Trump - A New Battle Everyday

[yoink 321]

On 7/24/2019 at 3:17 AM, RonD1120 said:

Trump Jr. raises $2.5M in Calif. for reelection campaign

 

OAN Newsroom
UPDATED 9:36 AM PT — Tuesday, July 23, 2019

The president’s eldest son recently saw a successful round of fundraising in California. According to Monday reports, Donald Trump Jr. and his girlfriend Kimberly Guilfoyle raised $2.5 million over a 48-hour period last week. The money will likely go toward Trump Victory, which is one of the main fundraising vehicles for the president’s re-election campaign.

Until this point, the exact locations for the fundraising events had been kept under wraps.

“Some ugly things have happened recently to the Trump family, and I think they’d like to avoid that,” said John Dennis, San Francisco Republicans chairman.

 

https://www.oann.com/trump-jr-raises-2-5m-in-calif-for-reelection-campaign/

 

Winning, even in California. 

 

To go towards Trump's Q1 total of $3.25m raised. So yeah, 'Winning'.

oh, apart from Bittigieg and Harris, both of whom raised more in California than Trump. Nearly twice as much in Harris' case. 

 

It's also not as straightforward a metric as you'd like to pretend. The Democratic voters in California are splitting their donations between 19 candidates. Your guys only have a choice of one... What do you think will happen to the funding totals when the democratic field narrows?

For reference, The overall cash raised for the Democratic field is about $26.5m, so the reality is that Trump has garnered only 11% of the total donations in California. Hardly 'winning', I'd say. Unless your definition of winning is 'better than I thought he'd do'. But that's a pretty low bar.

 

Trump DID top the small donations contributors list, at nearly 93% of his fundraising coming from people donating less that 100 bucks. But again, he's the only Republican in the field, so that's to be expected.

 

As always Ron, you oversimplify to try and try and take a jab at Democrats but end up looking either ignorant of the complexity of the topic you're discussing or deliberately misrepresenting the facts to suit your own world view.

 

Here's the real breakdown: https://calmatters.org/blogs/california-election-2020/2019/07/trump-funders-california-presidential-campaign-charts/

I suggest digesting it. There's a lot of interesting stuff in there.

Edited July 25, 2019 by yoink

[normiss 620]

5 hours ago, DJL said:

Kind of like declining the penalty in football, they get better field position.  An impeachment proceeding would be extremely risky politically.  It's doubtful that it would go through, Trump would not make it easy and resign like Nixon, it's difficult to say that it would even result in Trump's removal, it would divide the country along party lines and possibly do more to send Republican voters to the polls resulting in a substantial loss of seats (as happened to the R's after Clinton's proceedings) and even the next Presidency.  It does much more for it to be something that sits out there as an unresolved strike against Trump that weighs on the minds of people trying to decide if they want to use their lunch break to hit the polling station.

A leader is installed with the help of a foreign adversary, and our elected officials put their political self-interests ahead of country and allow it to become normalized. They are failing their constitutional responsibilities.

This is how a democracy dies.

[billvon 2,384]

On 7/24/2019 at 3:17 AM, RonD1120 said:

Trump Jr. raises $2.5M in Calif. for reelection campaign

Cool!  Trump embezzled over $1.1 million of his last campaign donations; looks like he has his sights set higher this time.  So pay up, Ron!  Donnie needs a new yacht.

[metalslug 31]

57 minutes ago, normiss said:

This is how a democracy dies.

I don't like Trump much myself, but unless I've missed evidence somewhere that the actual vote count was tampered with, he's the guy that voting Americans wanted. Sure, it's a sad a reflection of a 'government of the people', but it's about as democratic as it gets.

[billvon 2,384]

2 minutes ago, metalslug said:

I don't like Trump much myself, but unless I've missed evidence somewhere that the actual vote count was tampered with, he's the guy that voting Americans wanted.

Well, not quite.  Millions more Americans wanted Clinton over Trump.  The electoral college elected Trump.

[metalslug 31]

6 minutes ago, billvon said:

Well, not quite.  Millions more Americans wanted Clinton over Trump.  The electoral college elected Trump.

Fair point. Although, you can't have it both ways I guess; Either democracy died many years ago ever since the electoral college had that role, or it's an integral part of a living democracy.

