Posted on 11/17/2016 8:11:06 AM PST by Kaslin
Political journalists totally dismissed the possibility of a victory by Donald Trump because they were looking in the wrong direction. Too many of them look to Washington, DC to explain what's happening in America. They've got it backwards. We should all look to America to explain what's happening in official Washington.
From that perspective, the only real question is why President-elect Trump didn't win by a bigger margin.
For example, there are 99 state legislative bodies in America (every state but Nebraska has two -- a House and a Senate). Data from Ballotpedia.org shows that, during the Obama Administration, there was an amazing transformation among those legislatures. An astounding 85 out of the 99 are more Republican today than they were when President Obama took office."
The impact of this can be seen in the number of what Ballotpedia calls Trifectas. These are states where one party controls both houses of the state legislature and the governorship. They have, in effect, total control over the state's political process.
When President Obama took office, Democrats had more Trifecta control than Republicans. There were 14 Trifectas held by the president's party and 11 by the loyal opposition. Now, however, the Republicans dominate. Following last week's election, the GOP holds 25 Trifectas while the Democrats hold only six.
To suggest that Republican gains during the Obama years have been broad and deep is an understatement. There are now 958 more individual Republican state legislators than there were eight years ago.
On top of this, Republicans have increased their number of U.S. Senators from 41 to 52 and added more than 60 seats in the House of Representatives. Overall, as chronicled by Sean Trende of Real Clear Politics, the Republican Party is stronger today than it has been at any time since the 1920s.
The recent strength of the GOP can be traced directly to President Obama's policies including Obamacare, the War on Coal and an ever-growing regulatory burden. More broadly, while official Washington applauded the president's enthusiasm for top down government by federal bureaucrats, most of America did not.
Donald Trump rode this wave of growing GOP strength all the way to the White House.
The President-elect was far from the perfect messenger. But, among the 17 Republicans and 3 Democrats who sought their party's presidential nomination, he was the only one who recognized the moment.
All the other candidates were making the same mistake as the journalists -- they were looking to Washington to explain America. They were part of a political class that had grown far too comfortable serving Wall Street at the expense of Main Street. They dismissed the concerns of everyday Americans as irrelevant to the workings of government.
Trump, on the other hand, looked to America to explain Washington. No matter what the DC consultants said, he instinctively understood that most Americans see the political class as a problem rather than the solution. That's something none of the other candidates were willing to admit.
The President-elect almost certainly never did an analysis of how much strength Republicans have gained in state legislatures during the Obama era. He simply felt it. But the evidence was there for all to see. And the numbers suggest that the Democrats may remain in the political wilderness for a long time to come.
if reason and reality can overcome illegal immigration, parasitism, and the bubble of emotionalism, wishful thinking, ignorance, foolishness, stupidity, and fantasies of libtardism
The motto should perhaps be...."You can't please everyone"
and of course if everyone agrees with everything, there is no need for the other half of the equation.
This is why the Democrat party has to extend the vote to third-world populations.
When the GOPe and LSM teamed up against him, it's amazing he didn't get creamed by a huge amount - his own personal fortitude and instincts carried him over the edge against odds that nobody has ever overcome in politics before him.
CA, WA, OR, NV, CO, NM which voted GOP from 68-88 are now solidly blue.
VA has shifted to Blue.
NC is now purple as Florida.
Demographic shifts in GA are slowly turning that state a very light shade of Red.
Texas is heading the same way as GA.
If either of those two states go Blue it's over for the GOP-e at the presidential level.
Dimorcats may be down this cycle but they're by no means in the wilderness.
For later.
Get rid of a bunch of illegals who vote, get rid of birthright citizenship an, and get rid of anchor baby- based immigration for extended families, and you will get rid of the problem.
Immigration IS the MOST IMPORTANT issue this election cycle!!! If Trump does NOT change the open borders immediately WE ARE DOOMED the Dems know this!!!!! What these BASTARDS have done to this nation for votes is DISPICABLE!!!!! Republicans are just as much to blame as the Dems, campaign contributions from chamber of commerce were MORE IMPORTANT than American citizens DRAIN THE SWAMP!!!!
