Popular vote? You should have believed in it yesterday!

IF YOU CARED ABOUT THE POPULAR VOTE YOU WOULD HAVE BEHAVED OTHERWISE EVERY OTHER TIME.

From USAToday. Political commentators
in the MSM have already trotted out the
nonsense about the stolen election from 2000.
They never complain when popular vote
decisions that go against their editorial line get
overturned in court.

Outcry over the popular vote is just one more desperate gadget out of the bag of suck that the Eastern media establishment and their Democrat clients are using as tools to bail out the massive amounts of water they've taken on since the 2016 election.

We have a messed up election system, but that's not news. The news media, be it large networks like ABC or CNN, or newspapers like USA Today, or so-called "fact-checkers" Politifact debating the definition of a landslide, is trying to hem in the truth which is that the electorate by either voting for Donald Trump, voting for a third party candidate, or even NOT VOTING AT ALL, rejected their directions to go to the polls and vote for their preferred candidate former Sec. of State Hillary Clinton. I want to stress the last point especially. We have seen the same so-called advocates of a popular vote in this case, such as the LA Times which we will focus on, strike a remarkably different tone in other instances.

But first about the "popular vote" that Clinton supposedly won.

Not voting is a statement of negation

The abstention vote may be frustrating to the writers
and "journalists" looking for a narrative, but you
can't throw away the fact that enough people didn't
care to vote to make the notion of a popular vote
irrelevant.

These puppet "journalists" will never appreciate the above statement, even if they state it out loud. We went through an election that saturated all types of information media, and yet when the big day arrived only 53.8% of people showed up. Michael Moore claims that the Donald Trump voter was the one that said "F*** YOU". I disagree: There were 133,060,220 people who did show up to vote, them being the 53.8% of eligible voters. How about the 114,263,594 people that didn't show up? Isn't that an even bigger "F*** YOU", at least from some of them? A substantial portion of those people were probably being lobbied hard to show up, and yet they didn't. Did you hear about "Souls to the Polls", a particularly pandering Democratic Party initiative aimed at taking black voters to vote directly from church, by bus? And yet it's now known that many blacks deliberately stayed away from the polls. Good for them; I've done it too and may do it again. And all of the 3rd party voters said the same thing, both to Clinton and Trump. So in the your popular vote is not quite as popular as it's cracked up to be.

Why isn't this talked about? It's quite simple: The media want to talk about GOOD and EVIL, BLACK or WHITE, RICH or POOR. The middle doesn't matter. In many cases votes are cast that don't select anyone, known either as the "blank ballot", "None of the Above" (NOTA) in the UK, or an abstention. It turns out that 28,824 voters cast their ballot for "None of these Candidates" in this election, which is a literal protest ballot. A total of almost 7 million people voted for someone besides Clinton or Trump, so what's all of this sore loser talk? If you get right down to it: Hillary Clinton earned almost 62 million out of a total of 244 million eligible voters, only about 25% of the vote. So in the grand scheme of things your popular vote is not quite as popular as it's cracked up to be. Just remember this:

They never believed in the popular vote. . .

. . . and they haven't started now. When the media has an agenda and they want to push it, they let you know through messages both implicit and explicit. A lot of times policy decisions are brought directly to the voter as ballot initiatives. The State of California is a good example of a place where this is a major factor in electoral politics, and I will show you below that this reputedly liberal state has voted in ways you may not have expected.

So does the media (or activist groups) accept the mandate of the voter when these measures go against their editorial line? Let's look at a number of cases and how the "credible" corporate media reacted to these ballot measures:

Prop. 209 was actually very popular
in most of California, apart from the
Bay Area and LA metropolitan
area (Wikimedia).

California Proposition 209 --Nov. 5, 1996.

What: This measure was introduced by opponents of affirmative action on the basis of race, gender, or ethnicity. This yes-no measure won by a 54.55%-45.45% margin, a clear majority, with a turnout of 65.53%. Like in our current election cycle where support for Clinton was largely confined to coastal urban areas, Prop 209's opposition only carried the vote in the Greater Los Angeles and San Francisco Bay areas.
Media reaction: How did the New York Times react to this? In Proposition 209 Shuts the Door, published a year and a half later, the Times blasted it for keeping black students out of Berkely Law School (1 in a class or 268). And what about the political system? Did they let the issue lay dormant? No. In September 2011 the California legislature passed motions in both houses known as Senate Bill 185 to reduce the restrictions of Prop.209 against affirmative action, but it was vetoed by Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat. In 2013 it came back once again as Senate Constitutional Amendment 5, and was heavily backed by a vote of 27-9-3 in the State Senate. The only thing preventing this measure from being re-introduced as a measure was a deep outcry from the Asian communities of California that would have been negatively impacted by the passage of a repeal. How did the media react? The LA Times in a guest editorial claimed that there was a need for more accurate polling of Asian Americans, not that perhaps there had been a further shift AGAINST affirmative action since 1996 among the Asian Americans that would be cut-off by quota systems.
Judicial: Court battles to repeal the measure by the ACLU and other activists have thus far failed, including an April 2012 challenge in the US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