[kallend 1,621]

5 hours ago, metalslug said:

Fair point. Although, you can't have it both ways I guess; Either democracy died many years ago ever since the electoral college had that role, or it's an integral part of a living democracy.

USA is NOT a democracy, and was not designed as one.

[BIGUN 1,050]

2 hours ago, kallend said:

USA is NOT a democracy, and was not designed as one.

And, that is why we have an Electoral College. 

[ryoder 1,381]

2 hours ago, BIGUN said:

And, that is why we have an Electoral College. 

Show me any other republics that have anything comparable to the EC.

The EC was designed to give the Southern states disproportionate power in order to protect slavery.

Period.

[kallend 1,621]

2 hours ago, BIGUN said:

And, that is why we have an Electoral College. 

The reason for the Electoral College is described in detail in the Federalist Paper #68 written by Hamilton.  It was so only the elite got to choose the president.

[DJL 232]

12 hours ago, normiss said:

A leader is installed with the help of a foreign adversary, and our elected officials put their political self-interests ahead of country and allow it to become normalized. They are failing their constitutional responsibilities.

This is how a democracy dies.

I disagree, many times we make a wrong move and only in retrospect do we harden ourselves against it.  That statement could be applied to many things we've done in the past but will never do again.  But I'm only right about that if I end up being right about that and the idea that we'll do better next time certainly doesn't alleviate them from your statement.

Edited July 26, 2019 by DJL

[BIGUN 1,050]

4 hours ago, ryoder said:

Show me any other republics that have anything comparable to the EC.

Of the some 125 "democracies" - 60 of them have some form of EC 

[BIGUN 1,050]

4 hours ago, kallend said:

The reason for the Electoral College is described in detail in the Federalist Paper #68 written by Hamilton.  It was so only the elite got to choose the president.

Huh? Where is that in #68? Hamilton had nothing but praise about the electoral college. .

[ryoder 1,381]

13 minutes ago, BIGUN said:

Of the some 125 "democracies" - 60 of them have some form of EC 

I am talking about an EC like the US has where the electors not elected officials, nor any sort of political leader:

"Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector."

 

Look up your electors from the 2016 election, and tell me if you ever heard of any of them:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_2016_United_States_presidential_electors

[BIGUN 1,050]

7 minutes ago, ryoder said:

Look up your electors from the 2016 election, and tell me if you ever heard of any of them:

I have a bit of a disadvantage on this. Channel 6 News always runs a profile on the State's electors. I get it - it's very popular to hate the electoral college when the votes aren't in your favor. 

[kallend 1,621]

22 minutes ago, BIGUN said:

Huh? Where is that in #68? Hamilton had nothing but praise about the electoral college. .

Indeed - that was exactly what Hamilton wanted.

[jakee 1,254]

16 hours ago, metalslug said:

I don't like Trump much myself, but unless I've missed evidence somewhere that the actual vote count was tampered with, he's the guy that voting Americans wanted. Sure, it's a sad a reflection of a 'government of the people', but it's about as democratic as it gets.

Apparently you've missed the evidence of what the actual vote count was.

 

Voting Americans wanted Hillary. The EC wanted Trump.

[JerryBaumchen 1,047]

59 minutes ago, BIGUN said:

it's very popular to hate the electoral college when the votes aren't in your favor. 

Hi Keith,

I've despised it since I first read about in my mid-teens.  IMO it is not the best system for any modern gov't.

Jerry Baumchen

[wmw999 2,117]

The eighteenth century guys who designed the US were Englishmen. Which means they were essentially classist; in Great Britain, the House of Lords had veto power over Commons until the 20th century. 

They wanted something different for the future, but what you’ve lived with all your life goes deep. 

The Electoral College seems to have been, to some degree, the House of Lords. 

Wendy P. 

[BIGUN 1,050]

23 hours ago, billvon said:

Millions more Americans wanted Clinton over Trump.  The electoral college elected Trump.

