Step one: Recruit a group of celebrities -- ranging from A-listers to D-listers -- to make solemn-sounding, straight-to-camera appeals in an open video addressing members of the electoral college. Step two: If that airtight plan fails to have an impact, get these self righteous Hollywood types to send personalized videos to individual electors. Step three: Deluge electors with thousands of daily emails in a frantic, last-ditch effort to sway today's vote. One of the 538 members of this powerful group from Missouri, which Trump carried by nearly nine points, has heard quite enough from these people. Via CBS News in St. Louis:
Jan, who asked us not to use her last name, is one who has been inundated with emails, letters and phone calls urging her to change her vote from from Donald Trump to Hillary Clinton. Jan says she’s been receiving 3,000 to 5,000 emails a day, although over one 24-hour period, she got 9,722! Over the last two days, she received 300 letters. “I can’t say that I’ve been threatened, because I haven’t read every email,” she says. “I have received a couple that offered to pay any fine that I would be imposed upon for changing my vote. I kind of consider that bribery.” Jan says she’s visited with a few of Missouri’s nine other electors, and they’re experiencing the same thing...She says they’re disrespecting the system. “I don’t know if our educational system has failed to educate these agitators, or these are the children that took 4th place in little league and received a big trophy for having their shoes on the right feet.” Jan says despite the pressure, she’s not changing her vote.
That's a swift, appropriate backhand from Jan. Anyway, all of the media attention on the electors this year is a bit overblown -- despite a vow from one in Texas to vote for someone other than Trump, and whispers that others may be in the mix. Why? The math: Trump's electoral vote lead has some padding; he needed 270, and won 306. So even if a small handful of "faithless electors" defect, the outcome won't change. Hypothetically, if the final 2016 map were exactly the same, with the exceptions of Hillary taking Pennsylvania and Michigan, Trump's electoral college advantage would be a perilously-thin 270 to 268. Then we'd really have a five-alarm story on our hands, wherein even that one 'Never Trump' elector could conceivably tip the entire election (although even then, it would likely end up getting tossed to the Republican-held Congress, which would vote for the GOP ticket). But that isn't the case. Trump simply isn't going to lose dozens of electors. For the umpteenth time, it's over. Nevertheless, this is an interesting piece of trivia to keep an eye on, via The Hill: "But there hasn't been an election in which more than one elector jumped ship for reasons other than the death of a candidate since 1836, according to the nonprofit FairVote. So a defection by even one more Republican elector would make history." Meanwhile, here's National Review editor Rich Lowry taking electoral 'coup'-minded liberals to the woodshed over their hypocrisy:
For fear that Donald Trump will violate democratic norms, liberals want to have the Electoral College throw out the results of a presidential election and impose their choice on the nation for the first time in our history. The hypocrisy is rather astonishing. A major theme of the Democrats and the press during the election was (reasonably enough) the absolute imperative of accepting the results. This lasted as a bedrock principle of democratic governance all the way until roughly 4 a.m. Wednesday, Nov. 9, when it became clear that Trump had won and angry protests in the streets, pointless, harassing recounts and calls for an Electoral College coup became the order of the day. In theory, 37 electors could flip against Trump on Dec. 19, deny him the 270 electoral votes needed to win and precipitate one of the gravest constitutional crises in the history of the republic. If you spin out the scenarios, it’s hard to see how Trump would actually be denied the presidency (if no one gets 270 electoral votes, the contest is thrown into the Republican House). So the point of the whole exercise would simply be to disrupt as much as possible the heretofore sacrosanct peaceful transfer of power. And it’s Trump who’s the threat to our system?
Read the whole thing, as Lowry dismantles the ludicrous rationales and double standards being advocated by various prominent lefties, including Peter Beinart, John Pedesta, and Robert Reich. I'll leave you with further evidence of how self-deluding and reality-contorting life in The Bubble can become:
Really having trouble taking the New York Times @nytimes seriously these days. It's like the Guardian's Manhattan edition. pic.twitter.com/wUkj1wyej8
— Niall Ferguson (@nfergus) December 18, 2016
If you think Ivy League students are living in a cultural/political bubble... You are exactly right. All are in 80%-90% Clinton areas. pic.twitter.com/cJouWh9VcG
— (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) December 16, 2016