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Category Archives: Donald Trump
The Trump Conundrum
Donald Trump is an unusual presidential candidate. By the time a normal politician reaches the level of running for president, they have a history in government. There are bills that they have sponsored, bills that they have voted for, and things that they have done. This history allows the opponent to run ads based on this past history. Some of these ads will contrast the history to the candidate’s current pledges (e.g., this candidate supported policy X; you can’t believe them when they say that they oppose policy X). Others will use past decisions to say that the candidate has bad judgment or supports bad policies. For Trump, his history is not one of policies but of business practices. (We saw some of this in 2012 when Mitt Romney had a much longer business record than political record, but Trump takes it to the next level.)
Tagged Donald Trump
2 Comments
A “Rigged” Election
For several weeks, Donald Trump has been spouting a lot about how, if he loses, it will because the election was “rigged.” As discussed further below, in the sense of fraud and phony votes, it is almost impossible to rig an election. However, as in the Republican primary, to the extent that the election is rigged in the sense of the rules favoring a certain candidate, the rules are almost certainly rigged in favor of Donald Trump.
The first and biggest way that the rules are rigged in favor of Donald Trump is the electoral college. As folks may remember from high school history or government class, a vote for a candidate for president is actually a vote for a slate of electors supporting the candidate. Those electors then vote in December for the candidate on whose slate they ran. A candidate needs to win 270 of the 538 electors to win. Each state has a number of electors equivalent to the state’s representation in Congress — it’s House seats plus its Senate seats. Because every state has two Senate seats, the electoral college is weighted in favor of small states. (If you have two House seats, you have twice as many electoral votes as House seats. If you have fifty House seats, you only have four percent more electoral votes than House seats.) Of the twenty-one smallest states (those with four or fewer House seats), Republicans have won twelve of the twenty-one states in the past four elections. Of the nine states that have gone Democratic in one or more of the last four elections, four are considered swing states.
Also posted in Civil Rights, Elections
Tagged Election Judges, Vote Suppression, Voter Registration
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Just for fun…
Get your Trump Score here. You won’t be sorry, but you will laugh out loud. And then you’ll sign up to work the Clinton campaign. If you’re not there yet, remember there are Senate and Congressional campaigns, as well as row office campaigns that you can work. Get your Trump Score and then get out there and make sure it doesn’t happen.
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Putin-Trump 2016
No, I don’t think that Trump is actually running on a ticket with Vladimir Putin. It’s just that sometimes, you just can’t tell for sure. Throughout 2015, the conventional wisdom was that, at some point, as the primaries approached, Republican voters would wake up from their flirtation with Donald Trump and realize that Trump is not a Republican, that he supports almost none of the traditional positions that the Republican Party has taken for the past fifty years.
Nowhere is Trump’s lack of respect for issues and principles clearer than when he stumbles into foreign policy. The only discernable principle that Trump has demonstrated so far when it comes to foreign policy is some variation on mercantilism — that the only foreign policy interest that the U.S. has is what’s good for U.S. business, primarily what’s good for the Trump Organization.
The past week has seen several examples of this approach. On NATO, forget the fact that the security guarantees that the U.S. has given eliminates any need for Germany, Poland, the Baltic states, Ukraine, etc., to develop their own nuclear weapons (and all could within months). What matters is how much everyone is paying, as if the U.S. Army was 21st century mercenaries fighting on behalf of the highest bidder.
Also posted in Rant
Tagged Crimea, Donald Trump, NATO, Ukraine, Vladimir Putin
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Trump, Inc., for President
For all that is different about this year’s presidential race, the one that, for the most part, has been overlooked is that Trump is the head of a closely-held family business. For lawyers, there is a big difference in how we look at publicly traded companies and those that are privately held. If a company is publicly traded, it has to file SEC reports and answer to a diverse group of stockholders. While officers and directors can engage in self-dealing, there is a clear separateness between them and the corporation. When a company is owned by a single person or family, lawyers are more likely to take a very close look at whether the owners treat the corporation’s assets as their personal assets or if they maintain an appropriate degree of separation. In other words, we look at whether the corporation and the person are truly separate or whether the owner treats the business as his alter ego.
Everything that we have seen in this race so far tends to indicate that Donald Trump is the Trump Organization and that the Trump Organization is Donald Trump. Throughout the primary, Trump held a lot of events at Trump Organization properties (with Trump Organization products lavishly displayed), This week at the convention, we saw this overlap in the news reports on Melania’s speech. Aside from what the plagiarism says about Trump Organization business practices and what that say about how Trump would govern, the bigger concern is how the Trump Organization just delegated somebody to work on the speech. (Given that Trump is the owner of the Trump Organization, the campaign laws issues is easily managed. Trump just has the Organization give him a dividend which he contributes to the campaign and the campaign pays back to the Organization — a mere paper transaction that complies with the law.)
If, before the election, Trump sees the Organization as a tool to further his personal ambitions, what happens after the election? Traditionally, a president (or other politician)with significant holdings puts them into a blind trust. In theory, because the politician does not know what changes the trustee may make to the portfolio, this practice prevents them from making decisions to benefit their personal stock holdings (e.g., deciding to change weapons acquisitions from the army to the air force because they hold Boeing stock). With Trump, there is simply no conceivable way that Trump could divest himself of his holdings in the Trump Organization. More importantly, while Trump may step down from day-to-day management, the new CEO will be one of his children (and we have already seen the key role that his children play in advising him). The first time that Trump tries to play hardball with another foreign leader, the logical response will be for that foreign leader to start talking about what that country could do to help or hurt the Trump Organization. If Trump wants China to take a tougher stance on piracy of movies and software, China may offer a good site for a Trump Casino in Hong Kong. Trump wants Mexico to do more on drug trafficking, Mexico may impose some new regulations that effect the Trump property in Baja. When the Trump Organization’s interests diverge from the U.S. interests, whom will Trump favor? The risk that Trump will sacrifice the U.S. to favor his company is simply to large for any reasonable person to take.
Also posted in Money in Politics
Tagged Donald Trump, Trump Organization
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Fact Checking Trump’s Speech Last Night
I would have, but the Washington Post beat me to it. Read it here. Consider printing it out and carrying it with you to show to Trumpites.
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What Have We Learned from the #RNC?
The most important takeaway is that the GOP is now Donald Trump’s party. This may seem minor, but it’s critical to understanding what will be necessary for the upcoming general election cycle: the rules are different.
You may have noticed that MSM referred to the RNC as “Donald Trump’s Convention” instead of “The Republican Convention” or “The RNC Convention.” Next week is not “Hillary Clinton’s Convention” — it is “The DNC”. No convention has ever before been personalized this way. The importance relates to how the cycle will be covered, and intimates that he will continue to be covered differently from everyone ever. Note that the first night of the convention, while the mother of a soldier lost in Benghazi was speaking, Donald called into Fox and they preempted her speech to speak with him. A cautionary tale for the party comes from more than 150 years ago. Read about Zachary Taylor. Seriously, read the link. Read it now. It’s really important.
Welcome back. Now you know the future.
Also posted in RNC
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The Republican Ticket
Given who was willing to accept a spot on the Republican ticket, Donald Trump (after much back and forth) did the somewhat mature thing and named Governor Mike Pence of Indiana as his running mate. This pick pretty much ends the chance that Trump will face any type of substantial open rebellion at the convention as the Republicans decide to take whatever lumps they will get in the fall. However, there are several significant problems with this ticket.
The Trump-Pence Ticket Logo
Also posted in RNC
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