Meanwhile, a state like Michigan has turned surprisingly red even before this election. This article fails to mention the biggest factor in party affiliation in America today. It’s not race, income or education level. It’s URBANIZATION. It’s the growth of cities that turns places like VA, NC and GA from red to purple, and it is the depopulation of dumps like Detroit and Cleveland that are turning the Rust Belt red.
Springfield, Ills, April 6, 1859
Messrs. Henry L. Pierce, & others.
Gentlemen
Your kind note inviting me to attend a Festival in Boston, on the 13th. Inst. in honor of the birth-day of Thomas Jefferson, was duly received. My engagements are such that I can not attend.
Bearing in mind that about seventy years ago, two great political parties were first formed in this country, that Thomas Jefferson was the head of one of them, and Boston the head-quarters of the other, it is both curious and interesting that those supposed to descend politically from the party opposed to Jefferson should now be celebrating his birthday in their own original seat of empire, while those claiming political descent from him have nearly ceased to breathe his name everywhere.
Remembering too, that the Jefferson party were formed upon its supposed superior devotion to the personal rights of men, holding the rights of property to be secondary only, and greatly inferior, and then assuming that the so-called democracy of to-day, are the Jefferson, and their opponents, the anti-Jefferson parties, it will be equally interesting to note how completely the two have changed hands as to the principle upon which they were originally supposed to be divided.
The democracy of to-day hold the liberty of one man to be absolutely nothing, when in conflict with another man's right of property. Republicans, on the contrary, are for both the man and the dollar; but in cases of conflict, the man before the dollar.
I remember once being much amused at seeing two partially intoxicated men engage in a fight with their great-coats on, which fight, after a long, and rather harmless contest, ended in each having fought himself out of his own coat, and into that of the other. If the two leading parties of this day are really identical with the two in the days of Jefferson and Adams, they have perfomed the same feat as the two drunken men.
But soberly, it is now no child's play to save the principles of Jefferson from total overthrow in this nation.
One would start with great confidence that he could convince any sane child that the simpler propositions of Euclid are true; but, nevertheless, he would fail, utterly, with one who should deny the definitions and axioms. The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of free society.
And yet they are denied and evaded, with no small show of success.
One dashingly calls them "glittering generalities"; another bluntly calls them "self evident lies"; and still others insidiously argue that they apply only to "superior races."
These expressions, differing in form, are identical in object and effect--the supplanting the principles of free government, and restoring those of classification, caste, and legitimacy. They would delight a convocation of crowned heads, plotting against the people. They are the van-guard--the miners, and sappers--of returning despotism.
We must repulse them, or they will subjugate us.
This is a world of compensations; and he who would be no slave, must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it.
All honor to Jefferson--to the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so to embalm it there, that to-day, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of re-appearing tyranny and oppression.
Your obedient Servant
A. Lincoln--
Source: Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, edited by Roy P. Basler.
Source for this reproduction of the letter is
With regard to Lincoln's expressed admiration and defense of the "principles of Jefferson," perhaps a recap of those principles, as expressed by Jefferson in his 1801 Inaugural Address, might be in order here:
(Excerpt, "Our Ageless Constitution," p. xiv, reformatted)
"Let us, then, with courage and confidence pursue our own Federal and Republican principles, our attachment to union and representative government. Kindly separated by nature and a wide ocean from the exterminating havoc of one quarter of the globe; too high-minded to endure the degradations of the others; possessing a chosen country, with room enough for our descendants to the thousandth and thousandth generation;- entertaining a due sense of our equal right to the use of our own faculties, to the acquisitions of our own industry, to honor and confidence from our fellow-citizens, resulting not from birth, but from our actions and their sense of them;
- enlightened by a benign religion, professed, indeed, and practiced in various forms, yet all of them inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man;
- acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence, which by all its dispensations proves that it delights in the happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafter
—with all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and a prosperous people?
- Still one thing more, fellow-citizens—a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.
- This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.
