Elections

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Chris Christie loses 2016 Presidential election

Once more, New Jersey governor Chris Christie has proven that he is unfit to be nominated by the Republican party to run for President in 2016. Yes, it’s true — he has once again placed the good of his state over the good of his party.

It was bad enough when he actually said a nice thing about the President after Hurricane Sandy, acknowledging the help his state received from the feds. Just because it was true never stood in the way of the modern Republican party.

But now, with the death of Senator Lautenberg, Christie had the opportunity to appoint a new Senator who would serve until the next election. Clearly, he should have appointed a Republican to fill the seat left vacant by a Democrat, even though the will of the state was clearly to put a Democrat into that seat at the last election. No, Christie has decided to let the people decide who should fill the seat by holding a special election. Maybe they’ll choose a Republican, you never know.

The party is outraged that he would allow the will of the people to be more important than the good of the party. So, by doing the right thing, he has pretty much destroyed any chance he had of getting the nomination of his party in 2016.

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2016 Democratic Presidential Straw Poll

Let’s just have some fun with a meaningless poll this far before any primary.

Not everyone is convinced Hillary Clinton or even Joe Biden will run in 2016.

Who do you think will run for the Democratic primary?

Not who you think will win; not who would you like to run. Who do you think will run?

You can vote for up to four.

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Top 5 reasons to get rid of the Electoral College

1. It will make every vote count. I grew up in Virginia which, at the time, was reliably Republican. My vote meant little in the Presidential race. Then I moved to Massachusetts and later New York where my Republican friends’ votes were meaningless.

That’s ridiculous. With the winner-take-all elections we have now, people who are in the minority party in their states have no real reason to come out and vote.ElectoralCollege-638x370

By having a popular vote for the President, every vote will count. Democrats in Utah and Republicans in Hawaii won’t feel their votes are wasted.

2. It will force candidates to campaign everywhere. Right now, there are states that rarely see a political campaign, where the candidate visits only to raise money and then disappears. The candidates also pay an inordinate amount of attention to whatever issues are important to those states that are in play, even if those issues would hurt the rest of the country. (Admittedly, some of that will still go on with our current primary system.)

Getting rid of the electoral college means a vote is a vote, no matter where it is. A vote in Idaho is meaningless to a Democratic candidate now, but it would be worth just as much as one in a swing state if we get rid of the electoral college.

3. It will help get people in those non-swing states involved. It should increase voter participation, and even help the local economy.

4. It will get rid of “red states” and “blue states.” This concept does nothing to help political discourse, and only divides us more.

5. It will make it clear that the President represents the people, not the states. And, more importantly, all the people, not just the ones in the states that elected him.

Right now, a President can lose the election and still win. That has happened three times in our history, most recently when Gore got more popular votes than Bush yet Bush won the electoral college. We ended up with a guy a majority of Americans voted against. How is that democracy? That’s winning by a loophole. And it could easily happen again.

(EDIT:  Be sure to read the very extensive debate on this topic in the comments!)

(EDIT #2:  Obviously, this was written before the 2016 election, so now we have two examples of a candidate winning the popular vote and losing the election within a period of 16 years.)

(EDIT #3:  If you’re really interested in this topic, I dedicated an entire chapter to it in my book HOW TO ARGUE THE CONSTITUTION WITH A CONSERVATIVE.)