The Final Results of the 2016 Presidential Election Are In

The results are in: Donald Trump has officially been elected as the 45^th President of the United States.

On Election Day, according to state laws governing the awarding of electoral votes based on the results of the popular vote, Trump won 306 votes, and Hillary Clinton won 232. The margin was virtually unchanged yesterday; Trump took 304, and Clinton, 227. Two pledged Trump electors from Texas went rogue, one voting for John Kasich and the other for Ron Paul. (So the Libertarian Party will still end up with an electoral vote, despite Gary Johnson's failure to make a splash.) Meanwhile, five Clinton electors across the country voted for several other people, including Bernie Sanders, Colin Powell, and Faith Spotted Eagle (an American Indian activist involved in the Dakota Access pipeline fight).

Amusingly, for all the talk of Republican electors voting for someone other than Trump, Clinton actually lost more votes to faithless electors. And it could have been even worse for her—another three pledged Clinton electors in Minnesota, Maine, and Colorado attempted to vote for someone else (Sanders in Maine and Minnesota, and Kasich in Colorado) but had their votes invalidated due to state laws binding electors to the results of the statewide popular vote.

Some unexpected names also received electoral votes for Vice President: Carly Fiorina, Susan Collins, Maria Cantwell, and Winona LaDuke (the Green Party’s 2000 VP nominee).

Seven rogue electors may be well short of the thirty-seven that would have been needed to actually change the results of the election, but it’s still hard to count the ways in which this was historic:

·         Most number of faithless electors in a single election, beating the previous record of six, set in 1808.

·         Most people to receive at least one electoral vote for president in a single election.

·         First time the Green Party has received an electoral vote for President or Vice President (Winona LaDuke).

·         First time faithless electors voted for a candidate from the other major party (the three Democrats in Washington State who voted for Colin Powell).

·         And Faith Spotted Eagle now has a place in history, going from completely unknown activist to one of only two women (along with Hillary Clinton) to have won Electoral College votes for President.

Odd footnotes to a crazy year.

And presumably, now that Trump has officially been elected President, liberals will forget their brief infatuation with the power of the Electoral College and “Hamilton electors” and go back to decrying it as a relic of slavery.

Yesterday Was The Stunning Series Finale

Note: I had intended to publish this yesterday but was unable to do so. I apologize. Regardless, I hope you find it to be a unique and entertaining take on the 2016 election.


Tonight, tens of millions of Americans will tune in to the stunning series finale of 2016, one of the most groundbreaking dramas currently on television. Anticipation has been ramping up for weeks, as the writers delivered one twist after another, leaving audiences with mouths agape, wondering what could possibly be next.

It started straightforward enough, back in Season One, with a cast of confident Republicans vying to take on the anointed Democratic nominee. But one character, Donald Trump, who started out as a seemingly minor character whose sole purpose seemed to be comic relief and an added source of tension, quickly grew to dominate the show. Whether his increasing role was the result of widespread popularity among some fans, or the writers’ intention from the beginning, has remained a secret, but he quickly shook up a sharply divided primary election, surging into the lead.

One by one, he cut down his Republican challengers. Many of the actors in those roles gave critically acclaimed performances, although those portraying the characters of Jeb Bush and John Kasich have been criticized as being “wooden” and “low-energy”. But overall, Season One—the pre-primary season—offered twists and turns that left the viewer eagerly anticipating what was to come.

And the second season did not disappoint. It kicked off with high drama on caucus night in Iowa, where Ted Cruz turned against Trump, his erstwhile ally, and won the first state in the grueling slog to 1,237 delegates. His victory was quickly beset by accusations that he had stolen votes from rival Ben Carson, by publicizing a CNN report that Carson was planning to exit the race. Trump, meanwhile, took the lead in the delegate count with a quick succession of victories in New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada.

Trump and Cruz returned as season regulars, joined by John Kasich, Ben Carson, and Carly Fiorina in a recurring role. Marco Rubio also initially started the season as a regular, but his character felt increasingly robotic and underappreciated, and he was finally written off the show following a dismal primary showing in his home state of Florida.

Hillary Clinton also returned as a series regular on the Democratic side, joined on the second season by Bernie Sanders—who defied expectations by winning several primaries and offering Clinton a strong challenge from the left. Despite this, he could not ultimately overcome the Clinton machine, and by the end of the season had dropped out of the race and endorsed his former opponent.

By the final episodes of the second season, only Trump, Cruz, and Kasich remained in the Republican race—with many TV critics and fans alike wondering why Kasich had not been removed from the show long ago. Plot devices to make the character more compelling and relevant, including a brief strategic alliance with the Cruz campaign, felt contrived and overdone, and were quietly abandoned.

Still, apart from Kasich, the final episodes of the second season were strong, guaranteeing renewal. Cruz declared a major victory in Wisconsin, but was ultimately overcome in the Indiana primary and conceded defeat—though not before offering a defiant, impromptu speech declaring what he really thought of Donald Trump. The season ended with Trump the presumptive Republican nominee, ready to face Hillary Clinton in the fall.

The third season premiere was perhaps the most dramatic to date, with a showdown and near riot on the floor of the Republican National Convention over a proposed rules package. Forces opposed to Donald Trump joined with party loyalists and conservative stalwarts to attempt to force a roll call vote, a dramatic yet ultimately futile struggle that has quickly become one of the defining episodes of the series. And in the very next episode, Ted Cruz returned in a special guest role to offer a dramatic speech in primetime, pointedly refusing to endorse his former primary rival in the face of hundreds of furious delegates.