So what was the liberal/media reaction to the popular vote in this case? Answer: Snarky editorials, protests, and lawsuits.

California Proposition 8 -- Nov. 4, 2008.

Proposition 8, though not as widely
supported as Prop. 209, easily passed
despite a well-funded pro-gay opposition
campaign.

What: This measure was to define marriage as being between a man and a woman in California, or ban same-sex marriage. This was an even bigger shocker than Prop 209 as California's tolerant cities were thought to be enough to more than carry the opposition to this amendment. It didn't happen. The measure passed by a 52-47 margin. By the way, the 340 thousand votes making up 2.48% of ballots that were invalid or blank in this Yes-No vote? They wouldn't have overturned the 600 thousand vote majority in favour of the amendment. Black women voted for the proposition by a majority of 72%, the same day they voted for Barack Obama as president for the first time.

Prop. 8 by no means settled the gay marriage question as far as the law was concerned and understandably so. There had been numerous same-sex marriage licenses already issued in California prior to the measure, and the people holding them did have grounds for objection. In other states similar measures passed by even wider margins:

• Colorado Amendment 43 (2006): 56% Yes, 44% No approving marriage as between a man and a woman.
• Florida Amendment 2 (2008): 62% Yes, 38% No.
• Wisconsin Referendum 1 (2006): 59% Yes, 41% No. This amendment even went as far as to nullify all previous same-sex marriage licenses issued.
• Nevada Question 2 (2002): 67% Yes, 33% No.

The last result is especially indicative of public attitude towards the issue, since Nevada is the number 1 marriage destination in the country, so it could only stand to gain from gay couples coming over to get their marriage license in the Silver State.

Media reaction: In response gay rights advocates only became more adamant that the issue would be decided NOT by popular vote but by the exact opposite mechanism: court decisions. In their official editorial, the LA Times didn't accept the mandate, but wrote this:

"If the election of Barack Obama as president teaches us anything, it is that the road to civil rights is long and rough but eventually leads to the right place. African Americans probably understand this better than any group; what they did not seem to perceive, as a demographic that tended to vote for the same-sex marriage ban, is how wrapped up their experience is with that of gays, the group most recently struggling to have its rights recognized." In other words, the Prop. 8 ballot's passage was a setback for its opponents, not a mandate for its supporters.

Protests: Prop. 8 was met immediately by a wave of activist protests. GLAAD and similar organizations began a campaign of boycotts and other measures against those that had contributed with funding to Prop.8's support campaign. Worse, in many cases protesters directly harassed supporters of the initiative such as the elderly Christian woman Phyllis Burgess who was taunted on live TV and had her cross torn from her hands and trampled by a crowd of pro-gay protesters. Gay Star Trek actor George Takei recently tweeted that "The people elected Hillary, the system elected Donald". Yet in the aftermath of Prop. 8 he and "husband" Brad Altman participated in protests and legal challenges to the ballot measure.

Legal measures: The long battle to beat Prop. 8 and all of its counterparts around the nation ended in 2015 when the US Supreme Court overturned it, and all of its opponents pulled out every stop to get it done. They even tried resorting to emotional blackmail, as the National Center for Lesbian Rights sent one of its activists Jean Podrasky to Washington with a sign to attend the court hearing. That's fine, if not for the fact that Podrasky is Chief Justice John Roberts' cousin and is a lesbian. Justice Roberts in the event published a dissenting opinion claiming the overturning of the anti-same sex marriage amendments was an affront to democracy; meaning that he ended up ignoring his cousin's stunt.

