Я не умер, трахая лошадь. И я
определенно не трахал твоего осла после моей смерти. Вы думаете, я
сделаю предложение о шоу ослов, если отцы-основатели добавят коллегию
выборщиков в вашу конституцию?
No, Empress Katherine the Great didn't die fucking a horse. And she couldn't fuck the Democratic Donkey after she died either.
You think she offered to give the founding fathers a donkey show if they added the electoral college to the Constitution?
Anyway, Putin wasn't alive when the Constitution was drafted, but Katherine the Great was Empress of Russia!
Now, drop the partisan bullshit and start working on some serious issues such as climate change.
OK, the first question you need to get around is why did Hillary Clinton lose the election? She won the popular vote by one of the largest margins EVER in an election. That is nearly 3 million votes.
Where she lost the election was in the electoral college, which is an institution found in the US Constitution. You can find it in USC Article II, Section 1, Clauses 2-4 along with the 12th Amendment. The fact that this institution was changed early on in the republic (1803-1804) demonstrates its problematic nature.
Any Russian influence in creating the electoral college would have to date back to the founding of the US given that Electoral College was the body that actually made Trump President. You can read about how the electoral college works here.
I should add that the Electoral College's main purpose is to thwart the popular vote, which it actually has done in 5 elections. The elections of 1876, 1888, 2000, and 2016 produced an Electoral College winner who did not receive at least a plurality of the nationwide popular vote. In 1824, there were six states in which electors were legislatively appointed, rather than popularly elected, so it is uncertain what the national popular vote would have been if all presidential electors had been popularly elected. There have been five United States presidential elections in which the winner lost the popular vote including the 1824 election, which was the first U.S. presidential election where the popular vote was recorded.
Toss in that Clinton could have gotten enough votes in the electoral college by:
1) Winning the popular vote in all three states: Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
2) Winning the popular vote in Florida and at least one of the following states: Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
The 2000 Election focused on Florida, but a popular vote win for Gore in Ohio could have also led to his victory (see https://www.270towin.com/2000_Election/interactive_map). The 2016 narrative focuses on Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, but is flawed since none of those states were solidly for Clinton. Michigan and Wisconsin went for Sanders in the primaries. I would toss in the result of the 2008 Michigan primary where:
"In Michigan, where Obama and other candidates removed their name from the ballot, Clinton won against "Uncommitted" (i.e., a vote for nobody) 55-40%. Exit poll respondents said that if all candidates had been on the ballot, they would have voted 46% Clinton, 35% Obama, 12% Edwards, 3% other."
I definitely would not call Michigan solid for Clinton in 2008 and 2016. But the Dems made it clear they preferred to lose with Clinton than possibly win with Sanders. But that's another post.
The bottom line here is that no one state's popular vote would have gotten Clinton the presidency. Additionally, it was a chance to expect Michigan and Wisconsin to vote for Clinton.
Next we get to the Clinton supporters who made it clear that Donald trump would not be President:
I would also add the Clinton Supporters who said things like:
If anything, the "Russian Bots", or whatever the fuck you want to call them, were basically using the failings of the US system of elections against itself.
So, maybe there were Russian bots, but nothing a foreign power could do would have screwed up the 2016 elections worse than what internal US forces did. And the really sad thing is that a lot of these things could have been avoided have the election been run with fairness principles which have disappeared over the last 40 years.
So, the real joke is on the comedians who gave Trump far more publicity than he deserved because of ratings. Are those people Russian bots?
Anyway, you have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Russians did indeed cause a Trump win. Using that standard, you've lost the game before you've even started.
It sort of makes sense since nobody is taking credit for a leak. It would have to be these crafty little critters from Mézières' and Christin's (and now Luc Besson) Valérian et Laureline. What else could so easily get away with stealing documents and then leaking them.
Yep, you got that correct, Catherine II, also known as Catherine the Great (Екатери́на Вели́кая, Yekaterina Velikaya), Empress of Russia from 1762 until 1796.
That's because the only thing which made Donald Trump president was the electoral college, an institution created by the US Constitution (Article II, Section 1, Clauses 2-4). So, if there really WAS any "Russian" influence in the process that made Trump president of the US, it would have had to have been produced during the reign of Catherine the Great!
The Fact is Hillary Clinton won the popular vote with 65,853,516 (48.5% votes) to Trump's 62,984,825 (46.4% votes), but lost in the electoral college by receiving 232 (43.1%) of the electoral votes to Trump's 306 (56.8%) votes.
Of course, it is far easier to blame the Russians for this defeat than it is to address the real issues behind Clinton's loss.
Although, that is a strategy that is sure to backfire since any claims of "Russian" interference result in the faults of the Clinton Campaign: her being a weak candidate, DNC misconduct, and pretty much everything that was common knowledge to Sanders' supporters and Clinton opponents.
Any real discussion of Clinton's loss must include the faults of the US system of elections: especially the radical overhaul of the electoral college, which was supposed to have prevented foreign interference in the US presidential process ( The Federalist Papers, No 68).
It is blatantly obvious that the Electoral College serves no useful purpose, but that won't be addressed as long as people refuse to address the real cause of Trump's becoming president.
Then again, any real investigation of the US election would be a threat to the current Democrat-Republican duopoly. The duopoly thrives on the illusion that US elections are somehow "democratic", but it is hard to make that claim when an institution designed to be anti-democratic is allowed to continue its existence.
Here is a little more on why recused AG Jeff Sessions getting busted
for perjury could be a big deal to investigating Trump's apparent
collusion with the Russians to rig the outcome of the election.
"Trump and other White House aides have repeatedly denied any contact between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.
The ties between Sessions' staff and the current White House are many.
Trump senior policy adviser Stephen Miller was Sessions' communications
director before joining the Trump campaign in January 2016, and former
Sessions chief of staff Rick Dearborn was director of the Trump
transition and is now Trump's deputy chief of staff for legislative
affairs.
..Sessions was perhaps Trump's most loyal supporter in
Congress last year, and he chaired Trump's national security advisory
committee."
Sessions directly benefited from Trump's questionable election. He gained personally from this apparent collusion, gaining a position arguably more powerful than being a senator, and one from which he could shield Trump from investigation. While there is no clear quid-pro-quo, no evidence so far that Sessions was promised the AG slot, or some other political plum, if Trump won, I think we can consider it implied from the outcome.
As a Trump National Security advisor, the CHAIR of Trump's National Security Advisors, Sessions would
know damn well about the efforts of the Russians against the US, from
hacking Americans (and not ONLY the DNC) but also in the proxy war in
Syria as it relates to terrorism and ISIL. Sessions was much more
than "called a surrogate a time or two" in his relationship to Trump
and the campaign. He was a key insider, which makes his connections to
Russia all the more suspect.
If the DoJ and the FBI can get
leverage on Sessions for his conduct -- like perjury -- Sessions might throw
Trump under the bus to save his own hide. Not just Trump but also Trump staffer Stephen Miller who is a former Jeff Sessions staffer. Or at least Sessions might try to reduce the
punishment from his actions in some way if not seek total immunity. Sessions has never struck me as a particularly strong person who would fall on his sword for someone like Trump; rather he is and has always been something of an opportunist, a man who took more money from special interests like Big Oil to act against the interests of his constituents than any other member of Congress.
