Democrats: We need you and your sons in the Boy Scouts

Look, I know the temptation is strong after Donald Trump's embarrassingly partisan speech to the Boy Scout national jamboree to condemn the organization and pull your sons out of the Boy Scouts. But now more than ever we need you in the Boy Scouts.

One of the greats links among the Boy Scouts is the Boy Scout Law. Let me review some of the points of that law. A Scout is friendly. A Scout is courteous. A Scout is kind. The Boy Scouts is a brotherhood of different types of young man from all across this country. In fact, when I was a scout I remember going to camp and having the opportunity to meet scouts from all over the world. The scouts teach tolerance and diversity. When we gather for a scouting event, we know we are in a room full of friends. It doesn't matter if they're a Democrat or Republican a Libertarian or a member the Green Party. We all believe in doing our duty to God in our country, and helping other people at all times.

And we need this diversity. Sadly, politics in our nations capital has become poisonous.  Members of both major parties are more interested in securing power, than they are in securing good governance. If we as a nation are to continue to be strong, then our leaders need to reach across the aisle, put aside petty differences and do what is best for the American people.

Scouting helps us to this. At a gathering like the national jamboree, young men have the opportunity to meet and interact with other young men who come from different parts of the country, and who have different ideas and backgrounds from them.  Scouts learn from different points of view. Scouts learn to share ideas. Scouts learn what it means to be friendly, courteous and kind while working together to build a greater future for our country.

So resist the temptation. We need you and your boys, so we can show that it is possible to have a dialogue from different points of view, and still consider ourselves brothers. That is truly what Scouting is about. And that is our hope for the future of this great nation of ours.

William J. Kovatch, Jr.

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.