In 2000, Republican George W. Bush won the presidency by one vote, because SCOTUS, in Bush v. Gore, screwed it up after the Gore campaign unwisely did not demand a state-wide recount in the Sunshine State. But Gore received more popular votes than W.
In 2016, Hillary won more votes than did what’s his name — you know, the guy who likes only his family members and his rabid base.
Because of the Electoral College, Gore lost, and so did HRC.
Our forefathers set up the Electoral College because when we began as a nation there were thirteen ex-colonies, all of whom became States, and each of them, at the outset, wanted to retain their sovereignty, but in 1787 they grudgingly or otherwise agreed to this tenuous experiment called the United States.
Takes 270 votes in the outdated Electoral College to become president.
On Friday, Colorado’s Democratic Governor, former Boulder Congressman Jared Polis, did the right thing by signing the law proposed by Democrats (who now control both houses of the Centennial State’s legislature), to join twelve other jurisdictions, including the District of Columbia, in the National Popular Vote Compact, which will not become active until 270 electoral votes are guaranteed. With Colorado’s nine electoral votes, the Compact now has 181 (https://www.coloradopolitics.com/hot-sheet/polis-signs-national-popular-vote-into-law-but-it-doesn/article_ce02e900-497a-11e9-94ea-87789e17ff29.html).
So which are the sensible states which are in the Compact?
California, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, and the District of Columbia, which should be a State, but most likely that ain’t gonna happen anytime soon.
In today’s Times, columnist Jamelle Bouie presents a thoroughly researched argument for dealing with the prickly problems of the archaic Electoral College (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/28/opinion/the-electoral-college.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share).
Colorado’s chief Bernie supporter, associate solitary reporter Lewis Thompson, is, no doubt, pleased, because, as he so eloquently puts it, “I’m fr___n’ tired of Republicans winning presidential elections where they can’t manage to muster enough votes nationwide.”
In other news, Donald Trump’s harried Acting Chief of Staff, Mick Mulvaney, who used to be a Tea Party Congressman from South Carolina, is trying his utmost to scoop up the poop left over from Trump’s last-minute decision to ground all Boeing 737 Max 8 and 9 aircraft, after Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crashed on March 10, six minutes after takeoff from Addis Ababa, killing all 149 passengers and eight crew members on board. French authorities are investigating the black box.
Trump, a certifiably ineffective leader, was the last world leader to order the grounding of the Boeing 737 Max 8, after Boeing’s CEO, Dennis Muilenburg, assured Trump that the 737 Max is safe. Boeing is the largest US exporter by volume of sales, and it employs 153,027 people worldwide, mostly in the United States.
Yesterday, on the PBS News Hour, aviation expert Jeff Wise explained to John Yang how badly Boeing messed up; and many questions are being raised as to why the FAA allowed Boeing to figure out whether the 737 Max is safe (https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/this-aviation-expert-says-boeing-made-disastrously-bad-decision-on-training-for-737-max).
Additionally, SCOTUS yesterday agreed to consider whether Lee Boyd Malvo’s life sentence without the possibility of parole, for the murders he committed in Washington, Maryland, and Virginia when he was 17, should be reduced. So we sent associate solitary reporter Susanna Sherman to talk with Chief Justice John Roberts. ASR Sherman is a longtime student of the English language, having received her PhD in Linguistics from Harvard when she was only 16. Sherman is intrigued by the similarity between the name Malvo and “malevolent."
Chief Justice Roberts is an astute judicial politician, who is well known for his skill in persuading his colleagues on the Court — even, on rare occasions, Silent But Angry Clarence Thomas and Sammy Alito, to go along with him.
In November, the Associated Press approached Chief Justice Roberts for comment after Trump described a jurist who ruled against his ill-founded asylum policy as an “Obama judge.” So Roberts, in response, said, “We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges." The Chief Justice’s remarks were widely interpreted as a rebuke of Trump’s comments.
“Mr. Chief Justice, I and all my dozens of colleagues at America’s best political newspaper, apocryphalpress.com, will be watching the Malvo case very closely, so I want to ask you point-blank, Sir, whether you agree with me and DNC Chair Tom Perez that Donald Trump is, in a word, malevolent.”
“Susanna, that’s a pretty good summation. I only met the man once, on January 20, 2017, when, against my better judgment, I performed my constitutional duty. I’m really looking forward to swearing in his successor on or before January 21, 2021."