The great reckoning is well underway, and anyone with a television, radio or broadsheet can hear it. In the wake of the Nov. 8 presidential stakes, there’s been something of a telethon graph running in front of our faces and in the back of our minds, collectively. Sure, some of it has been in the abstract-but-academic realm – i.e., the Electoral College is a racist creation by the U.S. during the political ascent of Thomas Jefferson in the elections of 1800, in which Southern slave owners, utilizing the three-fifths clause of national law applied to slaves, won him the 14 electoral votes he needed to become president. In other words, the Electoral College was created to protect slavery; Jefferson himself was a slave owner.
That alone is a terrible notion to wrap a head around, as are superdelegates, as is the absence of actual democracy in one of the world’s most important voting rounds. It also sounds like a lot of sour grapes, given that the races are generally close in popular vote, so either side can ring the bells when it doesn’t get its way.
Hillary Clinton, as we all now know, lost the Electoral College vote on Nov. 8 by a fairly impressive margin of 306-232. Nobody – OK, maybe not nobody – saw that coming, considering that one candidate was in fact qualified to be leader of the free world; the other, not so much. Donald Trump’s clean victory in 2016 stands as an embarrassment to most of our wiser sensibilities.
But that telethon still carries on, that red marker on that giant thermometer showing at first a 1.5 million lead in popular votes to Clinton in November, then showing, in more recent polls, a 2.5 million lead for the former first lady and secretary of state. That’s a pretty broad swath of folks, one almost too broad to be dismissed. Or so you would think.
Your average voter isn’t ready to crawl under a desk and scream Cold War II over the noise of potential espionage and hacking from Russia, now even acknowledged by the CIA.
“I don’t believe it. I think it’s a massive excuse,” Trump has publicly said. This is the same Trump who is building a cabinet of straw men (and women), some of whom have incredibly strong Russian ties. So why aren’t we fighting back.
“Believe me, if there was anything I could do to make Hillary Clinton the next president of the United States, I would,” Clinton supporter and former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell recently told the Associated Press. “But this is a big waste of time.”
Tell that to Senate Majority Leader (and Republican) Mitch McConnell. Or even our own doughboy Sen. Marco Rubio. “I want to warn my fellow Republicans who may want to capitalize politically on the leaks,” he said in October. “Today it is Democrats. Tomorrow it could be us.”
Go West
As if things could get any worse up in the gaudy penthouse of Trump Towers, noted former military guy, the one who liked to shoot heads in the sand (literally), Allen West has apparently joined Trump’s entourage. The former Congressman Allen West – who also works for, wait for it, FOX News – is best known for hating Muslims out loud. West recently posted an internet meme suggesting all Muslims be “exterminated.” He seems really nice.
And you know all of that “fake news” racket that’s been rattling around your Facebook feed? You can probably blame West for some of it. In addition to hating anyone brown – though Brown is black – West has used his website to promote falsified studies denying climate change and to try to accuse the Environmental Protection Act, via Barack Obama, of planning to steal $3,000 from each American in advance of his exit, according to the Miami New Times. There’s also talk of West becoming the leader of Trump’s media arm, but we can’t even think about that yet.
Revisionism retooled
You guys! Exciting news! Just like every awkward birthday party full of menacing aunts and conspiratorial grandpas, the Florida Constitution is expecting some questionable food and lots of terrible conversation as it rounds another 20 years in 2017. By law, the state must revisit its most sacred document every two decades, and, because this year we are living in a hell like no other, conservatives are planning to walk tall and carry a very big red pen to this particular party.
The Miami Herald reports that, despite the fact that the 37-member Constitutional Revision Committee has traditionally tried to walk a middle line, this year it is more likely to be a tea party for the likes of Attorney General Pam Bondi, House Speaker Richard Corcoran and Senate President Joe Negron – all super friendly to nice people, we hear. Noises are being made that many constitutional mandates could be rolled back, despite the obligatory charade of public hearings. This is going to get ugly.
Erase the gay, again?
A new group called 50 Bills 50 States formed last week and it has already raised $10,000. But these aren’t just any old bills the group is talking about. These are your favorite pray-away-the-gay conversion therapy bills, the likes of which have already been banned in five states and a district: California, New Jersey, Illinois, Oregon, Vermont and Washington, D.C.
“In the states and cities where the bans are already in place, we want to revive the conversations so that LGBTQ kids know they are beautiful and loved,” one of the group’s founders Samuel Brinton, a survivor himself, said in a press release. “And in the other 45 states, we are going to work with legislators to introduce bills banning these brutal practices. We know every state won’t pass these bills in 2017 but the unanimity of submitting them will resonate from coast to coast.”
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