2016 August 16^th

Patrick J. Buchanan writes in his column today that, “Yes the system is rigged.” This is in support of Donald Trump’s claim that if he loses the Pennsylvania election then the election was rigged. Buchanan is right; of course, the election is rigged and SCOTUS is busy trying to un-rig it. States control when they can vote, where they can vote and who can vote (within constitutional limits). In many states, the Republican Party is in the catbird seat and they have decided that voters need a picture ID to vote, That’s not a problem for many of us who have a driver’s license but for many poor people (read Democrats) it just replaces the poll tax, once used throughout the south to deny black citizens the franchise. SCOTUS declared the poll tax unconstitutional but Republicans have replaced it with a voter ID requirement, ostensibly to combat nonexistent voter fraud. It didn’t work and SCOTUS is busy knocking down these new barriers.

Buchanan, like Trump, is enamored of crowds. He points out that Bernie Sanders crowds dwarfed Hillary Clinton’s, but doesn’t mention that Clinton got 15.8 million primary votes to Sanders 12 million votes.

He goes on to tell us that, “The strongest GOP field since 1980 were sent packing.” (sent packing by Trump) This “strongest GOP field” consisted of Louisiana governor “Bobby” Jindal who left his state virtually bankrupt; Senator Ted Cruz who called his senate leader a liar on the floor of the senate; Carly Fiorina who was cashiered as CEO of Hewlett Packard and then went on to challenge California’s Senator Boxer for her senate seat losing badly, then refusing to pay her staff. All of these were part of this cream of the crop field, according to Buchanan.

Trump’s claim that if he loses Pennsylvania the election must be rigged because his crowds there are huge. That claim is nonsense. Trump’s rallies do draw big crowds. Let’s assume he pulls a total of 100 thousand at five separate rallies.  Does anyone really believe all of these rally goers will vote for Trump, that none of them attended his rally to be entertained? There are 7.2 million registered voters in Pennsylvania and 3.1 million of these are Republicans. If Trump had 100 thousand rally attendees and all of them voted for him that would be just 3 percent of the registered Republicans. He (and Buchanan) claim that if he gets 3 percent of the registered Republicans voting for him but loses the election it follows that the election is rigged. What are Trump and Buchanan smoking?

There are other unpleasant numbers for Trump as well. He makes much of the total primary vote he received, about 13.3 million votes…but more than 16 million Republican primary voters voted for someone else. In fact Hillary Clinton got 2 million more Democratic primary votes than Trump got Republican primary votes.

Buchanan finishes with this gem, “But if Hillary Clinton takes power and continues America on her present course, which a majority of Americans rejected in the primaries…” In which primary election were Hillary Clinton’s policies rejected? Buchanan can have his own opinions but he can’t manufacture his own facts. (Thank you Daniel Patrick Moynihan for that gem.)