Posted on 11/21/2016 9:19:07 AM PST by Kaslin
It has been difficult to discern exactly what the anti-Trump protesters are protesting. The election is over. Donald Trump will be president after Jan. 20.
As it turns out, they have five demands, according to CNN. One is the Electoral College deny Trump the presidency. Another is assuring Americans know they believe Trump is “not my president.” The other three are some variation of making a statement. About 4.5 million people have signed a petition posted on Change.org demanding the Electoral College make Hillary Clinton president.
“Hillary won the popular vote. The only reason Trump ‘won’ is because of the Electoral College,” the petition says. “But the Electoral College can actually give the White House to either candidate. So why not use this most undemocratic of our institutions to ensure a democratic result?”
I write about the four previous elections where the electoral vote and popular vote split in my book, “Tainted by Suspicion: The Secret Deals and Electoral Chaos of Disputed Presidential Elections.” Unlike in the1824 “corrupt bargain,” the 1876 Hayes-Tilden standoff and 2000 hanging chads debacle, there is no formal dispute of the outcome this year, at least not from Hillary Clinton.
It’s most similar to 1888, when Benjamin Harrison won a decisive Electoral College victory over Grover Cleveland, but lost the popular vote. There were no legal grounds for a dispute for Cleveland then or Clinton now.
But there is certainly an informal dispute against Trump by the millions protesting across the country—as aimless as it might seem. In that sense, malcontent Democrats this year are behaving more similar those Democrats chanting “Tilden or blood” after the 1876 election.
Occasionally, these marches led to riots. The walkouts by high school students, some encouraged by teachers and administrators, led to one 15-year-old Trump supporter getting beat up by class mates, while other acts of violence have taken place against those who admitted to voting for the president-elect.
The violence is not that different from what happened in 1876 when Democrats were demanding that year’s popular vote winner Samuel Tilden be president, as it seemed Republican Rutherford B. Hayes would likely ascend to the presidency. From “Tainted by Suspicion:”
Henry Watterson, publisher of the Louisville Courier-Journal and a Democratic Congressman from Kentucky, on Jan. 8—which he called “St. Jackson’s Day” because it marked the Battle of New Orleans—called for “the presence of at least 10,000 unarmed Kentuckians in the city” to march on Washington to ensure Tilden was elected. His friend Joseph Pulitzer, still building a vast newspaper empire, went further, calling for 100,000 people “fully armed and ready for business,” to ensure that Tilden becomes president.”
Angry Democratic mobs across the country would chant, “Tilden or blood,” and reportedly in a dozen states, club-wielding “Tilden Minute Men” had formed threatening to march into Washington to take the White House for their candidate. This came to Tilden’s chagrin, who sought to calm the rowdiness, as he didn’t want to be responsible for an insurrection, nor did he see it as a viable path to the presidency.
***
Today’s angry Democratic mob perhaps aren’t yet chanting Hillary or Blood as they did in 1876. But some are getting violent. Plus, the Democratic mobs in 1876 (and for that matter in 2000) had some rationale for their post-election temper tantrums. In 2016, Donald Trump clearly won the election, so it’s puzzling to figure out what the protest is about.
Even the popular vote argument is very weak since Hillary’s near million vote advantage came almost entirely out of California. If anything, that makes the case for the Electoral College since one or two large states shouldn’t overwhelm the will of the rest of the country.
The Electoral College votes on Dec. 19. It’s a safe bet that a month and a day later Trump will be inaugurated, at which point declaring that Trump, “is not my president,” will just be factually wrong no matter how angry the mob is.
Where’s the sign: Look at us! We’re moronic idiots!
Looking at that picture, it’s really, really hard to take those morons seriously. It looks like some useless public school in kommiefornia (redundant, I know) staged the thing for a photo op.
I like all their protest signs in Spanish.
They still don’t get it.
You lost. Get over it.
It is very easy to see these are the BLM "rent-a-mobs" redirected.
We are required to make our political choices on the say so of high school children. /s/
Maybe it is time to go back to when you had to be a LANDOWNER to vote.
Future Parasites of America on display.
Well, one sign got it right for THEM. It’s the one that, within the phrase “estamos unitos”, the word “unitos” be replaced with another word. Spanish speakers will understand.
They are protesting free elections and rule of law.
LOL — “unidos” not “unitos”
Din’t these people ever go to work?
Fixed it for you
THIS is what we have to look forward to, not just for the next 4 years, but for every election from now until the left comes to power again.
If the election does not go ‘their way’, there will be protests and riots until it becomes so tiring for AMERICANS to see and put up with, that they just don’t go vote at all.
The millenial generation has become the whiny, gimme, throw a tantrum until you get what you want generation.
It is sickening that these people don’t even realize that they look and act like a mob of spoiled brats that needs a huge ass whipping with a big black belt..................
This ‘temper tantrum’ that these ‘babies’ are doing is not going to change the future POTUS...it is done, it is over with, why do you think he is picking his people, why do you think he is called “President Elect”...because he won...
So go back to your ‘cradles’ with your bottles and teddy bears and go to sleep...WE the American Voters will take care of America along with our President and Vice President and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN...
They don’t need to, they’re getting paid by Soros
Soros must feel the prison gates closing on him. He’s really ramping up the paid opposition.
“One is the Electoral College deny Trump the presidency.”
After hearing Colorado Elector Michael Baca on Tucker Carlson the other night, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if he either declined to vote, or voted for someone who never made either ticket.
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