It's funny how the same people used every underhanded tactic back then to overturn Prop. 8 have changed their stripes. Nowadays Podrasky is publicizing on Twitter ways to boycott Trump. claims that Kanye has lost his mind for supporting Trump, and is holding out hope for Democratic Senate candidate Foster Campbell of Louisiana in their runoff election, a man who is currently polling at between 27% and 34% in a two-way race. Ms. (Mrs.?) Podrasky also tweeted the following message: "F* you Gary Johnson, F* you Jill Stein, F* you Susan Sarandon" on Nov. 11, presumably blaming them for the Clinton loss. She also retweeted Takei's tweet about the "people" electing Hillary.

And that's not all! If you think that American media respects the popular vote worldwide, read below.

Quebec sovereignty referendums -- 1980 and 1995

The 1995 Quebec sovereignty referendum predictably
broke the province's support along linguistic regions, with
the Francophone zones voting "Oui" (or yes) and everyone
else voting "Non" (no).

Result: Oui -- 49.5, Non 50.5 in 1995,

What: On May 20, 1980 and October 30, 1995 the Canadian province of Quebec voted to remain in Canada. In both instances the movement among Quebecois to separate from English-speaking Canada, first led by nationalist leader Renee Levesque and then later by Jacque Parizeau of the Parti Quebecois (PQ), fell short of passing, although the second time they came much closer with 49% as opposed to only 40% in 1980.

Reaction: Well aside from the fact that the sovereignists, the ones demanding independence, forced a second referendum, Quebec has since the 1960s maintained the OQLF. This body forces all public accommodations to post information in French as well as English.

Despite the apparent mandate of TWO referendums rejecting Quebec sovereignty, the PQ, liberal Canadian media, and their ilk have continued to try to promote the issue from time to time. As recently as this September a pro-sovereignty Anglophone forum sympathetic to the PQ was formed in Montreal. Despite numbering only a few dozen members, it attracted media attention.

Quebec and multicultural nonsense: 

Quebec Premier Jacques Parizeau, leader of the separatism
movement during the '96 referendum, was a very accomplished
leader but he was the opposite of a multiculturalist. But in the
USA our liberal media gives him all the slack he needs. (CBC) 

The liberal media perspective on this, and again I'll use the LA Times as the exhibit, is that independence referendums are GOOD when they suit their agenda of multiculturalism and BAD when they oppose those values. The Quebec referendum is now being pushed by the LA Times contributor and law professor Timothy William Waters as the template for Calexit, the preposterous new movement to have California seced fromt the USA due to Donald Trump's election. So if such a ballot measure failed, would Waters and his ilk demand a second referendum like happened in Quebec?

And is Quebec really a display of positive, multicultural nationalism as its proponents claim? Not in the least. In June, while ripping the Brexit vote the Huffington Post ran an article claiming that it did give hope for Quebec independence from Canada. The New York Times also ran an opinion piece in 2012 lukewarmly saying that the independence movement is not quite strong enough to go for a new referendum, but only mentioning a shooting by a Canadian federalist from that year. Excuse me, but I thought we'd all agreed that Canada was the ideal pluralistic society that we'd all want to live in, especially if a Republican gets elected. Why would anyone want to leave it? 😉

It's actually a telling case of liberal self-delusion that a media that jumps on every case of American jingoism, that they have such an open mind to what for all intents and purposes is an ethnic nationalist movement that despises not only anglophone Canadians, but other immigrants that prefer Canadian to Quebecois citizenship.This was apparent in the 1993 documentary The Rise and Fall of English Montreal, which chronicled the steady rise in anglophobic sentiment in Quebec since the 1970s. In the film the anglophones were shown to be a public under siege, with state policies requiring the use of French in corporate settings creating an unwelcome setting for them and even public schools being under de facto segregation between French and non-French children even though the classes themselves were in French. The film even interviewed a Greek immigrant that claimed that he may move back to Greece due to the French laws. Jacques Parizeau, the Quebec premier and leader of the separatists said during the OUI vote's concession speech that they had lost due to "money and ethnic votes". By ethnic votes, Parizeau didn't mean the rock-ribbed anglophone establishment, that would be the "money". He meant the "allophones", third nation immigrants to Montreal, including Italians, Pakistanis, Jews and more that overwhelmingly voted against independence.  

