How Evan McMullin Could Win Utah and the Presidency
fivethirtyeight.com
fivethirtyeight.com
A side point that I took from this article is that some people talk about the potential for the U.S. to shift from a two major party system, however our election process strongly discourages it. As a result, it's highly unlikely to ever happen. Since the process for electing a President and VP go to Congress if candidates fail to win at least 270 electoral votes, I feel that the American public would be less likely to vote if the chances of Congress picking the President, assuming 3 major candidates are likely to split the electoral college vote. However, maybe that would make people pay a lot closer attention to the down-ballot races for Congress...
Indeed, a party-list proportional representation for the state legislatures would strongly encourage minority parties to obtain seats, as votes cast for a party not winning in one's district would be go on to matter on the state-wide level.
As for the presidency, a worthy consideration could be how France elects their president. Their system is a two round system. In the first round, anyone who is eligible can be on the ballot. But if no candidate receives more than 50% of the votes (not electors), it goes onto the second round, where the two candidates with the most votes are the only ones on the ballot.
In practical terms, only two parties in modern France have held the presidency, but at least each presidency was elected by a majority of the voters. Plus France's parliament and senate contains members from parties that never get the presidency itself.
Another place to look could be your neighbour to the North, that practically has three main parties: NPD, Tories and Labour. Of course, Canada is a parliamentary system, so they don't have a strong executive branch like the US.
But you are not wrong, it's the US election system that encourages the two party system. But what I truly wonder is why each state basically maintains the same system as every other state.
I've thought about trying to start a ballot initiative to remove parties from the ballot process. Each candidate would have to generate sufficient support to get their name on the ballot, no other rules. Organized groups like parties would be useful under those rules, but an independent wouldn't be at a legal disadvantage compared to a member of an incumbent party (as is the case in many states today).
While your initiative is well meant, abandoning parties is actually a step in the wrong direction. Because while parties won't appear on the ballot, the parties will make sure to include their name and their candidate in every advertisement, so only few voters are unsure whom each candidate represents. Likely washing away other parties' chances as they don't maintain the same influence.
No, party-list proportional representation is a much more democracy and fairer system. Because it allows a voter to vote for a party that's not popular in their district, but so that their vote can matter on a state-wide or national-wide level.
Of course, that's a major overhaul of the system, but unfortunately, I personally believe that's what necessary. However, I believe that such an overhaul could start in smaller more progressive states like Vermont or Maine. And if the system catches on, there may be public push for a similar system in neighbouring states.
For the presidential election there would be more risk of pushing the election to the House of Representatives, but candidates could bargain with each other and withdraw and such. People would be able to figure it out.
Sounds nice. Alas, there's always winners and losers.
The fight is always people vs capital. Anything that weakens the party organizations empowers the monied interests.
"generate sufficient support to get their name on the ballot"
In my jurisdiction, any candidate paying the modest filing fee appears on the ballot. What are the rules where you live? Of course, the Presidential race is a whole tarball onto itself.
There has been interest to lower the bar even further. Such as gathering 200 signatures (to a petition) in lieu of the filing fee.
https://ballotpedia.org/Ballot_access_requirements_for_polit...
The primaries bypass that, major party candidates (selected privately by the party, the thing I propose to remove) can either file a petition (with ~1/2 the signatures required of an independent) or pay $100.
Note that I'm not proposing preventing groups from organizing and participating in the gathering of signatures and endorsing of candidates, I'm proposing removing the provisions that make it easier for the incumbent groups to get on the ballot and putting them on equal footing with everyone else.
If that burden were lifted from the voter and we were able to vote multiple parties into legislative bodies, then it just shifts that burden into the legislative body. Voters would find their representatives engaging in various alliances with other parties that the voter might not like. For the voters who dislike compromise entirely, they wouldn't like it - it would be trading one problem for another.
The other thing is that proportional representation governments are generally seen as being "more responsive" - they change more quickly, yielding larger effects from year to year (probably back and forth as different parties gain power). This means less stability.
