Voters Express Disgust at Ruling
Elites
The 2016 presidential
election contest to pick a successor to President Barack Obama began in earnest
on February 9, 2016, when 535,103 voters in New Hampshire traipsed through the
snow to cast their ballots in the New Hampshire Presidential Primary.
Although the election was called a primary, the New
Hampshire ballot access rules means that the election is basically a General
Election. Turnout was over 60%.
There were 882,959 registered voters as of February 5th,
231,376 (26%) of the voters are registered Democrats, 262,111 (30%) of the
voters are Republicans, and 389,472 (44%) of the voters are Undeclared. New
Hampshire allows same day registration and lets Undeclared voters pick a party
for the day, and then return to undeclared status.
What actually happened was that 5,392 more voters cast their
ballots in 2016 than in 2008, the last time there were heavily contested
primaries in both parties, and another 37,689 people who voted in the
Democratic primary in 2008 switched to the Republican primary in 2016. So, 284,120 Republican ballots were cast, a
gain of 43,081 over 2008, and 250,983 Democratic ballots were cast, a decline
of 37,689 over 2008.
That means that at least 22,009 undeclared voters cast ballots
in the Republican primary and 19,607 undeclared cast ballots in the Democratic
Primary, assuming 100% turnout of party members.
The
results, including write-ins from the other primary, are: 1st place
Senator Bernie Sanders 153,679 (28.3%); 2nd place Donald Trump
102,201 (18.7%); 3rd place Hillary Clinton 95,792 (17.8%); 4th
place Governor John Kasich 45,347 (8.4%); 5th place Senator Ted Cruz
33,351 (6.2%); 6th place John Ellis (Jeb) Bush 31,573 (5.9); 7th
place Senator Marco Rubio 30,235 (5.6%); 8th place Governor
Christopher Christie 21,281 (3.9%); 9th place Carly
Fiorina 11,805 (2.2%); and 10th place Ben
Carson 6,561 (1.2).
The top ten candidates
accounted for 98.2% of all the votes cast in the election. Except for Rubio
receiving 203 write-in votes in the Democratic primary to Christie’s 216, the
relative position of the candidates in the opposite parties write-in votes
remained the same. It is interesting to
note that more than 2,888 Republicans, almost exactly 1%, wrote-in Sanders or
Clinton; while 3,228 Democrats, more than 1%, wrote-in Republican candidates’
names.
This clearly shows that the action was in the Republican
primary. It attracted a greater share of
the unaffiliated, and more Democrats opted to vote in the other party than
Republicans.
Voters Are Trying to Get the
Candidates to Talk About the ECONOMY
By boosting outsiders, a businessman with no governmental
experience, and a populist Senator preaching socialism, the voters are sending
a clear message to the governors that dealing with the economy, specifically
jobs and the red ink in which everyone, from pension funds to personal balance
sheets, is drowning. The candidates have had their fun talking about
immigration or whether their opponents are really eligible to run for president. Now that the voters have gotten a chance to
speak, it is clear they are dissatisfied with the debate so far.
And it’s not just the politicians who got it in the neck, with
establishment stalwarts like Hillary Clinton running third and Jeb Bush running
sixth. The New Hampshire Union Leader, the leading newspaper of the state,
endorsed Chris Christie early, and he ran an unimpressive eighth garnering 3.9%
of the vote and dropping out. So, much for the value of newspaper endorsements in the age of social
media and television. Christie’s
crash was unsurprising to anyone who paid attention to his previous record at
the polls.
What Lies
Ahead – Bush v. Clinton
Mainly white voters from
small rural states have been the only voters so far. Now, the contest moves into areas more
representative of the voting population of the country. As in every presidential race, anti-leader coalitions
emerge as the contest moves to different states. Trump has made himself
unacceptable to minorities, especially Hispanics, and his incendiary rhetoric
would mean the United States would be at war immediately upon his
inauguration. His advocacy of, not only waterboarding, but carpet bombing, targeted assassination,
even of the families of targets, makes good entertainment and grabs voters
attention, but would make catastrophic government. Furthermore, Trump is short on policy and
voters are not going to take The Donald on trust, he has been divorced and gone
bankrupt too many times. Trump is a
snake oil salesman who will eventually flame out. If the Republicans actually fail to stop him,
he will lead them to a Goldwater-style defeat in November. As it is, the Republicans are already almost
too fragmented to win in November, and I actually think, given the stolen
election of 2000, that the Republicans have elected their last president. However, Trump has exposed the Republican
emperor with no clothes. He has
demonstrated that the media covers elections primarily to improve their bottom
lines, not to inform the voters or help them to frame a viable government. He
also, with his vast alleged personal wealth, has demonstrated how his opponents
have to toe the line of their contributors, something he does not have to do in
a self-financed campaign.
Christie demolished
Rubio’s gravitas before imploding himself.
Ted Cruz is an irresponsible barn burner who is trying to lead the
country backward into a Christian past that never was. The irony is that both leading
contenders are offering nineteenth century solutions to twenty-first century
problems.
This leaves Kasich and
Bush as the only viable centrist Republicans. It would make a strong ticket,
Ohio and Florida,
although if Kasich beats Bush, would Jeb be willing to be Vice-President?
Hmmm. In fact,
this election is shaping up to be 1992 all over again. In 1992, in the Democratic primary, a dying
Senator from a neighboring state, Senator Paul Tsongas of Massachusetts, beat
Bill Clinton in the Democratic primary.
