Our local newspaper printed a special election extra edition today, with all the articles coming from the Associated Press. The information is "as of" 3:00 AM (EST) today, so it's not exactly final. They have trump winning with 276 electoral votes to Hillary's 218. I thought I heard on the TV news this evening that the gap was wider than that, with Trump getting some 300 electoral votes. The paper credits Trump with 48% of the popular vote with Hillary getting 47%, but the TV news said that Hillary actually got more of the popular vote than Trump, although I didn't hear the numbers.
Trump would not be the first "minority president", it happens from time to time, and the last time was in 2000. Whenever it does happen, there is a hue and cry to abolish the Electoral College, but nothing ever comes of it. It would require a constitutional amendment, with a 2/3 majority of both congressional houses and ratification by 3/4 of the state legislatures. The last amendment, the 27th, was ratified in 1992, and was first proposed by congress in 1789, so I don't expect the Electoral College to be abolished any time soon.
Speaking of the constitution, I looked up the procedure for making cabinet appointments and found it in Article II, Section 2. It doesn't mention cabinet appointments specifically, but it gives the president the power to appoint "other public ministers", which I think is what they used to call cabinet heads before they started calling them secretaries. At any rate, those appointments are made with "the advice and consent of the senate". I think that means the senate has to confirm them, which is the more familiar term in use today. At last count, the Republicans retained control of the senate, just barely, with 52 Republican senators, down from the previous 54. This means that, if Trump wants to get anything done, he will need to be nice to the senators of his own party. If a few of them get pissed at him and vote with the Democrats, he's screwed.
According to my paper, most of the people who voted for Trump weren't exactly thrilled about him. They either disliked Hillary even more, or were so pissed off at the way the country has been running that they wanted to throw some sand in the gears. I was considering doing that myself, but Ken talked me out of it, and I'm glad he did. I didn't expect Trump to win, and intended to cast a protest vote for him. Since he did win, I'm proud to say that he did it without my vote.
No comments:
Post a Comment