The founding fathers found our slower, less responsive form of government more of a feature than a bug. They were aware of parliamentary forms of government but chose otherwise. Switching to parliamentary system is not a panacea, it has its own set of problems.
I think the problem with the US system is just that over time, partisans have discovered that lying about their beliefs is in their best interests. When you have a bunch of politicians claiming that they believe one thing when they know otherwise, their followers are encouraged to actually believe the falsehoods. I don't know if there's a more academic word for "shitposting" but that's basically what it is. (I believe this is more common on the right than the left, but that's beside the point.)
I'm not sure how to adjust the system so that the incentives are aligned more towards truthful debate, though. I think this is ultimately about a philosophical struggle that we used to have settled. Back in enlightenment ages, there was broad consensus that reality was an objective thing and that truth was a guide through it. But now it's pretty popular to believe that reality is just what we make it, by continually repeating whatever truth/facts we believe. I think that basically mirrors philosophical history in that romanticism came after enlightenment, but I don't know what that means about where we are now.
Since no party holds an absolute majority, all decisions end up being compromises, and therefore progress is dulled.
I am only arguing from the side of perspective of a democracy. There is something rewarding as a voter to feel that one's vote actually matter. I doubt a Republican voting for President in California feels their vote makes any difference.
But as a form of government? Then proportional representation doesn't scale well, which is why I am only recommending it for your state legislatures, not nation-wide.
The European Parliament is proportional represented but divided by constituencies, which in a lot of cases are just the member states, but member states are permitted to divide themselves into constituencies.[1]
All I am saying is, I do find it cringe-worthy when Americans refer to their system as 'democracy'. It's not even representational democracy, it's pseudo-representational democracy at best. Because if it truly was a representational democracy, then shouldn't D.C. or Porto Rico be represented at the federal level like everyone else?
The US is a Republic, and that's fine with me. Just don't pretend otherwise.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Parliament_constituen...
California moved to that for their state representative elections a while ago. The upshot is you can (and several times have) had two Democrats or two Republicans running against each other at the end.
Is party-list proportional representation even constitutional under the one man, one vote principle?
To summarise quickly: In district 1, parties A, B, C and D run. Each party has a list of candidates in order. Each voter can vote for a party or a candidate. If they vote for a candidate, they technically also vote for that party. If they vote for a party, they also vote for the next candidate on the party's list to need their vote.
District 1 has 4 seats. Party A gets two seats, party B and C gets one seat, respectively and D gets no seats. The remaining votes from this district (for each party) is used on the national level.
The national level has an additional 30 seats, here party D obtains 4 seats, despite not winning any district seats.
As an example of how FPTP is actually working against the one man, one vote principle, consider the last UK general election in 2015:
Every vote cast in a constituency for a candidate that did not win in that constituency is lost. That's about 50% of the votes. But also, every excess vote cast for the candidate that won (e.g. if the next candidate got 5000 votes, and the winning got 6000 votes, that's 999 excess votes) are also lost. And that accounted for about 25% of the votes.
In total, about 75% of votes in a UK general election are pointless.
As an aside; I'll grant that effectively, each vote is counted in the UK, it's just that a lot of them end up having no influence at all. So I guess, it's more a philosophical question about what we mean with 'one man, one vote'. Are we being literal or are we being meaningful?
Congressional delegations should instead be elected vis proportional representation using single transferable vote. A non-partisan Approval Voting primary would be used to nominate a selection of candidates for the general election and then STV would distribute votes up to a qualifying threshhold, followed by the runoff vote.
Parties could choose to nominate only one candidate as they do now, but there would be many more seats they could compete for. Without Parties controlling the nomination process it would be much more even ground.
Would require a change from our first past the post (FPTP) voting system to something like approval voting. (Or proportional representation for assemblies.)
Duverger's Law suggests that plurality systems (like FPTP) results in a two party system, because candidates (belligerents) all try to form the smallest winning coalition.
