By Florida Bill
Despite all of the noise-making by unhappy, teary- eyed liberals with predictions of an historical turn-around in favor of Hillary Clinton, the electors cast their votes in the electoral college based on the popular votes of the individual states they represented. Like it or not, this is the way the electoral college is supposed to work. President-elect Trump prevailed handily and is now being fitted for his tuxedo, tails and top hat for the swearing-in ceremony on Jan. 20.The final push by the anti-Trump crowd was doomed to fail, but that did not diminish the resolve. Literally, millions of emails were sent to electors committed to vote for the President-elect imploring them to do a 180 degree turn-around in favor of Hillary Clinton and even threatening them with harm if they did not.
There are many reasons being offered for the Clinton defeat. Many blame the content of emails lifted from the Democratic National Committee and disseminated by Wikileaks for destroying the popularity of Clinton. These cyber missives disclosed that Clinton had been fed questions to be asked at debates, and that her followers were characterizing Democratic Candidate Bernie Sanders as a "Doofus." One referenced Mrs. Clinton by saying, "What planet is she from"? Those revelations added to the nation's dislike of the disingenuous former First Lady and Secretary of State.
But the latest argument is that cyber-interference from Russians tilted the election in the favor of the wild and unfit President-elect. It was the dirty-handed hacking of private emails, charged John Podesta, Clinton's campaign manager, which diminished her popularity. Behind it all, he said, was President Vladimir Putin, who masterminded the scheme to close the Oval Office door on Mrs. Clinton. However the precise way in which this supposedly was accomplished has yet to be explained by Podesta or anyone else. In addition, why complain about devious Russian hacking when Clinton won the popular vote?
Alongside Podesta who was sounding the loudest chant about Russian interference, was former President Bill Clinton, who had assured America of a Hillary victory with the folksy jingle that there had been "eight (years) for Bill," and now there would be "eight (years) for Hill." And along with the alleged Russian involvement, he said, were "angry white men" who did not like his wife. Also, he pointed out, the towering six-foot, eight inch FBI Director James Comey botched investigations and made public statements which contributed heavily to her loss.
For me, I am not particularly surprised that Russian intelligence agencies are hacking into Washinton activities. Iran and China, I suspect are doing the same. But you can be sure that Uncle Sam with its 17 intelligence agencies is keeping abreast of the activities of Russia as well as the Middle East and elsewhere.
And it is no surprise that Putin favored Trump over Clinton who he regards as incompetent and a clone of a weak and ineffective President. Trump has said that he never met Putin and regards Russian involvement in the election as pure fantasy, or at best, questionable and undetermined. The explanation has been fabricated by bitter democrats who spent a billion dollars on Clinton, and lost, he added.
But with all of the theories in, the hard truth is that Hillary Clinton proved herself to be dishonest, unlikeable and incompetent and has a 40-year history of outright prevarications. Russia was probably happy that she lost the election, but probably didn't have any say in the matter, despite what Clinton's liberal friends in the media are saying.
On Dec. 19, the electors assembled in each of the 50 states and cast their votes. There were no surprises in the outcome to anyone outside Hollywood. In the end Trump, garnered 304, a winning number and Hillary Clinton captured 227. Trump needed at least 270 of the 538 electors, and everything went according to script.
After all the efforts to lobby Republican electors to desert Trump, only two did — a pair from Texas, one of whom voted for former Texas Rep. Ron Paul and the other for Ohio Gov. John Kasich. On the Democratic side, four electors refused to cast their vote for Mrs. Clinton.
On January 20, 2017, Trump will be inaugurated as the 45th President of the United States. Mrs. Clinton, reportedly, will attend the ceremony alongside here husband, the 42d President. As to Clinton's political future, I expect that she will resume delivering 20 minute speeches to rich Democrats. For certain she will be entertaining hope that the new Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, will be gentle in his legal evaluations of her apparent criminal indiscretions while handling classified emails and her questionable stewardship of the Clinton Foundation with its billion dollar corpus.
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One of the horrors I feared should Hillary have been elected was that she would nominate Barack Obama to the Supreme Court and the slim Republican Senate majority wouldn't be able to stop it.
ReplyDeleteThat nightmare no sooner dissolved on November 5th than another reared-up in its place: Obama could pull a Grover Cleveland, who served two non-consecutive terms, and run for President again in 2020.
So I quickly checked the 22nd Amendment to find that he can't do it, leaving Grover forever holding the distinction as the only President to have served twice with a hiatus in between.
And I don't expect Obama to patriotically return to the Congress after his presidency, as John Q. Adams did.
So what is Barack to do? He says he'll stay in Washington until his elder daughter graduates from high school, and I expect he will, presiding as elder statesman over the Democratic Party to attack every move by Trump to annul those of his "executive actions" which are unconstitutional
But as soon as his daughter is established at Harvard, I hold to my original prediction that he will accept a professorship for an incredible salary at the University of Chicago to teach constitutional law (including how to evade it) and return to his former home in Hyde Park, from which he can oversee from both locations the construction and content of his nearby Presidential Library in Jackson Park, which will of course become a temple for liberal worship.
It is interesting to note, however, that library contributions from elite Dem donors seem to have dramatically declined since liberals had expected a Hillary presidency to continue Barack's policies. Such donations may dry-up completely in the wake of Obama's abstention from the UN Security Council vote declaring Israel's West Bank and East Jerusalem to be Palestinian territory.