As the number of votes cast against Donald Trump continues to rise, Trump and his supporters continue to brush that fact off with an interesting bit of reasoning. If the election was based on the popular vote, they say, Trump would have campaigned differently. Trump himself tweeted: "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."
There's at least one thing wrong with that rationale. It assumes that Clinton would not have changed her campaigning strategy, too. As it stands now, Clinton's popular vote total is by far the largest winning margin -- in history -- by a candidate who lost the electoral college. If that happened without Clinton even trying to get the popular vote, doesn't it makes more sense that her popular vote margin would have been even larger if she had campaigned for it?
The fact that the popular vote count is being brought to the attention of the American people really annoys the Trumpers. And they are livid at the anti-Trump protests. Their response to these realities? "You lost. Get over it." What should really be annoying them are these facts (from a Nov. 15 politico article):
On election night in 2012, Trump ranted about the Electoral College when he appeared to believe, incorrectly, that President Barack Obama lost the popular vote to Mitt Romney.
"He lost the popular vote by a lot and won the election. We should have a revolution in this country!" Trump wrote that night, continuing in a subsequent post that "the electoral college is a disaster for a democracy."
"The phoney electoral college made a laughing stock out of our nation. The loser one!" he added [sic].
"More votes equals a loss ... revolution!"
It is amazing how the Trumpers are able to filter out all of the incredibly stupid and contradictory things Trump says. It seems like there isn't a single thing that comes out of that jerk's mouth that hasn't been completely contradicted by a previous thing he's said. Like these other tweets from 2012:
Of course, when he thought he was going to lose, he incited his supporters with unfounded accusations of rigging. He urged them to take matters into their own hands with "Second Amendment remedies" if Hillary won. Some of them vowed to wage an armed revolution if Trump didn't win.
According to The Independent, Clinton has more than 1.7 million more votes -- and counting -- than Trump and more total votes than any other US presidential candidate in history -- except for Barack Obama -- who's approval rating is 55%.
Besides losing the popular vote, the Republicons lost two Senate seats and six congressional seats.
Imagine if the Dems had nominated someone other than Hillary Clinton. Someone without her long history of ethically dishonest and corrupt decision making. Someone like Bernie Sanders, for instance.
The anti-Trump protests are not only fair -- common human decency demands it.
Trump is a racist liar and a moral degenerate. That is not partisan hyperbole. As Senator Paul Ryan said -- "it's the textbook definition." I hope and pray that -- out of these protests -- a demand for an apology from Trump emerges. We can't let him get away with his mountain of insults, slurs and lies. We can not let this be the norm of our political discourse.
Trump gets his talking points from the right-wing hate media. He has delved into the dark and ugly fringes of the alt-right, white nationalist and white supremacist movements. Those hate mongers get away with that shit when they speak to their gullible audiences. We can't let Trump get away with that when he speaks to a national audience.
We must demand an apology.
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