FWIW, I strongly prefer approval voting. Easy to explain, tabulate. A lot more fair. Preference-based systems discourage mudslinging.
This cycle, Libertarian Gary Johnson was polling well enough that he had a prospect of getting into one of the debates (hitting 13% in several polls, with the threshold for inclusion in the Presidential debate being 15% - I don't approve of this arbitrary rule, but at least it's a known factor in advance. But then in a series of interviews he demonstrated how foolish he was - ignorant of Aleppo in Syria, a major global flash point for a few years now, unable to name a single foreign leader he admires even slightly, and finally giving an interview where he said he could go into the debates without saying a word and still improve his standing before sticking his tongue out at the reporter and performing an impression of Donald Duck (as best I can guess). The guy is just clown shoes and nobody has sidelined him this year except himself. As for his party conference, it was mainly memorable for one candidate for party chairman performing a strip tease on stage, presumably to win a bet or as a prank. Is it any wonder voters don't take them seriously? Jill Stein of the greens is little better and seems more interested in publicity stunts than promoting a platform or getting anyone else into Congress.
The real reason (IMO) is that if you seriously want to influence politics it is far more efficient to sponsor ballot initiatives in states that allow them and lobby in other states and at the federal level. Why waste money on getting someone elected when you can just buy off a politician from one of the major parties? Anyone who has enough money to actually underwrite a party already knows this and so has little or no incentive to spend years and multiple election campaigns trying to build a political platform, especially given that the Democrats and Republicans are quite willing to sell their principles so cheaply. the people with the political will have no money and the people with the money have no incentive.
It's not impossible, it just takes time. I estimate that with a starting pot of $5-10m and 10 years I could build a minority party in the US Congress. An even better prospect given the parlous state of the Republican party would be to simply drive a wedge into it after this election, subvert the least powerful side. adn just hijack the leadership after 5 years or so, which is basically what the Tea Party has done to the GOP.
See Taleb's tweet storm of their methodology: https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/762032883414556674
Taleb doesn't seem to be talking about 538s actual prediction, the polls plus model on the site, he's talking about swings from 50% to 20% 538 has not swung that hard at all
What would be better is to use IRV at the state level to allocate electors proportionally.
That would still increase the probability of elections going to the house. It's funny how we see that as a bad thing considering it's how most modern democracies elect their chief of state.
But maybe instead of adopting the parliamentary method wholesale we could just borrow the coalition building factor when no party has a majority.
That is, if no candidate had the required number of electors, they could acquire the electors of another candidate in exchange for VP or a cabinet position.
Constitutional hurdles not withstanding.
http://www.nationalpopularvote.com
The idea is to get state legislatures to pass laws that their states will cast their electoral collect votes according to the outcome of the national popular vote, but contingent on enough states passing similar legislation that the states who have passed such laws constitute a majority in the electoral college. In other words, the legislation has no effect until enough states pass it that it has the same effect as Constitutional amendment would. It's a devilishly clever hack, and the law has already passed (stealthily) in over a dozen states, including California and New York. It enjoys (as you might expect) overwhelming popular support nearly everywhere, so I think it has a good chance of actually succeeding. If you care about this sort of thing you might want to consider spreading the word, or even making a contribution.
Also, it is a tired meme that amendments are hard, especially when a majority of Americans agree on something.
You're forgetting that states can call for a convention[0]. If you need a majority of states to pass legislation, you can get a majority of states to call for a convention.
[0] https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/constitution/artic...
We should not be afraid of democracy, either we trust the people of this nation to self-govern or we don't. Yes, I am not a fan of direct-democracy, but amendments to the constitution is more about deciding what is important enough to us to enshrine as part of the spirit of our law going forward.
To give an example of the current desire for a convention, see the wiki article I linked elsewhere. A right wing group has had legislation calling for a convention to pass in eight states and a left wing group has managed to get it passed in five other states. Unfortunately, these groups are calling for different things, but it shows there is a brewing desire for a convention.