The third season has had plenty of twists and turns of its own, some better than others—from the three vicious presidential debates, to the bombshell release of tapes in which Trump was recorded bragging about sexual assault—and the flood of Republicans denouncing him, and the women who claimed that he had assaulted them, as a result. Tensions have only increased even further in the last couple episodes, as it was revealed that the FBI was reopening the investigation into Clinton’s mishandling of classified information while Secretary of State, an investigation believed to have been permanently closed at the end of Season Two.

And tonight, all will be revealed. According to the show, the race has tightened once again to within the margin of error in many polls, although Trump is still seen as the billionaire underdog. (It is a tribute to the writers of 2016 that the phrase “billionaire underdog” makes any sense at all in this context.)

Additionally, the fate of Congress and the Supreme Court hangs in the balance. Meanwhile, #NeverTrump Republicans continue to flock to the independent candidacy of Evan McMullin, who hopes to throw the election to the House and become, in the process, the first independent candidate for President to win statewide in decades.

Will he succeed? Will Hillary Clinton be elected the first woman president? Or will the late reversal by the FBI usher in a President Trump? Tune in tonight at 7/6c for the special, extended series finale of 2016.

Why Did No Major Independent Candidate Emerge?

One of the enduring mysteries in a campaign season full of them: Why, in a year when both major parties nominated candidates who are both historically unpopular with the general electorate, did no major independent candidate emerge, à la Ross Perot in 1992 or 1996?

Sure, we’ll get our fair share of third-party and independent candidates on the ballot: Gary Johnson, Jill Stein, Evan McMullin… But none of those command high name recognition, a particularly unique campaign platform, or the massive financial resources needed to wage a successful presidential campaign. Two of those, Johnson and Stein, are retreads from the 2012 election, doing far better this time around merely as the unwitting beneficiaries of widespread animosity toward the two major-party candidates. And Evan McMullin, while a decent man who would make a good president, is hardly a household name, even in intensely political households.

After it became clear that Donald Trump had a reasonably good chance at winning the nomination, the narrative turned from “Will Trump run as an independent?” to “Will someone run as an independent against Trump?” For a while, the answer looked like it would be yes—and someone well-known at that, a sitting or former governor or Senator (Gary Johnson, a Libertarian who last held elected office over a decade ago, doesn’t count). Rumors flew that Mitt Romney would enter the race, or Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska, or John Kasich.

But no one ever did.

Many of the reasons why lie with the prospective candidates themselves, and are impossible to guess at fully. But running for president is a demanding task, even when supported by the full resources and infrastructure of a major national party. Running as an independent, and building a national ground operation and fundraising infrastructure from scratch, is doubly difficult. And, for any Republicans who were current officeholders—or who hoped to seek office again in the future—following through with an independent bid almost certainly doomed from the beginning would have seemed to be a career-ending move.

Considering all that, it seems to me that there would have been only one Republican who could have reasonably embarked on a serious independent bid for the Presidency, without risk of political suicide, and who would have had a reasonable chance at success to boot—Mitt Romney.

Having run for president twice already, once as the Republican nominee, he would have already had built-in name recognition. Being retired from public office would have meant that he needn’t have worried about any potential sanctions from the RNC down the line. He would have been able to build, through his high name recognition and multitude of contacts, a national infrastructure in relatively short order. And he would have had a realistic chance at winning, or at the very least getting on the debate stage—a Washington Post/ABC News poll conducted in May showed Romney receiving 22% of the vote nationally, with Clinton at 37% and Trump at 35%.

As to why he ultimately chose not to run, only Romney himself can answer that, but I assume it was basically the same reasoning that led him to pass on running in the primaries last year—he had had enough of running for President, believed it simply wasn’t meant to be, and wished to give other, younger candidates an opportunity. Whatever the reasoning, though, his passing on an independent run exacerbated the trend of major national figures turning down the chance of running against Trump in the general election—and likely deprived the #NeverTrump movement of its one real chance to actually win the election.

Some Overdue Praise for John Kasich

Ted Cruz has received effusive praise from many corners since his defiant, rousing speech at the Republican National Convention (along with more than his share of anger and hatred from the Trumpkins), but less attention has been given to John Kasich. He may not have given a primetime address in the middle of Trump’s coronation and pointedly refused to endorse, but Kasich has been no less critical of the Dear Leader.

He angered many during the primary campaign, and with good reason. Beyond his moderate policies, his christening of himself as the “Prince of Light and Hope”, and his holier-than-thou admonition of critics of Medicaid expansion, his presence served to split the anti-Trump vote for most of the primary season, costing both Rubio and Cruz several crucial victories and won only Ohio in the process.

This in turn led many to believe he was secretly in league with Trump, sabotaging the efforts of the #NeverTrump forces in return for the vice presidency. But since he dropped out in May we’ve all been proven wrong. He reportedly declined the VP nomination after it was specifically offered to him, criticized and pointedly refused to endorse Trump in several media appearances over the past couple months, boycotted the Cleveland coronation in his own backyard, and has now angered Trump enough for the God King to pledge up to $10 million to defeat him in a future election (Trump has also pledged up to $20 million to defeat Cruz’s 2018 reelection campaign).

You still aren’t the best presidential candidate in history, John Kasich, but we had you wrong. Thank you for having the courage to stand up for your beliefs.