But instead of highlighting the hatred towards English speakers and others, most of the liberal media both here and in Canada has preferred to look at the romantic aspects of the Quebec separatist movement. When Parizeau, a gigantic figure in Quebecois political history, died in June 2015 Huffpost Canada published an article with the title "It's Time We Get Over Jacques Parizeau's 'Money and Ethnic Vote' Comment". It was written by  Toula Drimonis, herself a Canadian of Greek origin, who has trashed a recent Canadian bill against forced marriage and polygamy for being xenophobic. Parizeau's obituary in the NYTimes did mention the comment, but only briefly, while emphasizing his British mannerisms and his progressive economic policies including nationalizing the province's hydroelectric system. The same columnist Ian Austin decided to dedicate an article this month to highlight an effort to lower Canada's age of consent for gays. Compare this to the paper's current sensationalist coverage of Jeff Sessions' accused prejudices as being an issue that would disqualify his nomination as US Atty. General based on his fighting against a school funding court injuction in Alabama from the 1990s as state attorney general.

Here's some more sovereignty/independence measures where the popular vote still hasn't been accepted by the liberal losers or where the will of the people has been ignored:

• Scotland independence (2014) -- Yes 44%, No 55%. Notoriously anti-British Chief Minister Nicola Sturgeon of Scotland has been demanding a second referendum, particularly since the Brexit due to Scotland's overwhelming support for staying in the EU. Sturgeon's predecessor Alex Salmond claimed in June 2016 that he believed that Scotland would hold a second referendum with in two years after the Brexit.
• Puerto Rico status (2012) --1st question on keeping "current status": 47%, 53%. 2nd question: US Statehood 61%, Free association 33%, Independence 5%. This was the 4th referendum on this topic as previous ones had voted as follows: 1967 - commonwealth, 1993 - commonwealth, 1998 - NONE OF THE ABOVE. Hmmm. So has the USA made any moves since then to follow the popular mandate for statehood in 2012? NO.
• USSR referendum (1991), and various others* -- Look, I'm gonna get flack for this one, so I'm putting an asterisk there. The asterisk means that referendums in the Soviet Union and all succeeding states like all elections there may -- just possibly -- really be a bunch of bullshit. Having said that, on March 17, 1991 Mikhail Gorbachev, the first and only president of the USSR, won a mandate to maintain the USSR as "a federation of equal and sovereign republics in which the rights and freedom of an individual of any nationality will be fully guaranteed". The resolution passed in all nine of the federal-level Soviet republics that officially participated. In the six that did not, pro-Moscow front groups conducted unofficial referendums where it also won, but on the whole only USSR-supporters participated in them, therefore those results are completely irrelevant. Gorbachev would comply with the wishes of Armenia, Moldova, Georgia, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, the six republics that opted out prior to the referendum. But what about the other nine that technically had voted overwhelmingly to stay in? Ironically their wish to stay in the USSR was ruined by Soviet hardliners that launched a coup on Aug. 19, 1991 to reverse the Gorbachev reform agenda. Although the coup failed, it showed that by that point the Soviet federal state was ripe for collapse and was mostly reliant on the grace of its largest component, the Russian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic (RSFSR). On December 8, 1991 the presidents of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus signed the Belavezha Accords meaning that they would withdraw from the USSR and leaving it completely powerless. Thirteen days later the USSR was replaced by the Commonwealth of Independent States, a body that was much weaker than what Gorbachev had proposed. Since then various ex-Soviet republics have been roiled by similar referendum issues most of which were meant to either affirm or reject alignment with Russia, such as the Donbass Referendum (2014) and the Transnistria independence referendum (2006).

BREXIT (United Kingdom Referendum on EU Membership) -- June 23, 2016 

In June 2016's UK Referendum on EU
membership, the LEAVE side won only
in England and Wales, yet by popular vote
principles that's all the mandate it needs.

Result: Leave: 51.89%, Remain: 48.11%. 

What:This was in my book possibly the most important vote in the history of democracy. Not only because it showed that the desire for direct democracy, state accountability, and sovereignty of the nation state, but because of the way that a national elite so misread its own ability to skew public opinion. Let's start out with the most important point: If the popular vote is so important don't complain when the most populous division in the electorate overwhelmingly goes against your side. 

Media Reaction: To cover the entire media coverage of the Brexit would be too difficult in one article. The entire pre-ballot campaign by Prime Minister David Cameron was called "Project Fear" by Brexit advocates that claimed that it was a classic tactic used by the European Union's elite politicians and corporate oligarchs to scare voters into believing the following points:

• The UK outside of the EU would be incapable of surviving without access to European markets.
• Proponents of Brexit were themselves xenophobic, racist, and islamophobic.
• The UK would itself fall apart if it voted to leave, as Scotland and Northern Ireland both would prefer to stay in the EU.

