For Those Expecting an "Electoral College Miracle," You've been Well Played

"It's a Christmas miracle!"  If you're familiar with American TV, you've no doubt heard this phrase numerous times in your life. Typically in the plots around Christmas time, something has got the protagonist down. Maybe it is a loss of faith or hope. But by the end of the show, something unexpected and improbable happens that lifts everyone's spirits, and restores hope to the protagonist. 

Judging from my social media feeds, many of my liberal friends expected the Electoral College to deliver such a Christmas miracle. 

It started with the so-called "Hamilton Electors."  Several news articles proclaimed that there were Electors ready to cast a ballot for some reasonable candidate other than Donald Trump. I remember at least one of my friends on Facebook expressing excitement in November that this rumor was an actual thing, as an article reached the mainstream press. 

Then there was the call for intelligence briefings for Electors in the wake of accusations of hacking by the Russians from the CIA.  Electors have a right to know if a foreign power influenced our electoral system, was the rallying cry. Again, many of my liberal friends in social media expressed real hope that the Electoral College would "do the right thing."

And then December 19th, the day appointed for the Electors to meet in their respective state capitals, came and Trump received enough votes to be elected President of the United States. Indeed, while those wishing for an "Electoral College miracle" needed more than thirty Electors pledged to Trump to defect, only two actually did. 

And thus, many of my liberal friends took to social media and expressed disappointment; some using the harshest of profanity over the result. 

The fact is that they, along with anyone else who expected a more dramatic result, were played. They were played by a propaganda gambit from their very own party, the Democrats, assisted by willing accomplices in the press. 

The fact is that stories of possible Electoral College defectors were drummed up by Democratic political operatives. The press then reported the stories in a way that hid the political leanings of the perpetrators as well their true intentions. 

Let's first consider the so-called "Hamilton Electors."  These were Electors supposedly ready to vote for any reasonable candidate other than Trump. News stories trumpeted the fact that there had been "faithless Electors" in the past; Electors who voted for someone other than the candidate who vote the popular vote in their particular state. There were some news stories that announced that numerous Electors were taking advantage of legal advice offered for free from a certain law firm concerning the legal consequences of breaking a pledge to vote for the winner of their state's popular vote. Surely these were all indications of a potential Electoral College revolt. 

The problem was that the press failed to report that these potential faithless Electors were all Democrats pledged to vote for Hillary Clinton. 

In the end, there were a total of seven faithless Electors; the most of any presidential election. They voted for candidates like Collin Powell, John Kasich, Ron Paul, Bernie Sanders and even Faith Spotted Eagle, an American Indian tribal leader opposed to the Dakota Pipeline. But only two of these Electors were Republicans pledged to vote for Trump. Five were Democrats pledged to vote for Clinton.  This means that the so-called "Hamilton Electors" of  which the press trumpeted were very likely Democrats pledged to vote for Clinton all along. There never was any pending revolt of Republican Electors ready to "dump Trump."

Concerning the demand for an intelligence briefing over the alleged Russian hacking, media reporting was misleading in several respects. First, the press did its best to bury the fact that the push came from Democratic Electors, not Republicans. It would take a savvy reader some effort to discover that the originator of this demand was Christine Pelosi, Nancy Pelosi's daughter. Indeed, of the fifty five Electors demanding the briefing, only one was a Republican.  Hiding the affiliation of the Electors demanding the briefing gave the impression that Electors were ready to bolt from voting Trump. In reality, there was never really any danger in that happening. 

Second, the press willingly reported the so-called Russian hacking scandal in such a way as to exaggerate what the factual allegations were. The press used descriptions such as "hacking," a "foreign power" attempting to "influence the election," and the "integrity" of the "electoral system."

In fact, there has never been any allegation that the Russians ever attempted to hack into any of the state electoral boards and alter any vote count. But, by using such vague but inflammatory descriptors, the press was more than willing to have the general public conclude that the alleged hacking put the vote count in jeopardy. 

What has been alleged is that the Russians hacked into the email systems of both the Democratic and Republican National Committees to steal emails. It is alleged that the Russians leaked embarrassing emails about Clinton and her staff through Wikileaks. 

Thus the so-called influence was nothing more than an attempt to have an effect on the opinion of voters. Given the myriad of factors involved in the presidential campaign, it is highly doubtful that the release of embarrassing email communications had much of an effect on changing voters' minds. Quite frankly, the news emanating from the Wikileaks releases during the campaign was that there was nothing really ground-breaking from the emails. In the end, the email leaks were more hype than substance. 

Surely the news of the hacking should result in an effort to bring those responsible to justice for violating criminal laws. But, it is hardly a reason to overturn a presidential election. 

In fact, the news of how easily the Russians hacked into both the DNC and RNC email systems should emphasize why it was such a scandal that a sitting Secretary of State used an unsecured private server to communicate classified information. It placed such information at a high risk of being intercepted by foreign governments. 

So what was the purpose of these stories which dominated the news prior to the Electoral College vote?  First, there was a hope that more than thirty Republican Electors would be influenced to switch their votes and deny Trump an Electoral College victory. But that hope was misplaced. The parties choose the slate of Electors. They are chosen because of their strong loyalty to the political party. They are not chosen because they tend to be independent thinkers. 

Even if the campaign to influence the Electors succeeded, the race would simply be thrown to the House of Representatives, voting by state delegations, to decide. With Republicans in control of the House, the end result would likely have still been a Trump victory. 

The more important reason for the campaign to influence the Electoral College was to create a sense of illegitimacy of a Trump presidency. Trump didn't win the popular vote. He only won because of the disproportionate power given to small states by the Electoral College. Now the Electoral College failed to receive intelligence briefings of Russian interference and influence. And a record number of Electors were faithless Electors. Therefore, the stage is set to rationalize aggressive residence by the Democrats of the Trump agenda. 

What is comes down to is the fact that the public was played. They were played by the Democrats eager to paint the Trump presidency as illegitimate. They were played by a press, already biased against Trump, and willing to carry the torch for the Democratic Party. 

By: William J. Kovatch, Jr. 

The Perilous Plight of Pistachio Girl

Yesterday, ARAMark, the food service provider for the Philadelphia Phillies, announced that it had parted ways with Emily Youcis, affectionately known as Pistachio Girl. As the nickname implies, Youcis was one of the colorful vendors who sold pistachios at Citizen Bank Park (CBP).  As a Phillies fan in exile in Northern Virginia, I get to see one, maybe two if I'm lucky, games at CBP each year. So I cannot say I have ever had the pleasure of meeting Pistachio Girl. But judging from my Twitter feed (@PhilBaseBallHis), which includes a number of Phillies fans and Philadelphia sports reporters, there is a degree of sadness over this news, as Pistachio Girl seems to have had an outgoing personality. 

So why was Pistachio Girl fired?  It seems that Pistachio Girl has some peculiar points of view, particularly when it comes to race relations. You see, she supports White Nationalism and is not afraid to express it on her social media accounts. ARAMark, wanting to protect its brand, fired her. 

The story intrigues me because there are a number of conflicting principles involved. There is the right to free speech, the right of a business to protect its image and the blurring of the lines of what is public and private caused by social media. 

Let's start by talking about free speech. To be clear, I abhor racism.  Judging people based on the color of their skin is just plain ignorant. But one of the founding principles of this country is the right to free expression. The right free expression is so strong, it protects even offensive speech. I personally may not like flag burning, for instance. But flag burning is protected speech, and as such I have to tolerate it. 

Indeed, under the guise of the First Amendment, US society has to tolerate many types of expression that some may find offensive, obscene and immoral. That doesn't mean you have to agree with it. You are also free to express opposition to views you don't like. But the fact remains, people with racist points of view are free to express their beliefs. 

This is the reason, for example, that not only do I oppose banning the Confederate battle flag, but I feel pride that this is probably the one country in the world where you can display such a symbol of treason and yet face no legal repercussions. 

