Thanks to my friend John Franz for posting this.
To my California friends and fellow Americans:
Why We Have The Electoral College
We hear a cacophony of blaring and bleating from the media and the Hillary gaggle that she won the popular vote and therefore she should be president, 60,839,497 to 60,265,847. 47.8% to 47,3% — with the remaining 4.9% going to the other candidates.
But here are the facts:
Trump won the popular vote in 31 states to her 19 and DC. 62% to her 19%. Trump led in the total popular vote for all states except California. Hillary won California 5,860,714 to Trump’s 3,151,821. 61.6% to 33.1% exclusive of the other candidates.
Thus California gave Hillary the popular vote for all states as claimed by the Democrats and their media stooges. But deduct her California vote from her national vote leaving her with 54,978,783, and deduct Trump’s California vote from his national total, leaving him with 57,113,976, he wins in a landslide in the other 49 states, 51.3% to her 48.7%. So, in effect, Hillary was elected president of California and Trump was elected president of the rest of the country by a substantial margin.
This exemplifies the wisdom of the Electoral College, to prevent the vote of any one populace state from overriding the vote of the others. Trump’s Campaign Manager, Kellyanne Conway, whose expertise is polling, saw this early on and devised her strategy of “6 pathways to the White House”.
This meant ignoring California, with its huge Democrat majority, and going after the states that would give him the necessary Electoral votes to win, FL, NC, MI, PA, OH, and WI. It worked.
One other tidbit:
California is one of 11 “welfare states” where there are more people living off the government dole than there are working for a living. A perfect example of those who vote for a living.
My Take
Summarizing the above, CA alone essentially provided the votes that Clinton needed to lay claim to a relatively trifling popular vote victory. The rest of the country, including several traditionally liberal states, resoundingly voted for Trump.
So… California. I spent the entire 90s living there, and was still nominally a liberal during those years (I have since made a full recovery, thank you). A breathtakingly beautiful state indeed, but in my view, the *last* thing the rest of the country would want to do is follow CA’s lead anywhere.
CA’s awash in bad debt, leads the country in welfare dependency, and the state is the poster child for bigger and bigger government spiraling down the tube in dysfunction. Even back then, all but the largest corporations and most geographically entrenched of businesses were either voluntarily relocating outside the state, or were forced out by exorbitant taxes and stifling over-regulation. At a personal level, the government routinely imposed mandate after mandate restricting the people’s liberty and ‘pursuit of happiness’… that’s supposed to be a thing, as I recall.
As my CA experience wound down, I gave serious consideration to whether I wanted to stay there, and readily came to the conclusion that, for me, CA had nothing left to offer a native Hoosier like me. It was devolving politically, financially, environmentally, socially and culturally.
OTOH… musically, it was still a gloriously dynamic and diverse scene, and I had never been busier in my trade as a guitar player. That one shining personal advantage notwithstanding, I sold my C-class tour bus, packed up a 35’ U-haul with my car on a trailer and returned to Indiana content that I was not only returning to my roots geographically, but in every other important metric. It was good to be going home again. I miss my friends, but I have not missed CA at all in the ensuing years.
So the fact that the left coast was not able, through a simplistic mob-rule popular tally, to pry its agenda into the rest of the country is, IMHO, a godsend, and underscores the wisdom of the Founders in formulating the electoral process the way they did. It is desirable that the individual states, rather than a handful of regional urban concentrations of single-party voters, elect the president. I do believe that we would reject the electoral college at our own peril.
