There were a few surprises in how the usual suspects in the media treated the finality of the electoral college vote Monday, or maybe just an item or two slipped through. We actually did see some related subject lines by liberal media that got the story straight even if the content of the articles devolved into biased narratives.
For weeks following the election, every Putin / Trump conspiracy theory imaginable was entertained as if Hillary Clinton, but for such a conspiracy, would have been elected. The liberal media gave incredible amount of coverage to the Russian connection hype in order to serve as the propaganda arm of efforts to intimidate Trump electors to up-end the will of the people in their respective states. But as much as they pounded away at allegations of the Russian government hacking the DNC and raised the specter it was done to benefit Trump, both assumptions in dispute among our intelligence agencies, it was Hillary that lost ground with electoral college electors and not Trump.
Here is an NPR article by Scott Detrow. Notice how whoever wrote the subject line got it fairly straight but Detrow could not resist continuing the liberal spin about Trump and a narrative designed to undermine the electoral college.
Donald Trump Secures Electoral College Win, With Few Surprises (bold our emphasis)
(snip)
The Electoral College gathering is usually a formality — a chance for political activists to gather amid pomp and circumstance to formalize their party’s victory in each state.
But the fact Clinton won the national popular vote by such a large margin, combined with the unconventional and unpredictable — and to many, threatening — way that Trump carried himself before and after winning the White House, led to an unprecedented effort to lobby electors to vote for someone else.
Electors found themselves inundated by letters, petitions, tweets and Facebook posts, urging them to cast a ballot for an alternative candidate. Many received threats, as well.
Many people behind the lobbying campaign cited a Federalist Paper written by Alexander Hamilton, which frames the Electoral College as a safeguard against “foreign powers” that try to “gain an improper ascendant in our councils” — a potentially relevant line, in the midst of revelations that Russia attempted to disrupt this year’s election by hacking and releasing Democratic emails.
Indeed it seems as the virtually uncontested California vote trickles in, Hillary Clinton will end up with a nationwide total of about 2% over Trump. It is an irrelevant figure as part of the election but one that NPR will nevertheless relentlessly point to in order to try to psychologically delegitimize Trump’s presidency. Of course they will not mention the irrelevancy with the same alacrity, and never that Hillary received a plurality vote rather than a popular vote, as more people supported other candidates than her. And perish the thought NPR will mention in such context that Hillary’s husband won the presidency with electoral votes, not a majority of popular votes (again his was a plurality) and at only 43% of those cast, a lot less than the percentage Trump received.
Certain of Hamilton’s comments regarding the electoral college, (throw in Madison as well) are used by those who want to persuade electors they have the right even duty to vote for whoever they willy-nilly want, as if Hamilton’s views surely prevailed. We think the delegates (and approving states) approving the Constitution, had they intended to bypass the people in the states in favor of a tribunal to elect the president would have structured the presidential election clauses to make that clear. Inescapably the Hamilton ruse operates on the idea that a cabal of people should be able to get together and make inoperative the will of the voters in their respective states. The problem with that is, the authorization to have a cabal sit in such supreme judgement is not what is plainly in the Constitution as approved by the states. Hamilton’s thoughts do not first control, the text as approved first controls.
The Constitution Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 reads:
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.
That the states can bind, or allow parties to bind as many do, is derivative from the summary provided by editors of the government archives web site. States uniformly allow each party to pick a team of electors, and we would add, control them to the extent of having alternate electors vote when an elector(s) refuses to vote for a party’s candidate under the conditions of their office as electors.
The first part of the process is controlled by the political parties in each state and varies from state to state. Generally, the parties either nominate slates of potential Electors at their state party conventions or they chose them by a vote of the party’s central committee. This happens in each state for each party by whatever rules the state party and (sometimes) the national party have for the process. This first part of the process results in each Presidential candidate having their own unique slate of potential Electors. . . .
Hamilton’s views we think have been either stretched way out of bounds, or would be dangerous in practice.
The NPR article furthers the Russian conspiracy idea by referring to “revelations” as if what they are referring to is indisputable or widely accepted authoritatively. Wikileaks was the intermediary in the leak of the DNC e-mails, which are the ones supposedly associated with Russian involvement, the head of the organization disputes that Russians gave them to the organization. The “revelations” not in dispute are the content of those e-mails, which show the corruption of the Democrat Party.
R Mall