So even though I strongly disagree with Pistachio Girl's views on White Nationalism, she has a right to have them and express them. In this regard, I strongly oppose political correctness and those who feel the need to impose on others the right way to think and talk.

Take the Hall of Fame candidacy of Curt Schilling, for example. I find it the height of obnoxiousness that there are a sizable number of Baseball Writers Association of America voters who refuse to vote for Schilling over his outspoken political views, when he has more career strikeouts and wins than Hall of Famer John Smoltz. Political correctness is, quite frankly, a way to punish people who dare to express more right wing political ideals. That has no basis in a free society. 

But even the right to free speech is not entirely free. One thing to keep in mind is that this is a right the people hold with respect to their government. It is not a right the people hold with respect to each other or businesses. A private person may need to be tolerant of opposing views. But that private person is under no obligation to provide a forum for expression that that person finds offensive. The same is true for businesses. 

Specifically, a business has the right to attempt to shape its image among potential consumers. If a business finds that its likely customers are offended by racist views, then that business has the right to protect its image from being tarnished by the outspoken racist views of its employees. 

In some ways, I wish sports teams understood this concept better. Sports is a form of entertainment. For many, it is a way to escape from the pressures of life by enjoying the competition among talented athletes. Cheering for your team can be a way to blow off steam and stress from daily conflicts. 

This is why many of us fans don't want things like politics mixed with their sports. I may disagree with the views of an athlete or a sportswriter, and when I am cheering for my favorite team, I don't want those views shoved in my face. 

Some have speculated that this is one cause of the ratings decline that professional football is experiencing. If Colin Kaepernick wants to believe that the United States is oppressive in its race relations, he has the right to hold that view and express it. But fans also have the right to be offended when he refuses to honor the National Anthem during a football game. In the same vein, when I watch Sunday Night Football, I would like to avoid being lectured on global warming by the likes of Bob Costas. And the National Football League has the right to control its image by prohibiting players, coaches and broadcasters from expressing controversial views while on NFL time. 

Turning back to Pistachio Girl, as I said, I have never had the pleasure to meet her, and I have no idea if she espoused her racist views while selling pistachios at Phillies games. If that was the case, then I have no problem with ARAMark taking action to protect its brand. 

The question becomes, to what degree does a business have the right to dictate how its employees express themselves while on social media and have the right to punish employees for expressing offensive views?

This is where the line between what is private and what is public has been blurred by social media. Perhaps it is inexperience and a lack of wisdom. But I have found something of a disturbing trend among millennials of not knowing when something is to be shared publicly and when something is to be kept private. I have been aghast at just how much private information millennials are willing to share in open fora such as Facebook and Twitter. This can range from simple offensive and stupid speech to the display of unabashed promiscuity. It is almost as if millennials do not understand that by posting things in social media, they are adding to a public image which can be embarrassing and indelible. 

This is why, I maintain very separate online personas. I have different Twitter accounts for my law practice (@WilliamJKovatch), my baseball hobby (@PhilBaseBallHis) and my penchant for sarcastic and irreverent humor (@wjkovatch).  I don't want my law firm brand or my baseball hobby tainted by politics.  Indeed, some clients may be shocked to learn that their immigration lawyer is a Libertarian leaning Republican. Likewise, I believe that my wisecracks about Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump don't belong in my discussions about baseball. 

And it is when you peruse Pistachio Girl's Twitter account, you see that she not only proudly refers to herself as "Pistachio Girl," but has also posted pictures of herself in her ballpark uniform alongside some pretty inflammatory statements about race. Mixing her employment with her views online certainly gave ARAMark concern that its image was being tarnished. In this regard, ARAMark had every right to regain control of its image, even if it infringed on the free speech of its employees. 

Perhaps the situation would have been different if Pistachio Girl had kept her online personas separate. If she had not referred to her work in any way in her tweets, I would have a greater problem with her firing. This is not to say Pistachio Girl does not have the right to express her views. But expressing such views, in a way that can reflect on an employer, can have consequences. If nothing else, the plight of Pistachio Girl can serve as a lesson that speech may be free, but free speech can have consequences. And those consequences are intensified by the far reach of social media. 

By: William J. Kovatch, Jr. 

Be Skeptical of this Campaign Against "Fake News"

Spotting "fake news" used to be easy. It tended to reside in the tabloid section near supermarket checkouts, and it tended to include stories of aliens endorsing presidential candidates. Then along came the Internet and suddenly information became easier to access. But people also became intellectually lazy. Purveyors of prevarications found a much larger audience, reachable within seconds. And many people who buy it, without doing a minimum amount of research to debunk the story. 

For a while, "fake news" was simply a way to identify which of your friends and family members were gullible. You could chuckle, as you thought, "I can't believe my friend actually fell for this." If you had a strong reaction to a friend's posts, or thought you were being helpful, you could post a comment with links to websites that debunked the so-called news account. 

But now, there are allegations that the proliferation of "fake news" may have tipped the balance in the 2016 presidential election. In response, social media platforms, such as Facebook, are looking into ways to restrict "fake news" from popping up in people's newsfeeds. The problem, however, is who is going to police those who are policing the so-called "fake news." That is, how do you prevent the campaign against "fake news" from becoming a with hunt of censorship?

Whether you want to admit it or not, media bias exists not only in the mainstream press, but also in the board rooms of those who operate social media such as Facebook. You can see it during presidential debates, when self-appointed fact-checkers attempt to portray one candidate as more truthful than another. What we are willing to accept as "facts" in many ways depends on our preconceived view of the world. And what we label as "fake" will also depend on preconceived biases. Not surprisingly, what the fact-checkers called a lie often depended on the fact-checker's own leanings. 

At the moment, the anti "fake news" campaign is focused on those websites that do make up stories whole cloth hoping the gullible post links and thus increase the site's ad revenues. Does anyone remember the so-called story of the FBI agent supposedly investigating the Hillary Clinton email scandal who allegedly committed a fiery murder-suicide a week after James Comey announced the re-opening of the case?  Those who held fast to the belief that the Clintons have a way of making opponents disappear bought the story hook, line and sinker, and tweeted or posted it for wide distribution. We now know that the event never occurred. Instead, cheeky Internet trolls put up a website that looked like a news site, and hoped to rake in ad profit by inflaming the passions of Hillary haters. 

But the problem is that some of the advice on how to tell if news is fake isn't very reliable. One piece of advice is to check to see if the news source is a reputable outlet. However, in the past twenty years or so, journalistic standards have declined to such a degree that even so-called reputable sources have published stories of dubious merit. Fact-checking is dead. Carefully selection of which facts and stories are worthy of publication weed out what information gets served to the public. So-called "government leaks" and "unnamed sources" allow the major news outlets to publish innuendo, rumor and outright spin. All the while, other major news outlets will simply cite to each other, as if the proliferation of stories covering nothing more than rumor elevates them to fact. 

Take for example the early reporting of Donald Trump's transition to the White House. Reporters were eager to cite unnamed sources to claim that Trump was unaware of the scope of the presidency, that his team was in disarray, and that the president-elect wanted security clearance for his children. Yet a closer look at the evidence cited showed that all of this was merely based on exaggerations of questions the president-elect and his team posed in private when meeting with White House staff. Yet, despite flimsy sources, major news talking heads cited each others' stories to elevate rumor and conjecture into fact. 

Yet very little has been reported on why Hillary Clinton failed to address her supporters on election night despite conceding the rave to Trump. A few days later the same type of "unnamed sources" claimed she was in a drunken rage, lashing out physically against top campaign aids. Yet, major news sources have ignored this story, despite the fact that it was based on the same type of evidence (rumor and conjecture) as the allegations of Trump's alleged incompetence. Which is to be considers "fake news"?  

