Stop. Just stop. This is not 2000 where 400 Floridians and a bunch of hanging chads decided things and the overall margins were razor thin. He won the popular vote everywhere outside of California. That makes Hillary the President of California but not President of the United States. The rules of this game were set long ago, are well known and are not rigged. They are there for very good reason and work. Instead of whining about winning the popular vote, why not look at the numbers?
As of right now it looks like both candidates are going to get about 59 million votes with an chance that both will just barely break 60. Remember that number. Now lets look at some past elections:
2000:
Bush — 50.4M
Gore — 50.6M
2004:
Bush — 62M
Kerry — 59M
2008:
Obama — 69.4M
McCain — 59.9M
2012
Obama — 65.9M
Romney — 60.9M
So lets look at that. From 2000-2004 Dems ADDED 9 million new voters. Unfortunately Republicans added 12 million more. 62 million. You realize that in the middle of an unpopular war President Bush got more votes in a smaller country than EITHER Trump or Clinton did. We add roughly 3.3 million people to the United States every year between births and immigration. So in the 4 years between 2000 and 2004 the nation go 13m people bigger and the two major parties managed to collectively add 21 million voters.
Now lets go to 2008. Having been beaten by the other guys who got more new voters despite adding almost 20 percent ourselves, we worked even harder and managed to add ANOTHER 10m voters. At the same time, Republicans actually slipped 3m voters. Here is a simple lesson — if you add more than the other guy, you are probably going to win. If you add and the other guy declines, you probably win big. President Obama won Big in 2008.
Now 2012. We lose 4 million voters. Thankfully Republicans only added 1 million. But lets go back to that Romney number. Despite a SMALLER electorate and running a horrible campaign with an unpopular message, Romney won MORE votes than either Trump or Clinton. Bet Mitt is kicking his own ass for not giving it one more go right now.
So now lets look at this years popular vote. At the end of the day we will likely see a net decline of Democratic votes of around 5 million and a net decline of Republican votes of 1 million. So much for Trump being a “populist with a mandate.” From 2008 to 2016 the country grew by approximately 26 million people and 10 million fewer people voted.
This was supposed to be a “historic” vote. This was supposed to be a “populist” election. In the end it was wildly unpopular and the historic part was apathy.
If you take the Kerry people and simply add natural growth (more people turing 18 than dying), its enough to win in a landslide. If we had maintained HALF the momentum of adding 9-10m voters a cycle that we had from 2000-2008, we would own the House, a filibuster proof Senate and the White House in a landslide of historic proportions.
We lost because Dems stayed home.
White racists didn’t vote for Trump in huge numbers, Dems stayed home.
Men didn’t decide a woman can't be President, Dems stayed home.
No one betrayed the Democratic party other than the Democratic party. Republicans are no more popular today than they were 8 years ago. In fact when you consider the growth of the nation, they are LESS popular than 8 years ago. Republicans are stuck on 60m. We should be at 85m not 59m.
White Dems stayed home. Black Dems stayed home. Latino Dems stayed home. Asian Dems stayed home. Pretty much Dems outside of California stayed home. Thats how we lost. Fixing it is how we win. Give Dems a reason to vote instead of a reason to stay home.