The Rodney King Election

Let me try another argument for why it is wrong to make much of Hillary's lead in the popular vote.

As of 12:30 pm, 12/13/2016, Hillary Clinton leads Donald Trump by 630,877 votes.  It sounds like a lot.  In any state-wide race, like for the U.S. Senate, this kind of lead would be decisive if not overwhelming.  After all, the lead, itself, is larger than the entire populations of Wyoming (586,107) and Vermont (626,042) and nearly the population of Alaska (738,432).  But, in a nation of 324,720,797 people, who cast 127,203,552 votes, Hillary leads Trump by 0.5%---one half of one percent. Think of it this way.

Imagine the U.S. Senate is split exactly 50/50:  50 Democratic senators and 50 Republican senators.  Now, imagine that one senator changes his party affiliation from Democratic to Republican.  Now the split is 49 Democrats and 51 Republicans.  This creates a two vote difference in favor of the Republicans or a 2% advantage.  So, one senator crossing the aisle gives the Republicans a 2% advantage.

Hillary has a 0.5% advantage over Trump.  Her popular advantage is 1/4 the size of the Republican advantage in the example I just gave.  In other words, Hillary's advantage does not even rise to the level of one senator crossing the aisle.

Friends, there is no ground swell of popular support for Hillary Clinton.  Judging by the presidential vote, alone, we are one seriously divided nation.  That's all.

Furthermore, if you look at the larger political landscape, as I have argued in my blog essay, "Humility",  the reasonable assumption is that the American people have rejected the Democratic Party, and they have rejected Hillary Clinton with it.

The strange problem in the 2016 election is that the rejection of one candidate does not proportionately translate into the acceptance of the other.  The two candidates are structurally different.  Hillary Clinton was the leader of the Democratic Party.  If you reject the party you reject Hillary.  One clear result of the 2016 elections is that the American people have rejected the Democratic Party.

Donald Trump was not the leader of the Republican Party.  He may be that, now, but if he is that leader (and I am not sure that is true), he became their leader by beating them to a pulp with a spiked club.  I have in mind the grisly images of the annual fur seal hunt on the ice floes off Newfoundland.  (Look up those images only if you have a strong stomach.)  Thus, where rejecting the Democratic Party implies rejecting Hillary, favoring the Republican Party, as Americans clearly have done, does not instantly translate into accepting Donald Trump.

So, the result of the 2016 presidential election, alone, is unclear.  The only way to make sense of it, I think, is to put it into the context of all the elections:  state and national.  In that context, the American people rejected Hillary, and we are left with Trump by default.

It's a hell of a thing.  I desperately hope we will have greater clarity next time.  But that's where we are, today.  We have to accept Donald Trump, and all I can do is quote the notorious Rodney King:  "Can't we all just get along?"