"About to enter, fellow-citizens, on the exercise of duties which comprehend everything dear and valuable to you,
- it is proper you should understand what I deem the essential principles of our Government, and consequently those which ought to shape its Administration. I will compress them within the narrowest compass they will bear, stating the general principle, but not all its limitations.
- Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political;
- peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none;
- the support of the State governments in all their rights, as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns and the surest bulwarks against antirepublican tendencies;
- the preservation of the General Government in its whole constitutional vigor, as the sheet anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad;
- a jealous care of the right of election by the people—a mild and safe corrective of abuses which are lopped by the sword of revolution where peaceable remedies are unprovided;
- absolute acquiescence in the decisions of the majority, the vital principle of republics, from which is no appeal but to force, the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism;
- a well disciplined militia, our best reliance in peace and for the first moments of war, till regulars may relieve them;
- the supremacy of the civil over the military authority;
- economy in the public expense, that labor may be lightly burthened;
- the honest payment of our debts and sacred preservation of the public faith;
- encouragement of agriculture, and of commerce as its handmaid;
- the diffusion of information and arraignment of all abuses at the bar of the public reason;
- freedom of religion; freedom of the press, and freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus, and trial by juries impartially selected.
These principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation. The wisdom of our sages and blood of our heroes have been devoted to their attainment. They should be the creed of our political faith, the text of civic instruction, the touchstone by which to try the services of those we trust; and should we wander from them in moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety." - Thomas Jefferson
I think the author's political optimism ignores some key facts.
By the way, I voted for Trump, and I haven't written a critical word about him since it became obvious he would win the nomination six months ago.
(1) Democrats remain very competitive for the White House. Hillary Clinton, one of the weakest Democrat candidates in modern times, currently leads Trump by more than 1 million votes.
(2) 956,000 ballots in Los Angeles County have not been counted. Clinton will win the Popular Vote by at least 1.5 million.
(3) Winning the Popular Vote is not insignificant. 91% of the presidential candidates who won the Popular Vote have also won the Electoral Vote, and the election.
(4) Massive voter fraud in California (and New York state) makes no sense to me. Why would millions of illegal immigrants commit an easily traceable felony when almost every state and federal office is held by a Democrat?
(5) On the other hand, massive voter fraud in Florida and Texas would make perfect sense to me. However, why would the very powerful Republican Party in both those states just calmly stand by and watch that happen? In my opinion, they don't. In my opinion, the massive level of voter fraud claimed by many Comments at Free Republic (3 million to 5 million) is not happening.
(6) The GOP majority in the U.S. Senate is razor thin. Just 51 or 52. If Texas Democrats can find an attractive, moderate candidate to run against Ted Cruz in 2018, that will be a very close race. In his 2012 Senate victory, Cruz won by 56.6%. Center-left Republican Mitt Romney won his 2012 Texas race by 57.2%. And, Trump won Texas by just 52.5%.
(7) The USA Census counts “all persons present” in the country - citizens, non-voting legal residents, and illegal residents. The 2020 Census will have a significant impact on Congressional Redistricting. The GOP currently has a fire proof majority in the House of Representatives. The House will become much more competitive for Democrats in the 2022 election.
BTTT
Let the GOP ignore the People and they will be back in the minority as quick as they became the Majority Party.
Agree.
Unless we counter fraud and illegal immigration, we’re doomed.
If you look at the results in Illinois and New York State, you will see that the Democrats’ strongholds are in the big cities, and that is about it.
Let’s take Illinois first. Based on the results posted on the CNN website, if you eliminate the vote from Cook County (where Chicago is located), Trump would have carried that state by about 230,000 votes.
Likewise with New York State. Disregard the vote from the five counties comprising deep-blue New York City, and Trump carries the Empire State by close to 5,500 votes. Not much to brag about, but a victory nevertheless.
Even if the GOP writes off the big cities, there may be counties in the states those Democrat big cities are in which make a difference. Perhaps we have cases when we should be talking about battleground counties in deep-blue states while still concentrating on battleground states as a whole.
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