Quote

 

Whenever one party wins a majority of the popular vote and the opposing party wins a majority of the electoral vote, the losing party clamors to change the system. In 2016, neither Hillary Clinton nor Donald Trump won a majority of the popular vote. Clinton, in the CNN totals, gives Secretary Clinton 48.2 percent of the popular vote; Donald Trump has 46.3 percent or 1.9 percentage points less, with 5.5 percent voting for third party candidates. No one won a majority of the popular vote, and Trump won an electoral landslide, 306 electoral votes to 232.

Clinton probably won two million more votes than Trump, yet in the same election, the Republicans as a group in the House of Representatives beat Clinton’s plurality by 50 percent, winning the national popular vote by three million votes.Clinton won California by nearly 3.5 million votes, accounting for her popular win and underscoring her regional appeal.

In 2000, Vice President Gore won 49 percent of the votes cast, which is greater than the 43 percent President Clinton won in 1992. The statistics say that Gore beat George W. Bush by 543,819 votes. However, we really do not know that he won more votes that Bush. The Gore vote differential in 2000, expressed as a percentage of the total vote of all the votes, was less than the vote differential in Florida in 2000 favoring Bush. If total votes matter, we would have to recount the entire nation, not just Florida. The Electoral College system saves us from that.

Under the present Electoral System, if there are allegations of fraud or claims that the voting machines failed to count all the votes because the older people in Florida did not press the voting button hard enough, the investigation is limited to states where the electoral votes matter and the race is close. In 2000, if the popular vote had decided the election, we would have had to recount the votes of the entire nation, because older people in Texas (which voted heavily Republican) might be like the Floridians (whom Gore claimed) did not follow the directions on the voting machine. The Electoral College avoids the nation-wide recount in close elections.

The Electoral College, in practice, gives a little more electoral power to racial minorities, such as blacks and Hispanics, and thus is important in helping to achieve racial justice. Because these minorities tend to live in the large cities of the bigger states, their votes are important in tilting all the electoral votes of their state, thus encouraging candidates of both parties to appeal for their votes.

A purely popular vote would encourage some states (particularly one-party states) to change their voting requirements in order to increase their influence in the entire nation. A state may drop the voting age to 17 or 16, because more people voting in that state would give that state more influence, by affecting the national vote, not just its electoral votes. If a simple majority governed, both the candidates and the voters would have acted differently. Donald Trump, for example, would have spent more time in California, because an extra vote there (or one in any other large state) would counterbalance a Clinton vote in New York.

~Ronald D. Rotunda was The Doy & Dee Henley Chair and Distinguished Professor of Jurisprudence, Chapman University, The Dale E. Fowler School of Law. He is coauthor of six-volume Treatise on Constitutional Law: Substance and Procedure (5th ed., Thomson-West, St. Paul, Minn. 2012-2013), and Legal Ethics: The Lawyer's Deskbook on Professional Responsibility (ABA Thomson-West & ABA, 11th ed. 2013), a one-volume treatise on Legal Ethics.

 

 

[mistercwood 287]

Then don't use the popular vote, but do fix the EC. It no longer balances the playing field and instead implements tyranny of the minority - you still have one group dictating to another, it just flips who it is. Fix the representation to match the proportions it originally did.

And restore the power (and responsibility dammit!) for the electors to override shitty decisions - their original intent was to prevent someone like Trump, not enable his otherwise unlikely victory.

[kallend 1,621]

Today he was preening about how he got the SCOTUS to approve the theft of $2.5B from the military budget to pay for (part of) his wall.

I thought Mexico was going to pay for it, like he promised.

[wolfriverjoe 1,340]

Professor, only idiots & fools believed that Mexico was ever going to pay for the wall.

[kallend 1,621]

So Trump's tariffs haven't worked, so his solution is more tariffs.

His tax cuts haven't produce the business investment he promised, just huge deficits.

Interesting analysis:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/01/opinion/trump-economy.html?em_pos=small&ref=headline&nl_art=3&te=1&nl=opinion-today&emc=edit_ty_20190802?campaign_id=39&instance_id=11361&segment_id=15808&user_id=ca24d8cbef60603e22e6b56f4ff89857&regi_id=89442825emc=edit_ty_20190802

[kallend 1,621]

 "The president’s additional tariffs will only inflict greater pain on American businesses, farmers, workers and consumers, and undermine an otherwise strong U.S. economy.” - US Chamber of Commerce.

But what does the Chamber of Commerce know about business?