While there are many stories that are verifiably fake, in many other instances what one person considers fake depends very much on that person's world view. Having a social media platform appoint itself as a "fake news" blood hound is a frightening concept as it smacks of unchecked censorship. Used wrongly, the campaign against "fake news" can deteriorate into just another method of subtly attempting to manipulate thought by selective interpreting what is a "fact" that can be fed to the masses. 

By: William J. Kovatch, Jr. 

When Is "Borrowing" a Tweet Wrong? Asking for a Friend

I have a friend who got caught "stealing" another person's tweet. It was funny tweet. Within hours it got thousands of retweets and likes. He was rather proud of that fact, and announced it on his Facebook page.  In fact, more than a week later, he is still getting people tagging him on Facebook celebrating the tens of thousands of likes and retweets.

 

The thing is, the next day, the originator of the tweet got very annoyed. So much so, that she somehow got a national periodical to publish an online article on my friend and his habit of "stealing" other peoples tweets. Her Twitter followers were incensed. They were using words like plagiarism. One went so far as to start an online shaming campaign, and even published a link to my friend's law firm's contact page.

Now my goal here is to shame anyone. I'm not mentioning any names. But I do have serious question. What is the online etiquette? Where is the line?

Look, we have all "stolen," or if you like him more innocuous word "borrowed," online content. I have seen photos and memes that I thought were funny, downloaded them, and posted them on my online accounts. This is how memes links to videos and funny pictures "go viral." In fact going viral, which seems to be the modern day equivalent of Andy Warhol's 15 minutes of fame, is a coveted occurrence. Quite frankly, when I "borrow content" I figure all of my friends know I'm just not clever enough to come up with my own Joe Biden memes.

Plus there's that whole tradition of hearing a joke or funny line, finding it amusing, and repeating it to others. My grandfather did it all the time. Surely those of you who follow my Facebook account did not think that my comment that Mike Trout's winning of the MVP seemed fishy was original, did you? (Thank you Joe Corrado for your online joke. My repeating it was meant as a tribute to your wit, please don't sue me.)

And Twitter is a fairly unique platform. You're limited to 140 characters. It forces you to either be terse, witty or sarcastic. It takes a lot of thought to come up with something funny to write in just 140 characters. (It's a perfect platform for Haikus, by the way.) Some people who come up with the pithy jokes are understandably possessive of their intellectual property.

In this case my friend uses his Twitter account to brand his law firm. The person he borrowed the tweet from was also a lawyer. She also uses her Twitter account to brand her law firm. It is understandable that she could get annoyed that her work was picked up and used by somebody else, who is now getting the credit for being funny.  It'slike a stand-up comic stealing another comic's lines.

Sure, Twitter has a retweet button and a retweet with quote option.  You could do that if you wanted to be courteous and give credit to the originator. But people steal funny tweets all the time.

So where is the line? And when does the simple repeating of somebody else's joke turn into full-blown plagiarism?

By: William J. Kovatch, Jr. 

The Left Has No One to Blame But Themselves

Here we are just over a week after the U.S. presidential elections, and the meltdown among the political left, who are in full denial and finger-pointing mode, continues.  Instead of a truly needed introspection on this loss, the vocal on the left need to weed out which groups are responsible for this by failing to adhere strictly to the monolithic view of how they should have voted. I find it amazing that the most insightful analysis and criticism has come not from Democratic party leaders who need to learn how to adjust to this defeat, but from a fictional character created by a British comedian.

Jonathan Pie is a fictional reporter created by British comedian Tom Walker.  He has apparently been making these videos where the reporter supposedly flies off the cuff and goes into a explicative-laden tirade over the day's news.  Over the weekend, links to a video which supposedly catches Pie preparing for a day's broadcast, angrily laying it out to the left the reasons why they have lost a string of elections internationally, found their way into the newsfeed of many Facebook users.  The thing is, through the guise of a fictional character, Walker's criticism hits the mark.

Pie exclaims, "Our argument isn't won by hurling labels and insults."  On this, he is exactly right.  What has crept into leftist thinking is this smug arrogance that if you don't think like they do, you must not be intelligent enough to talk politics, let alone have a say in policy-making.

The hallmark of this arrogance can be seen all the way back in the 2000 presidential election when, during one of the debates, Al Gore got into George Bush's face to ask his about the Dingle-Norwood bill.  This arrogance was repeated in the 2016 election as the left had a collective fit when third party candidate Gary Johnson candidly admitted that he did not know what Aleppo was.  The idea being that we, the liberals of this country, spend countless hours pouring over our newspapers, periodicals, and Congressional Records to become much more informed than you.  How dare you think that you and your inability to recognize policy minutia have any business even being in the discussion.

And so, instead of educating, liberals assume that those who don't agree with them are less intelligent, and as such are only deserving of ridicule and insults.  Not satisfied with resorting to base insults, such as racist, bigot or sexist, the left engage in the mental masturbation of devising new ways of hurling insults by creating obscure terms or equating otherwise innocuous policy positions with ignorance.  Thus with arrogant smirks indicating knowledge of some inside joke, the left throw terms out like "alt-right," which are meaningless to the majority of Americans, but have derisive connotations within elitist liberal circles.

Having been accused of being "alt-right" for daring to openly criticize Hillary Clinton, I did research on the term.  I found that there is no clear definition of it, or where its boundaries lie.  It is merely the latest of epithets liberals have created to look down on dissention.

Of course, the derision doesn't stop with mere insults.  Stances on fiscal policy define whether or not a person is truly bigoted.  Thus, Democratic Representative Charles Rangel boldly proclaimed when the Republicans first broke the Democratic strangle-hold on Congress in 1994 that the new racists wear suits and call for tax cuts.

Going back to the video, after laying into the reasons why Clinton and the left lost, Pie confides that he dare not say these things to his leftist friends because he would get "f-ing lynched if he said this."  Pie laments that the left doesn't debate anymore because the left has decided that any other way of thinking is just unacceptable.  "So, if you're on the right, you're a freak, you're evil, you're racist, you're stupid.  You are a basket of deplorables." Exasperated, Pie exclaims, "How do you think people are going to vote if you talk to them like that?"

And surely, there were people who took pride in being the target of such criticism.  I had white female cousins proudly proclaiming themselves to be one of the "deplorables."  Back when Hillary participated in the character assassination of Monica Lewinsky to cover up her husband's disgusting behavior, she labeled his enemies as a "Vast Right Wing Conspiracy."  Back then, I had business cards printed up proudly proclaiming myself to be part of that "Vast Right Wing Conspiracy."

"When has anyone ever been persuaded by being insulted or labeled?"  Pie continues.  Afraid of being attacked for raising their opinion, Pie postulates, people wait until they are in the privacy of the voting to express themselves honestly.

And there is truth to this as well.  While the left may dominate public discourse with their control of most major media outlets, that discourse is not a true representation of how Americans believe.  As an example, when I first came to Washington, I was one of few in my Government office who had fiscally conservative views. And yet, I had to endure office-wide emails deriding the conservative agenda.  I could, and did, respond at first.  But finding myself shouted down and only contributing to the discomfort others felt in having an unwanted political argument in their virtual in-boxes, I decided that it was better to ignore the office-wide email chains and avoid political discussions with my friends and co-workers.  Sure, conservatives found each other.  But it was usually through whispers and innuendo until in a surreptitious meeting we would confide our beliefs to each other as if we were the French underground during the Nazi occupation.

The left love to extol the virtue of diversity for its own sake, unless of course that diversity includes a tolerance of a difference of opinions.  And thus charges of narrow-mindedness, ignorance and bigotry are emerging from this defeat.  If you are a white woman, who dare you vote against your gender.  If you dared to vote third party, well you may claim not to be a racist, but you showed your tolerance for racism by not voting for our champion, Hillary.