Hillary did not need to win in 2016, because she already won in 2008 and
everyone knows that one swallow does not make a summer. Hillary was going to stay in the race, and it
was a good chance for the voters to send her a message about what she needs to
do to pick up her game. She hasn’t faced
voters in a decade.
It’s Foreign
Policy, Stupid
Although James Carville, the Ragin’ Cajin Rasputin of Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign
famously said, “It’s the economy, stupid” the truth is that presidential
elections turn on foreign, not domestic policy. That was a lie. Clinton was astute enough not to call Bush I
up on the two wars: Panama and Iraq I, that he got the
country into.
There is only one finger on the nuclear trigger. There is only
one person who can order troops into battle or put boots on the ground. In the end, voters can finesse the economy by
changing the members of Congress, but there is only one Commander-in-Chief, and
in the current crop of candidates, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is
the only one who can tell the players and the issues in foreign policy without
a scorecard. Not to mention, after eight
years of a black president, it is more than time for a woman, and Hillary is
the only woman around even remotely competent and experienced enough to do the
job. She may not be likable, and may be
a little rough around the edges, but she’s not interviewing for wife or paramour,
it’s executive and diplomat in chief.
And Bush will be the Republican nominee
because a) the Republican party no longer believes in
democracy. The voter photo ID laws,
upheld by the racist Supreme Court majority, are designed to discourage voting
and b) the Bush family does not win elections, it smears its opponents. Voters will groan and complain about another
Bush-Clinton contest, but the truth is that elections are about the present as
well as the future. And the truth about
America today is that there is little social mobility, that
the best indicator of what a person will do with her or his life is to look at
their parents. This is what America has
become. If Jeb Bush is elected
president, he will be the fourth member of his family to become president (his
mother, Barbara, was a Pierce and related to Franklin Pierce.) One family, almost 10% of its presidents, is
that democracy?
But the most compelling reason for a Bush
nomination is that in the wake of the fraudulent 2000 vote count in Florida,
where Jeb was the Governor, many people wanted a revote. The 2016 presidential election will be a
chance to let the voters decide whether the 2000 election was legitimate or
not.
The reason that Al
Gore asked for a recount in only four counties is that under Florida’s election
Law’s, recounts had to be requested county by county, and even the Gore campaign
could not marshal the lawyers and the resources to file the papers to ask for a
recount in all 67 counties. The only
person who could order a statewide recount was the governor, Jeb Bush. So, it was Jeb who was responsible for his
brother becoming president, all because he was unwilling to see if the votes in
Florida had been counted correctly.
Jake Tapper, the famous journalist who wrote Down and Dirty: The
Plot to Steal the Presidency proves by examining the overvotes
as well as undervotes that, under the Florida
Election Law standard of voter intent, Al Gore clearly won the electoral votes
in Florida. However, Down and Dirty, is not mentioned in his list of
activities on Wikipedia. Jake Tapper’s
illustrious career in media is fueled by his knowledge and suppression of the
fact that Gore won the 2000 election.
So, it is necessary from a governmental perspective that Bush and
Clinton face each other in 2016 and that Clinton wins by carrying Florida. This
will be the revote for which voters in Palm Beach County were clamoring in
2000. Think about it. Should a country
which can’t even count six or seven million votes accurate really be spreading
democracy by force to others?
BONUS – An
Historic Proof that the Elected Leadership is Out of Touch
Lakewood Township in Ocean County, is
the seventh most populous municipality in New Jersey, with almost 100,000
people. Its explosive growth has been
fueled by a recent and rapid influx of Orthodox Jews. The Orthodox Jews are a powerful political
force with a majority of representatives on the various governing bodies.
While Orthodox Jews
are a majority of the school board, few send their children to the public
schools. As a result, although there are 30,000 school aged children in
Lakewood, only 5,500 attend public school.
Lakewood’s school budget was $112 million of which $20 million was spent
on busing. There are two reasons for
this disproportion. The first is that
New Jersey provides a transportation stipend to all students who attend private
school. The second is that Lakewood
provides “courtesy busing”, that is to say they provide bus service to
students, both public and private, who are not required to receive it by law,
but they do it for safety or other reasons.
There are almost 10,000 students in Lakewood who receive this courtesy
busing, 2,700 public school pupils and 7,100 private school students.
This year, Lakewood’s
school budget increased to $123 million, leaving a $9.5 million deficit. Looking to save money, the state monitor put
courtesy busing on the chopping block to save over $6.2 million. The school board, desperate to retain
courtesy busing, proposed a referendum, asking voters to approve a tax increase
to pay for the bus service.
On Tuesday, January 26, 2016, Lakewood voters cast ballots in a
special school referendum. The result:
108 YES, and 7,561 NO. The referendum lost with a 98.6% No vote, probably the
most lopsided in the history of a free democratic contested election. When people claim to win elections with 98%
or 99% of the vote, you can usually bet that a dictatorship is being described,
along with stuffed ballot boxes, physical intimidation or elimination of
opposition, etc. But 98.6% to 1.4% in a
fair and honest election can only mean one thing. THE ELECTED LEADERSHIP IS OUT
OF TOUCH WITH THE VOTERS!
The boosting of Trump
and Sanders combined with the collapsing stock market are the people’s way of
trying to get the candidates for president to talk seriously about the economy,
budget deficits and job creation.
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