By Edgar Mana-ay
This coming November 3, the fate of U.S. President Donald Trump will again be decided by the American people.
Are the Americans satisfied with the four years performance of Trump that he deserves to be given a second term? But before we go into that, it would be best to explain the seemingly undemocratic, absurd and self-contradictory (in Ilonggo, “tanhaga”) U.S. COLLEGE ELECTORAL SYSTEM in electing the president.
The Electoral College is composed of “ELECTORS” allocated per state and is the sum total of the number of senators and congressmen in a given state. Thus, California has the biggest Electors in the Electoral College at 55 and the state of Vermont has the smallest at only 3.
Among those in between are Texas – 38; Florida and New York – 29 each; Illinois and Pennsylvania at 20 each; Ohio – 18 and so forth to come up with a total of 538 Electoral College votes or Electors.
The election battle between the Presidential candidates is just to have a simple or just even one direct vote majority in a given state in order to be credited with the total Electors in that state. The candidate that gets the majority of the 538 electors win the presidency of the United States.
To show how absurd and “makatalanhaga” this system is, we go back to some unique presidential victory in the past. In 2016, 65,853,514 Americans voted directly for Hillary Clinton but she got only 227 electoral votes while Donald Trump got only 62,984,828 direct votes but 304 electoral votes and that made him the President of the US.
In the 2000 presidential race, Al Gore had 50,436,002 direct American votes while George Bush got 50,999,897 direct votes. In Florida where more than 6 million votes were cast, Bush won over Gore by a razor-thin margin of only 551 direct votes, thus entitling him to the 29 electoral votes allocated to Florida making his total to 271 as against 266 for Al Gore.
Had the Florida 29 electors swung to Al Gore, the score would have been: Bush 271-29 = 242; Gore 266+29 = 295 and Gore would have won the presidency. Gore appealed for a recount of votes in Florida but was not approve.
Because of the above system, the presidential campaign just aims to get a simple majority or even just ONE vote majority in a given state in order to be entitled to the TOTAL electoral votes in that state. The word landslide is not in the vocabulary of the campaign managers. This election time, the magic word is “swing state”. These are states with high electoral votes allocation and present survey shows it can either go Republican or Democrats such as Florida, Illinois and Pennsylvania, hence these are the states where the presidential candidates will exert utmost campaign attention just to get even the thinnest majority of the direct votes.
The two-party system in the US is also alien to Philippine politics where there are too many political parties and politicians change parties just like they change their clothes. In the US either you are a Republican or a Democrat and that label remains until you die. Politicians jumping to the other side of the fence is unheard of. The reason why the two political parties are distinct and different is because their basic party philosophies and platform are also poles apart.
A sample of their distinct difference are as follows. On climate change, the Republican believes the U.S. represent only a minor and shrinking share of global emission (which this writer fully agrees) and therefore cannot fix an alleged global climate problem with measures designed to grease local consumption.
The Democrat platform drafted by the radical socialist mafia of Senator Bernie Sanders and Rep. Ocasio Cortez is to eliminate “carbon pollution” from power plants by 2035, to zero out net greenhouse emission in the US by 2050 (which is utopia to this writer). It will be replaced by installing 500 million solar panels, 60,000 wind turbines, requiring all American buildings to be net-zero in carbon emission by 2030 with cost in trillions of dollars. It would also support stopping all oil and gas drilling on federal lands, suppression of the coal industry and other elements of the green terror. Examined carefully, none of it is remotely acceptable to the American people.
The Republicans want a total stop on illegal immigration which it had reduced by 90% during the term of Trump. But Democrats want open borders and unlimited admission of foreign migrants with the imposition of no standard at all and free health care, education and other services to them. This would ultimately result in every poverty-stricken persons in the world moving to the United States.
Dems are also ambiguous on urban violence and encourages de-funding of the police. This has resulted in the most widespread and destructive rioting in America in over 50 years mostly happening in dominantly democrat governed states. Other socialistic Dems programs are: free health care (anything that is too good to be true like the recent Kapa investment scam is NOT true), free university education for all families making less than $150,000 a year ( a nurse already a lucrative profession in the US barely makes $110,000), obligatory seizure of most firearms (which runs counter to the American tradition of gun-loving people dating back to the Mayflower pilgrims era).
Despite all the seemingly undemocratic and highly socialistic programs of the Democrats, WHY IS PRES. TRUMP LAGGING IN THE LATEST POLL SURVEY (as of 2nd half September) AGAINST BIDEN? As far as job approval rating, Trump has hit a 6-months high of 52% total approval with 48% in total disapproval according to the Rasmussen Poll.
But this is nothing compared to DU30’s job approval which has never gone down below 60% and has an average of 75% in his 3-year presidency. No American president in history had an above 60% job approval rating. This writer who frequents the US can attest that Trump has done tremendous improvement in the economy. My daughter who is in the plumbing contracting business never had it so good until Trump came because there was a boom in building construction and in the economy in general. Pitted against Joe Biden, Trump trails by 42% and 51% prefers Biden.
It’s mostly because of the braggadocio and proud (hambug in Ilonggo) style of Trump that does not endear him to the populace and Biden is exploiting this by making the election a personal referendum on Trump’s style, temperament and personality.
Unlike DU30, despite his cursing foul mouth and violent pronouncements (death to all drug lords!), still most citizens likes him because of his humble style and a personality oozing with utmost sincerity and love for the people. The American election is still a month away and many things can still happen that will change the political landscape.