And it is this monolithic intolerance of different view points that had blinded the left from recognizing the serious flaws in their own candidate.  It is as if the liberals in this country were so motivated to elect the first woman president that they forgot to consider whether this particular woman really deserved their support.

She's a woman who cares about all the people!  Really?  Because a look into her private conversations among her campaign staff showed her aloofness and tendency to look down upon those groups in society that don't offer unflinching support.

She has the right temperament!  Really?  Because we have all seen her break down into angry fits when challenged on her responsibilities and choices.

America is just too willing to reject an experienced and qualified woman in favor of an inexperienced and unqualified white man!  Really?  Because let's take a look at her so-called experience.  During her husband's administration she tried to forge a role for the unelected first lady in policy decisions, heading a secretive body to formulate a health care proposal.  It was a body kept secret specifically to avoid dissent and diversity of opinions.  And for that reason Hillary Care failed miserably.

After her husband's administration, she hand-picked an open Senate seat in a state where she had no connections, and which showed in the past to be friendly to carpet-baggers with popular political relatives who had presidential ambitions.  Her years in the Senate were meant to begin the creation of the myth of her experience by projecting a certain image.  To her surprise, this image was not enough as she found herself out-maneuvered by yet another inexperienced but charismatic Senator from her own party when she first sought the nomination.  Then, in a back room compromise, she was promised the all important Secretary of State position for her support of Barrack Obama in the general election.

And how was her tenure as Secretary of State?  Lost in this post-election shuffle is the sad fact that President Obama's foreign policy has been disastrous.  The key example of this was the naïve manner in which the Administration, which included Secretary of State Clinton, handled the so-called "Arab Spring."  Assuming that young people who rise up against a dictator must be fighting for greater democracy, the Administration ignored the power of fundamentalist Islam.  Indeed, our Ambassador and Embassy staff were not brutally murdered because of any security issues or any amateurish YouTube video.  They were murdered because the naivety of the Administration ignored the history of the spread of fundamentalist Islam and the power it holds over its followers.  (Indeed, to underline the point I made earlier on the hurling of insults, if any liberal Democrats were brave enough to reach this point in this essay, I fully expect that instead of resorting to history to refute me, at this point I risk being labeled an Islamophobe in making this argument.)

This election was not the triumph of hatred, ignorance and bigotry, as the left would have you believe.  As I mentioned in an earlier essay, it cannot even be seen as an ideological triumph for the Republican party.  But it was the result of a very negative campaign with two very flawed candidates.  The shame of it was that one of them had to win.  At any rate, at this point, instead of resorting to name-calling, and finger pointing, the left does need to engage in real self-examination.  And that self-examination should result in a realization that insults and derision are not the ways to win the hearts and souls of the electorate.

By:  William J. Kovatch, Jr.

Electoral College Victory, Popular Vote Loss: The New Norm in U.S. Presidential Elections?

When I was a boy learning about civics back in the 1980s, the idea that a person could win the Electoral College, but lose the popular vote was a novelty.  Sure it had happened three times already in U.S. history.  But the last time was in 1888, when Benjamin Harris beat Grover Cleveland.  As old as some of my teachers were, none of them had lived through that election.

Indeed, the latest examples for us were the Electoral College landslides of 1980 and 1984. We had teachers who liked to point out that a shift of just a few thousand votes in West Virginia in 1960 would have given Richard Nixon the Electoral College victory despite losing the popular vote.  But the fact was, it hadn't happened in almost 100 years.

But now it has happened twice in a sixteen year period.  Both elections involved a popular vote that was so close between the two major candidates that less than one percent separated them.  Both elections involved neither party receiving a majority of popular votes due to third party candidates.  In both instances, the Republican candidate emerged victorious in the Electoral College.

What was once a novelty of our system I believe has become a more likely outcome in future presidential elections.  It all has to do with demographics, and how the Electors are distributed.

Representation in the Electoral College rides off of a state's representation in Congress.  Each state gets the same number of Electors as it has Representatives in the House and Senators.  The District of Columbia gets at least the same number of Electors as the least populous state, which right now is three.

We all know that each state gets two Senators regardless of population.  That gives states with smaller populations the advantage.  In a state like California, there are approximately 680,000 people per Elector.  But in a state such as Montana, there are about 330,000 people per Elector.  Thus, if you live in a state with a smaller population, your vote in the presidential election has a greater weight.

When you compare the election results since the 1990s, what you see is that Democratic voters tend to congregate in states with a large population along the coasts.  Indeed, the Democratic candidates won by huge margins in New York and California.  Smaller western states, such as Montana, Idaho Utah, North Dakota and South Dakota tend to vote Republican.  That means that proportionally speaking, because of where voters live, Republican voters tend to count more in presidential elections. 

We all know, then, that presidential elections come down to the battleground states.  These are the states where the populations tend to be split more evenly among Democratic and Republican voters.  In those years where the elections are close, but the trend in these battleground states is to break with the Republican candidate, it will be more likely that the Republican will win enough states to secure an Electoral College victory, but when the tally of nation-wide popular votes is reported, win less than the Democratic counterpart.  Unless Democrats move out of cities like New York City and Los Angeles and into more rural areas, this trend is likely to continue.

Whether you believe this system should be changed is largely determined by whether your candidate wins.  The loudest calls for change in the Electoral College have not surprisingly come from Democratic voters.  But I recall a discussion during the 2000 campaign, that imagined the alternative possibility.  Namely, it was postulated that George W. Bush could win the popular vote but lose to Al Gore in the Electoral College.  It was further postulated that the Bush Campaign was ready to litigatie if that occurred.  Of course, we know that the opposite was true, that Al Gore narrowly lost the Electoral College and commenced litigation in Florida over the manner by which paper ballots were counted.  It was a contentious legal battle that very quickly found its way to the Supreme Court, and had this country uncertain for some time over who won the election.

In the end, the Electoral College is a method enshrined in the Constitution.  It can be changed, but only by a constitutional amendment.  Given that all of the methods of amending the Constitution require a super majority and that our electorate appears to be evenly split, it seems likely that the Electoral College is here to stay for quite some time.

By:  William J. Kovatch, Jr.

Be Careful Not to Interpret Too Much Into the 2016 Elections

Let the misinterpretation of election results begin!

Many of my hard core Republican friends have been ecstatic this past week.  There are feelings of vindication, and outright joy in having beaten back the dragon that was Hillary Clinton.

I chose to vote Libertarian this time around, but I have to admit a certain relief that there will not be another Clinton in the White House.  Of course, that relief is tempered with the realization that we will have Donald Trump.

If you have been listening to talk radio this week, you cannot miss the elation in the voices of the likes of Rush Limbaugh.  What is more, Limbaugh is outright proclaiming this election to be a complete repudiation of President Obama's policies and the Democrats' liberal ideology.  He is outright warning Trump not to accommodate liberals in his administration.

Surely the more extreme wing of the Republican Party, the Tea Partiers, will see it that way too.  A victory like this, where Republicans not only won the White House, but retained the House of Representatives and the Senate, will only encourage their "no compromises" attitude.  Although there is no credible threat, you can almost hear the Tea Partiers' desire to oust House Speaker Paul Ryan, who failed to adhere strictly to complete support of Trump during the campaign.

Republicans, however, need to be very careful about reading too much into this election.  To be frank, this was far from an ideological landslide.  Trump may have won a majority of Electoral College votes, but let's be clear.  Hillary won a plurality of national popular votes.  The GOP may have retained the House and Senate.  But along the way, they lost about seven seats in the House and three, possibly four, seats in the Senate.  From these numbers alone, this was certainly not an election where the Republican presidential candidate was so popular that his coat tails swept in numerous new Republican legislators.

Exit poll numbers point to this being an election where the voters, or at least those who lived in battle ground states, rejected a candidate perceived as corrupt and dishonest.

