HILLARY CLINTON'S POPULAR VOTE LEAD NEARING THREE MILLION

According to the Atlas of U.S. Presidential Election Results, as of December 19, 2016--the day the Electoral College votes to elect the new President--Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump by 2,871,974 votes (and still counting). With just over 137,000,000 votes cast, that means she won the popular vote by more than two percent. Nonetheless, Trump will be sworn in as President (OMG), but to claim that he has a mandate is a travesty.

But because of the Electoral College, it just didn't count/Credit Vox Efx

Remarkably, despite Hillary Clinton's 2.8 million vote lead, more than half of Republicans think Trump won the popular vote, as do 60 percent of Republicans with no college education. Trump clearly has millions of reasons to back up his famous "I love the poorly educated" quote.

As Abraham Lincoln said, "You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time. . . " Trump lives by those words.

Let's hope that Lincoln was also right in concluding, ". . . but you cannot fool all the people all the time."

Link to Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight site

We've all heard of statistician and author Nate Silver's acumen in predicting the outcome of political races, not to mention baseball, football, Oscars, etc. 

Here's a link to the presidential page of his website, FiveThirtyEight, where you'll find great stats and probably the best available prognostics about Clinton vs. Trump, the state-by-state races, the Electoral College, etc.

FiveThirtyEight

As of today, 9/20/16, Silver is estimating Clinton's odds of winning at 56.2% vs 43.8% for Trump.

If you want to know what goes into his predictions, you can get all the details here.

WELCOME TO 1984, BIG BROTHER AND THE MINISTRY OF TRUTH

"WAR IS PEACE."

"FREEDOM IS SLAVERY."

"IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH."

--GEORGE ORWELL, Nineteen Eight-Four

"HILLARY CLINTON . . . STARTED THE BIRTHER CONTROVERSY."

--DONALD TRUMP, 2016

Credit: Stephen Bettany

Doublethink at its best. The Ministry of Truth will be very busy rewriting the history of the last five years.

For a quick review of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, click here.

MOST TRUMP SUPPORTERS EXTREMELY ENTHUSIASTIC--OMG!

Polls show Clinton-Trump "enthusiasm gap."

According to the latest PDP tracking polls of likely voters, most supporters of Trump are highly enthusiastic about their candidate; far more than are excited about Hillary Clinton. 

PDP writes:

However, turnout in a close election will likely decide the winner of the race and, even though Mrs. Clinton definitely has the larger GOTV [get out the vote] operation, her supporters are markedly less enthusiastic than Trump voters. A whopping two-thirds (66%) say they are “Extremely Enthusiastic” about voting for Mr. Trump in November, while less than half (45%) say the same about voting for Mrs. Clinton. Another roughly one-fifth (22%) of Trump voters say they are “Very Enthusiastic” juxtaposed to 28% for Mrs. Clinton.

That makes 88% of Trump supporters either highly or extremely enthusiastic about him--so very likely to vote--vs. 73% for Clinton. We can expect to hear Trump bragging about that the next time he's in front of a TV camera.

But, more importantly, as PDP points out, " . . . turnout in a close election will likely decide the winner of the race . . . "

White nationalists are among Trump's enthusiastic supporters
Credit: Reuters;Chris Keane

Almost a century ago, in the aftermath of World War I, Irish poet William Butler Yeats wrote in The Second Coming . . .

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Credit: Wonkette

Those of us who think that a a Trump presidency would be catastrophic in terms of human rights, the economy, the environment, jobs and climate--not to mention what having an angry, thin-skinned narcissist's finger on the nuclear trigger might mean--had best look to our own convictions and find our passion. As Hillary has pointed out, this isn't a reality show. In this election, it's our one and only reality that's at risk.

Note (January 5, 2017): It looks as though this post was right on target. Today, Nate Silver's 538 published an analysis entitled "Registered voters who stayed home probably cost Clinton the election." 

It's no fun having been right in predicting a tragedy.