jg10003
jg10003's JournalMy letter to the electors
Dear Elector;
I know that you are committed to voting for a Republican for president, and I have no intention of trying to persuade you to do otherwise.
I myself am a Democrat who voted for Bernie Sanders in the primary and Hillary Clinton in the election. I suspect that you and I disagree on many issues of the day. However I am sure that we will agree that the United States constitution is an amazing document that has given us the greatest form of government in history. But the constitution is not indestructible, it is possible that the form of government we both revere could come to an end. It is for this reason that I am asking you to consider voting for someone of your own party, someone whose politics you agree with, but someone who is not Donald Trump. This is not about party politics or conservative versus liberal. This is about a man who has shown no respect for the constitution or the norms of political life. A man without the experience, judgment, temperament, maturity, or character to be president.
Vladimir Putin is technically a democratically elected president of a constitutional republic. In reality Putin is a strongman dictator who controls the press, harasses and imprisons opponents, and has used his position to amass a 70 billion dollar fortune for himself. I am afraid that Trump wants to be the American version of Putin. And I am afraid that he may succeed.
I reiterate, this is not about politics. I wish Hillary Clinton had won, but she did not. I accept that the next president will be a conservative Republican. I tell my fellow progressives that we have had conservative republicans in the White House before and we survived. But Trump is different, he is an existential threat to the republic. The threat goes beyond issues like health-care, taxes, abortion, or gay rights. The threat is to our system of government and the supremacy of the constitution.
So please consider an alternative. John Kasich, Mitt Romney, Lindsey Graham, or Paul Ryan are people I disagree with and would not vote for. However I do not fear them like I fear Trump because I know that these men will uphold the constitution and all that it means.
Respectfully yours,
How to email the electors
A good online tool for emailing electors:
http://asktheelectors.org/
Please bring back the "Good Reads" forum
Good Read: The End of the Anglo-American Order
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/29/magazine/the-end-of-the-anglo-american-order.html?src=me&_r=0In order for the Hamilton Electors strategy to work 37 Trump electors have to vote for someone else
A Clinton elector's vote has no influence on the outcome. However, if a Clinton elector announces that she is willing to vote for Mitt Romney or John Kasich in order to prevent Trump from being president then that might help persuade a Trump elector to do the same. It may be a long-shot, but it's the only shot left.
Map of the former United States
I posted this a few years ago as a lark, but now I think it is inevitable.
Notes:
1) I had trouble deciding if Mountainland and Midland should be one nation or two. I decided on two because I thought Colorado and Nebraska wouldn’t get along.
2) Hispanica may or may not decide to become part of Mexico.
3) Regarding Alaska; Russia invades Alaska after the collapse of the United States government. Canada counterattacks with the support of England, other Commonwealth nations, and whatever remains of NATO. After a few weeks of fighting, Russia and England come very close to a nuclear war. The United Nations then negotiates a partition similar to that of North and South Korea. The result is what is shown on the map.
4) All the scientists at Duke University, UNC, Rice, Vanderbilt, etc. are banished from New Christendom. They seek refuge in my country of South Florida. As a result the Republic of South Florida becomes the world’s leading center of scientific research.
"Hamilton Electors" spread the word on this group
http://www.hamiltonelectors.com/What do we want to achieve?
Our goal is simple: persuade 37 Electors to either change their vote from Donald Trump to another qualified individual, or abstain from voting altogether.
This will trigger a vote among the US House of Representatives on who will be our next President. With a new vote comes a new opportunity for new leadership.
We urge them to select a Reasonable Republican who does not have Donald Trump’s questionable ethics, lack of policy knowledge and lack of relevant experience.
We urge our fellow Electors to unify behind a President who’s fit to lead and to pick the best person for the job of Commander-in-Chief.
No, Bernie Sanders didnt ask his supporters to ditch identity politics.
From the New Republic:
Bernie never used the word "ditch".
But if you look in the quote in context, Sanders’s argument is much more nuanced than that:
Sanders argued for more women and minorities in Congress, stating, “We need 50 women in the Senate. We need more African Americans,” while adding that we also “need all of those candidates and public officials to have the guts to stand up to the oligarchy.” He stated that we have to “fight to bring more and more women into the political process, Latinos, African Americans, Native Americans,” but that they also need to be “candidates who stand with those working people.”
Richard Rorty's 1998 Book forsaw 2016, Identity politics has a lot to do with it.
For those unfamiliar with Richard Rorty, he was one of the most influential philosophers of the late 20th century.
Identity politics has a lot to do with Trump's rise. Those who criticized Bernie Sanders for focusing on income inequality without regard to race and gender should read this.
The result was disastrous. The alliance between the unions and intellectuals, so vital to passing legislation in the Progressive Era, broke down. In universities, cultural and identity politics replaced the politics of change and economic justice....
Mr. Rorty did not deny that identity politics reduced the suffering of minorities. But it just so happened that at the very moment....was diminishing, economic instability and inequality were increasing, thanks to globalization.
....“This world economy will soon be owned by a cosmopolitan upper class which has no more sense of community with any workers anywhere than the great American capitalists of the year 1900.”.....
....Which left the white working-class guy and gal up for grabs — open to right-wing populists, maybe even strongmen.....
....“Why could not the left,” he asked, “channel the mounting rage of the newly dispossessed?”....
....“Under Presidents Carter and Clinton,” Mr. Rorty wrote, “the Democratic Party has survived by distancing itself from the unions and from any mention of redistribution.”....
Which brings us to Hillary Clinton. She may have had a plan to relieve the misery of the working class, but she didn’t speak about it much. (Bernie Sanders did. And lost.) ....And though her slogan was “Stronger Together,” her campaign was ultimately predicated on celebrating difference, in the hope that disparate voting blocs would come out and vote for her.
Here, Mr. Rorty’s most inflammatory words are most relevant, and also most uncomfortable: “The cultural Left has a vision of an America in which the white patriarchs have stopped voting and have left all the voting to be done by members of previously victimized groups.” Mrs. Clinton tried this strategy. It didn’t win her the Electoral College. “This Left wants to preserve otherness rather than ignore it,” he also wrote. That didn’t work either.
People are furiously arguing about what played a key role in this election — whether it was white working-class despair, a racist backlash or terror about the pace of cultural change. It seems reasonable to think that all three played a part.
What’s so striking about “Achieving Our Country” is that it blends these theories into a common argument: The left, both cultural and political, eventually abandoned economic justice in favor of identity politics, leaving too many people feeling freaked out or ignored.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/21/books/richard-rortys-1998-book-suggested-election-2016-was-coming.html?src=me
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Member since: Fri Nov 5, 2010, 11:18 PMNumber of posts: 976