A few numbers jumped out to me from the election results that support this conclusion.  First, Trump received fewer votes than Mitt Romney did in 2012.  Second, Hillary's margins of victory with African-American, Latino, Asian and Young voters were smaller than those of Barrack Obama from 2012.  What these numbers tell me is that the voters just did not show up for Hillary the way they did for Obama in 2012.  For whatever reasons, Hillary was just not as exciting a candidate as the current President.

This is not surprising given the atmosphere of the campaign.  This was by far an extremely negative campaign.  This was true of both sides.  From the beginning of September, the Clinton camp was running television ads emphasizing Trump's negatives.  And of course, Trump's campaign mantra was "Let's jail Hillary."  There was very little on display about issues or agendas.  This was totally a personality campaign.

Such campaigns traditionally result in low turn out.  Voters hear over and over again how this candidate is the next Satan, no the other candidate is the next Satan.  Many voters get so discouraged by the choice, that they simply choose not to vote.  Those who do vote choose mainly to vote against someone, and not for their chosen candidate.  In elections like this, it is usually the last bit of bad news released before the actual election that decides the winner.  Hillary drew the short straw, as the announcement of FBI Director James Comey eleven days before the election reminded many voters of her negatives.  By time Comey sounded the all clear two days before the election, on a Sunday when most Americans were watching football, it was too late.

The 2016 election can only be seen as more of a repudiation of a bad candidate than as a triumph of any particular ideology.  Republicans would do themselves a favor if they keep this in mind.  While they are poised to control the two policy making branches of government, and may have a heavy influence on the judicial branch for years to come, a sharp turn to the right could make this victory short-lived.  The House and Senate will stand for election again in just two years.  If there is a radical ideological shift in the government that proves unpopular, the GOP could find their slim majorities erased.

By:  William J. Kovatch, Jr.

This Election Has Shown It Is Time to Strengthen the Electoral College

Guess what.  The U.S. Constitution does not guarantee the right of the people to elect their president directly.   As any middle-schooler can tell you, our system is based on a College of Electors, selected by each state, who in turn have the authority to cast the first ballot for president.  In fact, the Constitution does not even guarantee the right of the people to select their electors.

Section 1 of Article 2 of the Constitution provides, “Each State shall appoint, in such manner as the legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors . . . .”  (Emphasis added).  Although the Electoral College has been modified from time to time through amendments to the Constitution, none of those amendments explicitly guarantees the right of the people to vote either for the president or for an elector.

Put simply, the Constitution establishes a system where each state chooses electors to send to the Electoral College.  The number of electors is equal to the number of Representative to which that state is entitled in the House of Representative, plus the number of Senators.  In addition, the District of Columbia, which is not a state and is not entitled to any representation in Congress, is provided with no more than the same number of electors as the least populous states.  The electors meet in their respective states and vote, in separate ballots, for president and vice president.  The results are transmitted to Congress.

A person must win a majority of votes from the Electoral College to be elected president or vice president.  If no candidate wins a majority of votes for president, the House of Representatives has the task of choosing the president.  But, the House votes by state.  Each state is given one vote, and the Representatives can only for one of the three top vote getters from the Electoral College.  In the Senate, if there is no Electoral College majority for vice president, Senators vote for one of the two top vote getters. 

Why did the Founding Fathers establish such a system to select the chief executive of the United States?  As with many of the structures created through the Constitution, the Electoral College was created out of a fear of concentrating too much power in one person or one group of people.  To put simply, the Founding Fathers had just fought a revolution to break away from the rule of a tyrant. 

But as John Madison noted in Federalist No. 10, tyranny could include an “overbearing majority.”  Madison warned that a group of citizens, “whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole” could unite to push “some common impulse or passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.”  Madison recognized that people are fallible and selfish, and that this would cause differences of opinions and interests.  A group of people, to whom he referred as “factions,” could join together to pursue a common zeal over their particular opinion or even of a particular leader.  And thus divided into different parties, they could develop “mutual animosity” and attempt “to vex or oppress each other” rather than “to cooperate for their common good.”  Madison’s driving point was that the tyranny of a majority could work to oppress and infringe on the rights of a minority.  For these reasons, he, and other Founding Fathers, opposed pure democracy.

Instead, Madison argued for the creation of a body of people chosen by the citizens through which the views of the public could be passed.  The hope was that by choosing wise representatives, the good of the public as a whole could prevail over parochial interests and passions.  That is, Madison argued for the creation of a republic.

Yet, through the Constitution, the Founding Fathers did not create a purely parliamentarian form of government.  That is, they did not create a government where the legislature chose the person or group of people who would execute the laws.  As Alexander Hamilton explained in Federalist No. 88, the Founding Fathers wanted to make the chief executive officer, that is the president, independent from the legislature.  That is, they wanted the president to be free of any taint or influence from a pre-existing body.  It was thought that if the president were chosen by Congress, the president might be tempted to suppress his duty to pursue the good of the whole to the temptation to please Congress in order to preserve his tenure in office.

Putting the two fears together, that is the fear that a majority can itself be tyrannical, and the fear that an executive who is chosen by the legislature would be dependent upon the legislature and thus sacrifice the pursuit of the common good, the Founding Fathers devised a system whereby the people would choose a group who would come together only once for the sole purpose of selecting a chief executive, and then be disbanded.  The hope was that this smaller group of people, which we call the Electoral College, would give serious deliberation to the qualities needed for leadership, and choose a wise and virtuous leader.

In that way, the Electoral College was meant to protect the new republic from the dangers of demagoguery.  That is, a charismatic person could influence the general public by inflaming passions instead of reason.  Once in power, a demagogue could then trample on the rights of the minority.

Under the system envisioned by the Founding Fathers through the Constitution, the role of the people was no to select a particular person to be their president.  Rather, they were to select a group of people wise enough to select a person to be the president.

Unfortunately, in practice this is not was happens.  Through tradition, over time, the states have mostly chosen to hold popular elections where that state’s entire delegation of Electors would go to the winner of the popular vote.  In all but Maine and Nebraska, the states have chosen a winner take all approach. That is, each candidate nominates a slate of Electors, and the winner has his or her chosen Electors named to the Electoral College.  Thus, instead of choosing a group of people, individually, to in turn select our president, we vote for the person we want to be president, and the state’s Electors go to that person.  This turns the presidential election into nothing more than fifty-one different elections.

This system, which has grown out of tradition and not out of any constitutional requirement, has some unintended consequences.  First, it makes political parties indispensable.  Second, it distorts the popular vote.

With respect to political parties, in order to win the presidency, a person must be able to garner a few hundred people who will be loyal and vote for him when the Electoral College meets.  This means that a candidate must have an organization, and it must be on a national scale.  This is why it is virtually impossible for independent or third party candidates to win the U.S. presidency.

With respect to the popular vote, each state is guaranteed at least three Electors.  But, there is no guarantee that population is evenly spread across the states.  Thus, in less populous states, like Montana and North Dakota, voters have a disproportionately large say in who will become president.  It also means that it is entirely possible for a person to receive more popular votes for president, but because those votes may be concentrated in one state, lose the Electoral College count.  This has happened three times in U.S. history.

But, there is yet a third unintended consequence.  This system as it is currently configured is more vulnerable to demagoguery.  Specifically, most people today receive their news through television.  Television is a medium that thrives on images and short messages.  To get a message across, particularly on news programs, images must elicit an emotional response and do so in a short period of time.  Thus, the ten second sound bite reigns.  Television is not a medium conducive to a reasonable deliberation of complex issues.

We see this now in news shows and political fora.  Formats are not meant to encourage an intelligent dialogue as they are to encourage shouting, loud disagreement and entertainment that targets the short attention span.  In order to prevail, a person must look good, and have a catchy slogan.

