The myth of a huge white voter turnout has been debunked. The real story is the lack of Democratic voters. Obama had far more.
Okay, check this out. I saw this on CBS, with Don Lemon interviewing Michael Moore. (Clip below.)
Keep in mind, the graph below seems to exaggerate differences in the vote totals, because it only shows from 52 million and up. However, it does show that, as they point out in the interview, the “huge white vote for Trump” thing is just a myth.
As you can see, there were only about the same number of votes for Trump as there were for Romney in 2012. The real story is how many fewer votes there were for Hillary, compared to both of Obama’s vote totals, especially the first in 2008.
In 2012, Obama received 65,915,795 votes. She may get 63M or possibly even 64M, but would still be about 2M short of that, and six million short of Obama’s first win.
In other words, if you’re looking for someone to blame — and why not, the blame game can be somehow consoling when you’re feeling blue — we can clearly blame the lazy Dems who weren’t “inspired” enough, compared to the last couple elections, to save the world from the Orange Demagogue.
And yeah, I get it, Clinton wasn’t nearly as inspiring as Obama had been, and had a ton of baggage — whether you perceive all that baggage to be well-earned or not.
BUT. The Supreme Court will now be hard-right for the foreseeable future — decades. Not only that, but the huge number of vacant judicial seats all over the country — held up by the Republicans in Congress, who played the stall game on Obama’s appointments — will also go hard-right for the foreseeable future. This judicial branch issue is huge because it’s so long-lasting. Even if the Republicans get voted out again in four years, the judiciary will stay largely unchanged.
Right-wing judges will no doubt be siding with the one percent over average citizens and citizen organizations, who can’t afford big teams of expensive lawyers, and that has real consequences — for the environment, the economy, civil rights, women’s rights, and on and on.
Of course, there’s everything else about Trump — well documented — that is so potentially terrible. I could expand on all of that for a book’s worth, but I’ll refer you to sites like thenation.com, readersupportednews.org, alternet.org for some sobering articles and devastating truth bombs.
Despite all that, however, millions of Dems couldn’t be bothered. Nice. And we could’ve flipped the Senate too!!! I’m sorry, but to me, this non-action is deplorable. Yes, Dems have their own basket of deplorables, and they sat it out.
Thanks to all these non-voters, orange is the new black. I’m just afraid that orange is going to be in the shape of a mushroom cloud, or orange jumpsuits for all us liberals, or … fill in the blank.
I’m not a religious man, but, God Help Us All!
P.S. According to The Nation, “The results in a number of battleground states were so close that a shift of around 55,000 votes in three states (Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin) would align the national popular vote result with the Electoral College result,” giving Clinton the win.
The article also notes Clinton’s popular vote win is unprecedented: “Clinton has already won the popular vote by a dramatically larger number of ballots than anyone in history who did not go on to be inaugurated as president.”
The bipartisan National Popular Vote initiative would fix the Electoral Vote problem, without the need of a constitutional amendment: FairVote.
By the way, with this article, I’m only agreeing with Donald Trump, who in 2012 described the Electoral College a “disaster for democracy.”
Here’s the Michael Moore interview, queued to the spot:
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