My main thought upon hearing the news is to wonder who he’s going to end up taunting on Twitter to celebrate. Hillary? The left generally? NeverTrumpers? A Twitter pal suggested he might taunt “Evan McMuffin” by pointing out that McMullin will end up with fewer electoral votes than Faith Spotted Eagle. That seems like a smart bet.
Another smart bet from John Ekdahl: There are going to be some impressively “woke” takes on the left tomorrow about why it was supposedly important that Faith Spotted Eagle got that lone electoral vote.
Texas: 36 votes for Trump, 1 for Ron Paul, 1 for John Kasich.
— Philip Klein (@philipaklein) December 19, 2016
Trump’s over 300 EVs as I write this. There are two milestones in that news from Texas, actually — not only did Trump clinch 270, ensuring his election, but those two votes for Kasich and Paul were the very first red-state defectors all day. As expected, Trump’s support has been more solid than Clinton’s. (The vote for Kasich came from Christopher Suprun, who published an op-ed in the New York Times two weeks ago proclaiming his intention to go rogue. It’s not clear at the moment who voted for Paul.) Law prof Lawrence Lessig claimed a week ago that upwards of 20 Trump electors might be preparing to defect. No one to the right of Michael Moore believed him. Turns out we were all correct not to.
To give you a sense of how well the left is taking the news this afternoon:
We need to change the electoral college.
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) December 19, 2016
The hot-take forecast calls for a storm of online Democratic freakouts tonight followed by scattered impeachment cries for the rest of the week. One progressive became famous on the right for 10 minutes this afternoon when he started spitballing on Twitter that congressional Democrats could block Trump with a series of arcane procedural moves in a 90-second window involving Al Gore(!!) sometime next month. It’s gonna be like that on social media until January 20th. Make peace with it now.
Oh, by the way: Remember that Maine elector I wrote about this morning who intended to vote Bernie instead of Hillary? He did in fact vote for Sanders — and his vote was promptly disallowed. On the second try, he voted for Clinton. To the bitter end, after six months of being stuck with Hillary, the left couldn’t get away from her.
Update: A very mean and unsportsmanlike Patrick Ruffini encourages liberals to keep wasting their time on quixotic process shenanigans that’ll never work.
He hasn't officially been elected until the House of Representatives counts the votes. There's still time you guys.
— Patrick Ruffini (@PatrickRuffini) December 19, 2016
Update: Ah, turns out Texas was the last red state to vote today, leaving Trump with a final tally of 304 electoral votes. Those two defectors in Texas were the only votes he lost. Hillary will indeed end up with more faithless electors than Trump did.
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