But it is this manipulation of passions and emotions that motivated the Founding Fathers to create the Electoral College in the first place.  And indeed, this 2016 election has demonstrated the very danger that gave our Founding Fathers nightmares.  Both major political parties have been manipulated by demagoguery, and thus have nominated candidates with which many in the general public are completely dissatisfied.  Name recognition and entertainment have become more important factors in selecting candidates than a serious discussion of the issues that face this country.  Thus, this year many U.S. voters are left with the choice of voting for a candidate they don’t like in order to stop a candidate they hate.

The answer to this dilemma may simply be to strengthen the Electoral College, and have it return more to the roots of what the Founding Fathers intended.  That is, the U.S. public should go back to selecting a group of people who will in turn select the president rather than voting for the president directly.

One way to strengthen the Electoral College would be to eliminate the winner take all system.  Rather than vote for a single person, and all of a state’s Electors go to that person, voters should be forced to choose the Electors directly and by name.  If a state has six Electors, then the voters in that state should select six people to attend the Electoral College.  The names of the presidential candidates themselves should not be on the ballot.

The elections should not permit voters in a single sweep to select a slate of candidates. Each candidate should be selected separately.  Moreover, the candidates for Electors should not be grouped by party or by whom they support.  Indeed, nowhere on the ballot should a political party appear.  They should be listed either randomly or alphabetically.  This would have the effect of having a voter actually research the candidates for Electors, and determine if that person would be wise enough to in turn select the president.  If a person wants to select Electors all from one party, then have that voter research and know that information before coming to the ballot box.

Moreover, election of the Electors should permit vote stacking.  That is, if a state entitled to six Electors, then each voter in that state should be entitled to six votes and use them as they please.  If one voter wants to use all six votes on a single candidate to ensure that a particular viewpoint has a seat at the table, then so be it.

Finally, the Electoral College should not be a single day event where the Electors simply cast a vote.  To the contrary, it should be a multiday affair, where each Elector has an opportunity to say either what issues they find important, what qualities in a candidate they find important, or which particular person they may want as their president.

Yes, these proposals would remove the choice of presidency one step further away from voters.  But that does not make it undemocratic.  Voters will still have choice and a say in their chief executive.  But that choice would be less likely left to the winds of passions, ignorance and demagoguery.  It would instead make the process more deliberative and serious.

By: William J. Kovatch, Jr.

Republicans Are Real Good at Blaming Everyone for Election Losses . . . But Themselves

I just heard Sean Hannity's rant from yesterday's radio show. He really loses it over the possibility that Trump will lose Utah to an independent candidate, Evan McMullin. In fact, it's been humorous to watch Trump supporters seethe in anger over conservatives who cannot in good conscience support Donald Trump. Hannity is now threatening a "reckoning" on November 9th if Trump loses the election. 

One thing that fascinates me about this particular campaign is just how early Trump set up the narrative of blame if he loses. Almost immediately after the Republican Convention Trump claimed that the election was rigged. He targeted the media. He tagged the system as corrupt. It was almost as if he knew coming out of the convention that he was going to lose, and he had to begin blaming someone, something, anything but himself, for the impending loss. 

This is set up to be the third time in a row that the Republicans will lose a national election.  And yet the GOP fails to recognize that it has become its own worst enemy. 

The 2012 election should have served as a game changer for Republicans. The exit polls showed that the Republicans lost in every ethnic group, and in big numbers, except for white men. Rationally, this should have signaled the need to change directions. 

Initially, it appeared that the Republicans were going to do just that. One of the biggest indications of a willingness to change emerged in an effort to address immigration reform in a constructive manner. Finally. 

But something happened on the way to that place. One of the more radical wings of GOP voters, Tea Partiers, discovered just how much pull they now had in the party. 

Republicans, who control a majority of state legislatures, concentrated efforts on drawing congressional district lines to ensure a majority in the House of Representatives for years to come. That is, they used the map and demographic information to concentrate the number of likely Republican voters into safe congressional districts. It's a process known as gerrymandering, which had been around almost as long as the US republic itself. By concentrating conservative voters in a single district, however, Republican state legislatures wound up giving disproportionate power to the more radical wings of GOP voters, namely the Tea Partiers.  The result was that incumbent Republican Representatives had far more to fear about a more conservative challenger in the primaries than a Democrat in the general election. 

Republican leadership then began giving in to the Tea Party more frequently. The Tea Party found it had the power to shut down the Government over a budget fight to defund Obamacare.  With its new-found power, Tea Partiers could then concentrate on defeating any common sense approach to immigration reform, by labeling the proposals "amnesty."  

Tea Partiers got drunk with the power. Any Republican who didn't subscribe to their views completely received the dreaded designation of RINO (Republican in name only).  Suddenly, Republicans known for their conservative leanings, such as Marco Rubio and Paul Ryan, found that they were not conservative enough for this constituency. Indeed the hallmark of the Tea Partiers has been the refusal to compromise on any issue. 

So, instead of learning from electoral defeats, the party regressed. Its desperate efforts to cling to a majority in the House only gave power to a group of voters all too happy to alienate the rest of the country. It is this group of voters, with their no compromises attitude, that led to the nomination of Donald Trump. 

And once again, instead of being introspective and examining what is wrong with the Republican Party that it fails to attract voters on a national level, the stage is set for post-election finger-pointing.  If there is to be a "reckoning," it should not be aimed at conscientious conservatives who refuse to support a boorishly flawed candidate like Donald Trump. It should be with that wing of the party that refuses to let go of its outdated and divisive attitude, and that fails to see how its message is driving voters away. 

By:  William J. Kovatch, Jr. 

If a Pollster Called Me Today

Pollster:  This is ACME Polling Company. We're conducting a poll on the presidential election in Virginia. If the election were held today, would you vote for Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton?

Me:  Well that depends. In your scenario, who was leading in the last poll out of Utah?

Pollster:  Sir, you live in Virginia. Who would you vote for?

Me:  My vote depends on two conditions: who is ahead in Utah and whether Virginia is in the margin of error. 

Pollster:  So you're undecided?

Me:  Oh no. I know exactly what I'm going to do on Election Day. It just depends on those two conditions. 

Pollster:  Are you voting for Trump?

Me:  If Evan McMullin is ahead in Utah and Virginia is in the margin of error

Pollster:  Are you voting for Clinton?

Me:  Over my dead body. 

Pollster:  So you're writing in Ewan McGregor?

Me:  I said Evan McMullin. 

Pollster:  I've never even heard of that guy. 

Me:  Not many people have. But no, if I want Evan McMullin to win, it's better that I not vote for him. 

Pollster:  I'm sorry, have you been drinking or doing drugs?  Because that will invalidate my poll results. 

Me:  No. I'm perfectly sober. You see, McMullin has no chance to win in Virginia. His best shot is to win Utah and hope that neither Clinton nor Trump get 270 votes in the Electoral College. So it's better that I not vote for him in Virginia. 

Pollster:  Then you are voting for Trump. 

Me:  Not necessarily. You see, I can't abide the man. So if I can avoid voting for that's my preference. I'm only voting for him if McMullin is ahead in Utah and Virginia is within the margin of error. 

Pollster:  So then you're voting for McGregor. 

Me:  McMullin. But no. You see my heart is with Gary Johnson. 

Pollster:  But you are using your vote to try to help Ewan McGregor to win?

Me:  Evan McMullin. Yeah, it's the best shot to defeating Trump and Hillary. 

Pollster:  With only one state?

Me:  Right. If he gets votes in the Electoral College and if no one else gets a majority of the Electoral College, then when the House votes they can choose from the top three vote getters in the Electoral College. 

Pollster:   You're joking. 

Me:  No. Read the Twelfth Amendment of the Constitution. 

Pollster:  I'm sorry. I don't have a box for that. I'm putting you down as undecided. 

Me:  Well if you're going to do that, then put me down for Jill Stein. 

Pollster:  I'm not asking anymore. Goodbye.

By:  William J. Kovatch, Jr. 

