Bill Maher Breaks Silence on Trump

December 20, 2016

Posted by greenman3610
Filed in Crock of the Week

5 Comments »

5 Responses to “Bill Maher Breaks Silence on Trump”

Jim Housman Says:

December 21, 2016 at 4:41 pm
Ya gotta love ole Bill.

I grudgingly oppose him on the Electoral College however. In spite of the current craziness the writers of the Const knew what they were doing. They wanted to prevent a guy like Trump from swaying a majority of easily swayed, ill informed voters from annointing a blowhard demagogue for becoming president. The fault lies with the states ignoring the wisdom of the founders and requiring the electors to vote for whoever the “rabble” voted for. Just like the Senate, also mucked up.

The really hopeful message from the interview is that he hasn’t fled the country. Yet.

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- climatelurker Says:
  
  December 21, 2016 at 5:13 pm
  The electoral college did that but in the process revealed the growing divide between what the most people want and what a few powerful states want. In other words, a good thing becomes a bad thing.
  
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metzomagic Says:

December 21, 2016 at 5:10 pm
They wanted to prevent a guy like Trump from swaying a majority of easily swayed, ill informed voters from annointing a blowhard demagogue for becoming president.

So, in your opinion, did we fail at that? from what you said above, it’s not clear what you mean.

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metzomagic Says:

December 21, 2016 at 5:15 pm
No, sorry, I should have been clearer. I think the objective of “swaying a majority of easily swayed, ill informed voters from annointing a blowhard demagogue for becoming president.” was definitely achieved. So do you think that was a good thing, and if not, that the electoral college could somehow have prevented that?

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Jim Housman Says:

December 22, 2016 at 1:26 pm
To be clear we did elect the blowhard and the system did fail.

To reiterate: the founders were very fearful of populism. They set up a system of limited democracy with the concept of filtering the wishes of the population through a popularly elected elite that, in turn, selected a short-lived, single tasked, “college” of yet more select individuals to select the president. Their intent was not the formality that the electoral college has become. Their intent was to protect us from ourselves by using carefully selected individuals that, hopefully, would be able to use a longer view of the nation’s needs than could be obtained through the raucus, nasty process that elections too often become.

We got the result of the raucus, nasty process instead of anything resembling a longer view. We got that because the intent of the founders has been eroded by populist pressure over time.

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