Following the vote, the international media predicted a depression in the UK, one that has proven false. CNN's Christiane Amanpour had a confrontational interview on June 27, 2016 with Conservative MP Dan Hannan in which she accused him of backtracking on promises such as taking back control over freedom of movement and tried to pigeonhole him as an anti-immigrant bigot. The LA Times coined it "The isolationist catastrophe of Brexit". So where was the respect for the popular vote?

Moreover, it was soon determined that the REMAIN campaign's promoted fear that Northern Ireland and Scotland would dump the UK in favour of the EU was a canard: the EU had no interest in Scotland joining on its own.

Buyer's remorse? Don't read the streets.

Following this popular vote across the entire UK left-wing and other pro-EU activists took the streets in an outpouring of angst against the LEAVE voters and demanded that Parliament not comply with the vote or conduct a second referendum. These have included all types of far-left, pro-immigration groups backed by George Soros but also current and former British political and corporate elites such as ex-PM Tony Blair and Virgin founder Richard Branson and pop-music has-been Bob Geldof.

The liberal media in the USA will continue to amplify the judgmental readings of the Brexit vote as a xenophobic statement of hate. They first derided the Brexit supporters prior to the vote as "happy morons" as in an opinion article in the Boston Globe by the pro-EU Scottish historian Niall Ferguson. In June the Globe published a piece by British expatriate Noah Guiney calling the promises of Brexit a lie. In October, Ferguson hadn't changed his tune, claiming that the new British PM Theresa May would take Britain's economy back 43 years. Apparently he has little faith in the real inevitable: that the market will adjust as it has with the British Pound (GBP) strengthening against the Euro (EUR) since October. But enough about that . . .

Currently EU supporters have decided to stonewall the Brexit through the courts, which was greeted in the US very amiably by the Washington Post, which only interviewed REMAIN supporters when the UK's High Court ruled that Parliament must approve Article 50 which would .

. . . how is it that the governments of the EU states have responded to EU rejections by their citizens?

• Ireland approval of Lisbon Treaty (2008) -- Against: 53.8%, For: 46%. Instead of abiding by the results of this referendum, the pro-EU media refused to interpret it as an indication of popular skepticism towards the EU as shown by this article in the Irish Times.
  
  So they pressured Ireland to hold a second referendum on Oct. 3, 2009. Result: For 67%, Against 33%. Seem familiar? It was one of the reasons that the British magazine The Spectator openly derided David Cameron's statement that there would only be one referendum regardless of the result.
• EU Greek bailout austerity measures (2015) -- For: 39%, Against: 61%. While I can't justify the Greeks' idiotic soft-socialist economic policies that got them into a debt default, hey a vote is a vote. So after overwhelmingly rejecting the bailout deal in this referendum across every single region, Greece's government approved an even harsher deal not long after.
• EU Constitution referendums (2005) -- After two states, France and the Netherlands, rejected the proposed constitution, six other states cancelled theirs for fear of losing the vote. This included the UK led by PM Tony Blair, where his Foreign Secretary Jack Straw cancelled the referendum and said there would be no point.

The only vote that matters is the one the system permits

Let's drop this whole crap about how YOU, the liberal people both in the media or outside of it, care about the legitimacy of your vote. The cases above clearly show otherwise. You don't care about it when you lose; not when it's overseas in Europe or elsewhere, not in your supposedly beloved Canada, and clearly not even in your enlightened stronghold of California. The electoral college has nothing to do with why you feel the way you do. Otherwise you would have demanded the upholding of the following decisions that I've listed before, but which I'll put here again just to remind you:

• No race-based preferences in higher education in California (Prop. 209).
• Marriage defined as being between a man and a woman in California (Prop. 8).
• The desire of Quebec's citizens to remain in Canada (Referendums 1980, 1995).
• Brexit
• and more!!

You've already shown that the popular vote is not a principled stand but merely a contingency for you. If the popular vote fails, you will use several other contingencies to "correct" it:

• Protests, including violent ones.
• Media smear campaigns regardless of result.
• Attempts to overturn it through repeating the vote, cancelling it, or pulling shenanigans like trying to intimidate or otherwise persuade electors into casting votes against the elected person, in this case Trump.
• Suing in court to overturn the decision as unconstitutional as has happened with Prop. 8 and Brexit.

So there you have it. If you wanna be real popular vote principled m-effers, maybe change your attitude to what I've listed above.