? I've seen conflicting numbers on this. In any case, these people are idiots.The last thing we should want is electors ignoring their state votes, even if a slight majority of the state voted for someone not likable. Hillary winning this way will just be seen as more corruption.

I've also seen a few links being shared around Facebook by Hillary supporters calling for the Electoral College to be dissolved and for elections to be decided only by national popular vote. I laughed. Getting rid of the Electoral College will take a bit more than signing a petition. And I can't help but imagine the Hillary supporters' reactions were the roles reversed, Hillary won but Trump had the popular vote, and his supporters were carrying on this way.

I don't know what the hell people are protesting about, but destroying property and crying about the results of an election that Hillary didn't do a good enough job of rigging this time just makes these people seem like a bunch of damn babies. But I suppose that's what happens when the media spends the past year telling everyone how scary Trump is.

Yeah, I was never quite convinced about whether he was a plant or not. But I think some time around the second debate, he decided to get serious. I don't know. I'm hoping good things can come of this. At least we know Hillary won't be starting any more wars.

 

I think sites just stopped updating once we had a winner. I know The Guardian still doesn't show all of the results of the Senate and House races, and I don't think the electoral votes for Michigan, New Hampshire, and maybe a couple of other states have been tallied, either. Their vote totals show Trump leading the popular vote by a very small margin. Depending on who is sharing the information, I've seen claims that both candidates ended up winning the popular vote. So I don't know. But the fact is, it doesn't matter. All that matters is how the Electoral College votes. And I'm pretty certain they'll follow their states.

Hillary's diehard supporters are good at that.

I agree, and even in the primaries, Hillary's camp did nothing but shit on Bernie supporters by calling us sexist "Bernie Bros" or telling women they were going to hell for not supporting the woman candidate, and paying people through one of her super PACs to troll Berners online, etc., and then they told us "we don't need your votes anyway" whenever we argued how unfit Hillary was. Well, it turns out that Hillary did need our votes. Not to mention that Hillary's Victory Fund scheming to take money from the state parties for her own race ended up really screwing the downballots. It was all about her, to the detriment of the rest of the party.

We're not on similar sides of the political spectrum, but I also am not upset with Trump's victory. I feel like if Hillary won, the progressive causes I care the most about would have been pushed aside, and leaders like Bernie and others who stood up against the corruption of the DNC would have been buried. Now, Bernie, IMO, has come out of this election looking great- as he has been proven right about being the one who could beat Trump, and while I was displeased when he endorsed Hillary, now no one can say he didn't try his hardest for her, and the blame for this disaster can't be laid at his and the progressive movement's feet like Dems still blame Nader unreasonably for Gore losing. Trump also gives progressives and the left something to rally against, and maybe that unifying will help win back some of the state legislatures and governor seats, at the least. Or so I'm hoping.

I don't know. Tensions related to race and income inequality and things like that have been building for a while. I think no matter who became president, we would be dealing with unrest here. Just if Hillary won, we'd be antagonizing Russia at the same time.

 

Ha. Well, there are rules on how much a person is allowed to donate to a person's campaign, $2700 per election. So a rich Hillary supporter could donate $2700 directly to her campaign during the primaries and another $2700 during the general, but that's it. If someone wanted to donate more for her benefit, they would have to donate to a super PAC, and those aren't legally supposed to coordinate directly with campaigns, although of course Hillary broke the rules and did so. But anyhow, to get around big donors not being able to give more money to Hillary directly, 32 state parties agreed to skirt campaign finance law by accepting large donations (I think the limit to donate to a state party was around $33,000) from donors, and forwarding that money on to the national democratic party, who then funneled it into the Hillary Victory Fund. This was talked about some during the primaries, but probably not on the mainstream media. I'll try and find a link that explains it more; it's been a little while since I read about it. My guess is that this was used alongside Hillary getting superdelegate votes, something along the lines of "you vote for me, and I'll make sure you get funding for your own race", but I don't know for sure about that. In any case, it seems fairly obvious that the DNC put all of their money and effort into Hillary, and didn't give much of a damn about anyone running for any other offices, or they would have performed better on the national and local level. Wait, HERE's one article about it from May.

Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised to find out that the anti-Trump side has been egging some of this on. It seems like everyone has an agenda, and IMO, the powerful elites running this country prefer to have the people at each others throats over social issues, rather than paying attention to the shit they're sneaking through while we're distracted.

RE: Trump and gay marriage, I feel like some of his supporters might be a bit surprised on how he actually governs. But this issue isn't really up to him, I don't think. I mean, I suppose Congress could waste more of our tax dollars passing some anti-gay marriage law through, which I suppose then Trump could veto, but I think the biggest tests for marriage equality will come from state legislatures and be decided by the Supreme Court. So I assume this would mean that Trump will appoint someone pro-marriage equality, but that doesn't jive with some of the picks that were being floated around earlier in the year. *shrugs* But hopefully you are right, and his at least saying this helps ease some of the tension.

 

Yeah, I'd feel sorry for everyone who donated so much to her campaign if they weren't also part of the problem.

I agree with you on this. Plus, I'd like to think that the Justices are mindful of the current state of the country and wouldn't want to overturn a decision that would surely lead to more rioting in the streets.

 

The Green Party needs better organization or something. They just can't seem to grab people, and while I know that they do run people down ballot and have some people in local and state level politics, I feel like they would be better served working from the ground up instead of putting too much into a presidential race they are likely to never win.

I was disappointed in the turnout for third parties, though I don't know why I had faith it would be any different. I really did think Johnson at least would get to the 5%, but I suppose people still think they have to vote Dem or GOP no matter what, even when those two parties run such detestable candidates. But when the two main parties set such unattainable requirements to get into debates and the media either blacks out coverage or only covers stories that make the third parties seem ridiculous, I don't know what there is to be done about it.