Could the Electoral College Save Us this Year?

Any middle schooler who pays attention in civics class can tell you that here in the United States, we do not directly elect our president.  Instead, we elect people to sit in the Electoral College, and it is the Electoral College who in turn selects our president.

Our Founding Fathers actually intended for the Electoral College to be an actual group of people, who would meet after the election, deliberate and vote on who they, the electors, wanted to be president.  It was meant to protect the process from demagoguery, and the passions of the masses.

But that is not how it works today.  In every state, except Maine and Nebraska, the candidate who wins the popular vote wins that state's Electoral College delegation.  So in effect, the U.S. presidential election becomes fifty-one separate elections (although the District of Columbia is not a state, it does get to participate in the Electoral College). 

Not all of those separate elections are equal.  Each state gets that same number of electors as the number of representatives that the state has in the House of Representatives, plus two to represent the state's Senate delegation.  The District of Columbia gets three electors.  States with large House delegations get more electors.  But since each state is guaranteed at least three electors, voters in smaller states, like Utah and Wyoming, wind up with a disproportionately large say in who our next president will be.

Every four years, we hear arguments that the Electoral College distorts the popular vote.  It is anti-democratic, and as such it should be eliminated in favor of direct election of the president.  Indeed, twice in U.S. history a candidate has won the popular vote but lost the Electoral College vote.

This year, there is an outside shot that no one will win a majority of the Electoral College vote, and that an independent candidate could become our president.

The Constitution provides that a person must win a majority of the Electoral College to win the presidency.  If no one wins a majority, the choice for the next president goes to the House of Representatives.  But, the House votes by state delegation, where each state gets one vote.  And, when each state votes, they can only select a person who has won at least one Electoral college vote.

For the most part, the United States has a two party system.  That is, when a person is voting for president, they are mostly voting for a Republican or a Democrat.  As long as only the candidates from the two parties receive votes in the Electoral College, then one of them will likely win a majority.  There are scenarios where the two major party candidates can tie in the Electoral College.  But those are unlikely scenarios.

However, the equation changes if a third party candidate were to win the popular vote in just one state.  If that were to happen, then it could be possible for none of the candidates to win a majority in the Electoral College, and therefore throw the race to the House.

This year, there are a lot of voters who are dissatisfied with both nominees from the major parties.  However, because the U.S. electoral system is rigged to favor Republicans and Democrats, most voters view third party candidates as a wasted vote.  Thus, even if they do not like either candidate, they choose the candidate they dislike more, and vote for the opponent.

But things are a little different this year.  In the latest polls an independent candidate, Evan McMullin, is leading both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in the popular vote in Utah.  Thus, there is a realistic chance that for the first time in over a hundred years, a candidate who is neither a Democrat nor a Republican could win a state's entire delegation to the Electoral College.  If the math were to work out in the rest of the states, there is an outside chance that neither Clinton nor Trump will win a majority of the Electoral College.

All things being equal, this would normally favor the Republican candidate.  It would mean that the vote would go to the House, with each state getting one vote.  Even if the Republicans lose the House in the congressional elections, Democrats will likely be concentrated in the populous states, such as New York, California and Pennsylvania.  As far as state delegations are concerned, the majority will likely favor Republicans.

But, whether they say it publicly or not, Republican leadership does not like Donald Trump.  He was the outsider who cashed in on his name recognition and the popular discontent with politicians in general to win the Republican nomination.  His temperament and the perception of his chauvinism has made him a damaged candidate.  Indeed, after recordings of Trump's vile comments on women were released, some Republican candidates, including Speaker Paul Ryan, have refused to campaign for him.  Republican leadership may be eager to throw Trump under the bus if the opportunity were to come and choose a different candidate.

And there is where the Electoral College could save the republic.  If Evan McMullin were to win Utah, and if neither Trump nor Hillary won the majority of the Electoral College, it could give Republican leaders a real chance to reject the two major party candidates, viewed as severely flawed by many Americans, and make a more rational choice.  One could only hope.

By:  William J. Kovatch, Jr.

Paul Ryan Is in an Impossible Position

I feel for Paul Ryan. I really do. He's in an impossible position. He recognizes that fueled with angers voters in the Republican primaries were conned into voting for a bully and a buffoon disguised as a populist. 

Donald Trump has spent a lifetime perfecting the art of self-promotion. He tapped into the discontent of the Tea Party voters, who demand nothing but complete allegiance from their politicians, and convinced them that he was the outsider ready to take-on Hillary and the big government Democrats. Trump's boorish, crass and vulgar personality was no deterrent; it's what the Tea Party voters wanted. Cashing in on his name recognition, his reality TV experience and the wealth envy of many in the electorate,Trump was able to sweep in and steal the nomination from a GOP pool that was fractured and unfocused. 

Republican leaders knew who Trump was. But by time they realized that his candidacy was a serious threat, they failed to rally around a single, respectable candidate who could challenge him. 

When it became clear that Trump was going to win the nomination, the Republican leadership were not quick to embrace him. But faced with the prospect of a fractured party going into the convention, party leaders, like Ryan, had no choice but to accept and endorse Trump as the party's nominee. To do otherwise would endanger Republican efforts to hang on to the House and Senate. 

But Trump has never had to worry about working well with others. All of his career, he has been able to use his money to bully those around him. He never had to compromise, he never had to be considerate of others. So why should he start now?

And then the video of Trump's lewd and disgusting comments about how a star gets to treat women broke. Look, we all knew Trump was a chauvinist. We all knew Trump values women more for their looks than for their intelligence. We all knew he had no real respect for women. But as long as his chauvinism was disguised as mere comments about a woman's appearance, it could be dismissed. 

There was no disguising his comments to Billy Bish. Faced with this reprehensible attitude on how women could be treated, how he could use his celebrity status to engage in otherwise unwelcome behavior, Ryan took the steps to do the honorable thing and distance himself from Trump. 

Unfortunately, because of his position in the Republican leadership, he does not have the freedom to do what his former running mate, Mitt Romney, could do and completely denounce Trump. Like it or not, Trump is the standard bearer for the Republican Party. Realistically, Ryan cannot outwardly withdraw his endorsement of his party's nominee. 

So Ryan has done the best he could do under the circumstances and distance himself from Trump. His reward has been to find himself in the crosshairs of Trump's irresistible urge to spew his hatred through Twitter. His reward is to find the Tea Partiers hurling the worst insult they can think of at him: RINO (Republican in name only).

In truth, I pity Paul Ryan, a man who was thrust into the national spotlight only four short years ago to shore up the conservative credentials for Romney's candidacy. Now, the man once touted as a conservative policy wonk finds that he is the target of a vitriolic wing of his party's supporters which find him not conservative enough. In the end, when Trump's candidacy goes down in flames, Ryan will be made the scapegoat for daring to put civility and personal principles over voters' hatred of Hillary. 

By: William J. Kovatch, Jr. 

No One Is Entitled to Your Vote

No one is entitled to your vote. Let me repeat that. No one is entitled to your vote.

Why?  Your vote is yours. It is personal. It represents your choice; your voice. 

For millennia before the American Revolution, people struggled to have their government hear them. Even today, the majority of people in this world suffer under oppressive governments where they have no voice. Your right to have your say in how this government should be run has been hard fought and won. And you get to use it as you seem fit.

That concept seems to be under attack from many fronts this year. The attacks stem, in part, from the imperfect system we have.  Over time, the US electoral system has developed structures and rules that give the two major parties immense advantages. So it is assumed that only by voting Democrat or Republican that your vote has any chance of winning. And it is only through winning that your voice can be heard.

To be clear, your vote is an imperfect way to communicate to your government. We do not live in a pure democracy. We will in a representative republic. In our system, we elect people to represent us in making policy and legislative choices. Your vote, therefore, can be difficult for our government to interpret. Are we choosing a particular person, a political party, a particular issue?  Or are we making some other statement?

Into this system, you have people who say that if you are not voting for one of the parties with the institutional advantages, you have no chance of winning. Therefore you are throwing your vote away. Worse, they assume that the major party opponent of their chosen candidate must be defeated. So if you are not voting for their candidate, you are only allowing the other to win. It is this line of thinking that leads people to insist that one candidate or another deserves your vote. 

While a two party system ensures that one party or another controls the system to make laws and implement policies, it has major flaws. Our government addresses a large number of complex issues. In order to win the mechanisms of government in a two party system, the parties must form alliances among those various issues. One result is that some issues get drowned out.  

Another flaw stems from the way candidates for president are chosen. The primary system gives disproportionate power to the fringes of each of the major parties. It also gives an advantage to candidates who can manipulate name recognition and popularity. 

And so, many voters are left dissatisfied with the choices the major parties feed us. As we express our desire to reject both choices, we are met with the voices who insist that our vote must be used to win. Our vote must therefore be constrained to the two choices the parties gave us. 

But this view is limited and parochial. Our republic is more than merely a mechanism to institute major rule. It is designed to protect minority rights. It is a system set up to ensure that fundamental freedoms, such as speech, association and religion, are protected even if they are in the minority and unpopular. 

And it is in this system that we exercise our vote. In the privacy of the voting booth, the vote is personal. It is a reflection of our autonomy. It is a celebration of our freedom to choose. It is a memorial of those defended our democratic ideals. 

Honor those who died and sacrificed to protect this precious right. Revel in this incredible freedom. Exercise this right the way you see fit and tell your government how you think things should be run. Don't be intimidated by those who insist that their candidate is entitled to your vote. Vote your conscience and your conscience alone. 

By: William J. Kovatch, Jr. 

Trump Is No Authoritarian Danger; Hillary Is!

A number of my friends, and a good deal of the pundits, seem to be taking this "The sky is falling" attitude, when it comes to this year's presidential elections. That is, they are seriously motivated by this fear that if Donald Trump were elected president of the United States, but somehow this would signal the beginning of an authoritarian rule in the United States.

But the reality is if there is a danger of true authoritarian rule coming to the United States, Trump is not the candidate fear; Hillary Clinton is.

This is not to say that I am a big Trump supporter. The fact of the matter is I find him to be an ignorant, boorish bully. I have no intention of voting either for him or for Clinton in the November elections. Trump simply does not possess the skills or support necessary to turn the United States Government into an authoritarian government.

Consider the sources of Trump's popularity and power. Trump's numerous business failures have been well documented. It is also well documented that if he had just taken the wealth of each started out with and invested conservatively, he would have amassed a far greater personal wealth that he currently has. So it can't be seriously argued that Trump has any real business acumen.

To the contrary Trump is only been able to maintain his position by using his money to bully people. For example, a number of contractors on Trump's real estate development projects allege that they have been forced to except far less than the original agreed-upon payment because the threat of litigation costs make it far more rational to except the meager amount Trump offers then to fight him.

If Trump were to become the president, he would not be able to rely upon his personal wealth to bully others. There is far greater danger of Trump becoming frustrated with the need to deal with Congress and other world leaders instead of just getting what he wants.  His frustrations with no being the sole boss in charge is more likely cause him to quit than establish authoritarianism.

As for his supporters, they are drawn mostly from the Tea Partiers who have recently dominated the direction of Republican politics. These are people who have failed to recognize the lesson of the 2012 presidential election that the GOP has lost its appeal to various segments of the population. They are also drunk on their own Kool-Aid, as they cannot see that their success in the 2014 mid-term elections had much to do with gerrymandering and not the popularity of their agenda. While an annoyance in today's political atmosphere, tactically these are not people to be feared.

The source of Hillary Clinton's power and popularity, however, is far more troubling as she has demonstrated the skill set and the temperament that lends itself to authoritarian tendencies.

There is no doubt, Clinton is a brilliant tactician in the Machiavellian mold. She has taken a long-term view, skillfully and patiently putting all the pieces in place for her effort to rise to power.

Early in her career Hillary allied herself with a gifted and charismatic man who turned politician. Despite his obvious and almost pathological faults, Hillary has been unwavering in her support of Bill. Indeed, it is clear that Hillary made a deal with Bill a long time ago to protect his rise to power that has served her purposes well.

By this point, it is clear that the Clintons have a marriage that has been mutually beneficial for their respective political careers, but not one based on love or respect. Bill's womanizing can hardly be denied. Hillary's steadfast public support has enabled Bill to avoid the consequences for his behavior, which some have claimed has ventured into the area of sexual assault.

But Hillary did more than merely tolerate Bill's philandering. She chose to denigrate and slander those who would attempt to sully Bill's reputation. Dating back to 1978, Juanita Broaddrick reports that Hillary discouraged her from reporting her claim that Bill raped her. Hillary's attack on the character of the other women who came forward to accuse Bill is nothing more than the very victim attacking feminists decry in rape accusations. She likened Gennifer Flowers to money-hungry trailer park trash. When the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke, instead of acknowledging the truth, she attributed the scandal to some phantom "vast right wing conspiracy" to distract the public. Even after the truth of the allegations was shown, Hillary never offered an apology for deliberately and knowingly misleading the public. For her, it was all about the preservation of power.

And standing by her man has served Hillary well. Bill's charisma and skill has repeatedly saved her from her own scandals from the Rose Law Firm to Whitewater to her wanton and reckless handling of classified information.

Her willingness to mislead and distract followed her to her stint in the State Department. She was more than willing to promote the preposterous position that the attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi, which left the US Ambassador and three others brutally murdered, was caused by a spontaneous protest over a silly and amateurish YouTube video in order to cover up the utter ignorance and incompetence of the Obama Administration's Middle East policy.

Indeed Clinton tolerates neither criticism nor dissent. The voting public has all but forgotten how Hillary, as an unelected public official in her husband's first term, met in secret with advisors to formulate the Democrats' first major attempt to nationalize health care. While working on the plan, she shielded herself from the transparency critical to a functioning democracy.

And then there's her temperament: easily angered and according to both Arkansas State Police and Secret Service sources, full of contempt for the security details assigned to protect her.

Of great concern with Clinton is the cult of personality she commands. She has always had the unmitigated support of the militant feminists. But, for whatever reason, otherwise intelligent and reasonable people have chosen to ignore her faults and her corruption, and place her high on a pedestal. Indeed, the loyalty of her followers is so strong, so sycophantic, that they cannot accept that anyone can oppose Clinton on reasonable grounds. Instead, the intolerance and bigotry of her followers causes them to accuse anyone who voices objections to Clinton of misogyny. It is this intolerance of dissent among her followers that is indeed the most frightening aspect of Clinton's candidacy.

So blinded are these followers to Clinton's faults, that they cannot accept that the FBI report is a damning condemnation of her lawlessness. The result of the FBI investigation into Hillary's use of her personal email server was clearly that she broke the law. However, despite the clear proof of illegality, the FBI Director bent over backwards to find some reason not to prosecute Hillary. They mistakenly view this as an exoneration, instead of a clear act of corruption meant to protect the nominee from the president's party from scandal.

Indeed, it is this complete lack of tolerance and blind adherence of her loyal following that truly, and frighteningly, conjures images of the Nazi Brown Shirts. These are people more deserving of fear than the bumbling Tea Partiers.

There's a scene from the original Independence Day where Jeff Goldblum's character likens the appearance of the alien ships to a game of chess. A master chess player patiently waits until all of the pieces are properly in place before pouncing. For Hillary, the danger is that the pieces may be in place for this election.

Her patient, Machiavellian plotting, combined with her temperament, her inability to speak the truth and her intolerance of dissent all combine to create the real warnings signs of an inclination to authoritarianism should she be elected.


By:  William J. Kovatch, Jr.