It would be five times longer with likely significantly less wiggle room for future generations to cope with societal and technological changes, and most people would still be unhappy with the new version.
Only slavery can bind people to a constitution they don't want.
We nitpick ours because we like 98% of it...
And especially because the government spends much time working around the constitution with things like Interstate Commerce which now is everything. If you hold the work sacred you can't consider fixing the revealed flaws.
But yes, in practice it's almost always more practical to argue over the 2% rather than rewriting it all and rechartering the government.
We don't, which is why the government has many features, beyond the representative element, that slows and constrains the democratic process.
And we never did. When the country was founded, only white male land owners could vote. Ah, the good old days.
For further reading, this Wikipedia article breaks it down pretty well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Intersta...
Ordinarily I'd agree with you but it seems like lately the Senate has shirked their duty to provide advice and consent on appointments of justices to SCOTUS. :(
http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/written-explanation
Seems it only requires a plurality, not a majority of the votes.
A system where the votes are counted nationally and the ticket (president + vice president) winning the most votes is elected would be a system that I could strongly support.
But a system where each state votes its electoral college votes in a ratio based on the state's popular vote, which did not change the other rules (like "if no one gets a majority then we ignore the voters entirely and hold a vote in the House of Representatives instead") would work poorly.
The next-biggest weakness, I believe, would be that the ratio of voters in each state is fairly well known. There are roughly 200,000 voters per House Representative, so one must persuade a substantial portion of that number to "flip" any one vote. This means that, effectively, there would only be one vote "up for grabs" in each state (maybe 2 in the really big states), with the other votes essentially "fixed". This gives hugely disproportional power to the small states (imagine if each state had only a single vote).
EDIT: Please disregard!!! I misread the original proposal, which is a LOT smarter than I thought. The proposal is to give the state's votes to the winner of the national popular vote, thus effecting the proposal I originally preferred.
I think a lot of people get sucked in to thinking about voting methods when it is actually a distraction when you consider that we don't have a consensus of how to even define democracy.
For instance, ask yourself these two questions:
1) If, in a multi-candidate election, one candidate would defeat all others head-to-head, should that candidate be the winner? (I personally say yes, but many say "not necessarily")
2) If, in a two-candidate election, candidate A wins 51-49, but the supporters of candidate B are significantly more passionate than candidate A, should B win? (I personally say no, but many say yes - usually implicit in arguments for more "utility" or "overall voter happiness")
Because of my beliefs, I would be in favor of something like the National Popular Vote compact, but with a Condorcet element - where each state's EVs are awarded to the national Condorcet winner if it exists. States would transition to ranked ballots on their own timetable, and the national vote would take ranked ballots into account as reported. (An unranked ballot is Condorcet-compatible as it expressed a preference for one candidate above all others, with no preference between the others.) If Smith/Schwartz sets happen, the election goes to the House as it does now.
The electoral college is designed to protect the country from manifestly unqualified presidents.
Furthermore, the electoral college is all that stands between us and Florida 2000 on a national scale. Recounting one state was painful enough. Recounting all 50? Nightmare.
It is worth considering that if the size of the House had been permitted to grow as originally intended, then the difference between the NPV and the EC basically disappears. For instance, I believe that Gore would have won in 2000 had the House been double or triple in size (I forget exactly where, but somewhere around there). So that's a point in favor of the popular vote.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apportionment_paradox
http://study.com/academy/lesson/balanski-youngs-impossibilit...
And how does it protect the country from unqualified presidents? It may have been meant to do that, but at this point it's just a weird way to tally votes. There's no realistic chance these days that the outcome could be changed by electors voting differently from how they're supposed to.
All it accomplishes now is give a handful of states hugely exaggerated importance in the election relative to the rest by making it so that they effectively determine the outcome regardless of the popular vote total.
Well, it doesn't do that in practice. The electoral college which goes against the will of the voters will quickly become the last electoral college. As it's politically untenable for the electoral college to do anything but heed the will of the voters, it's vestigial. All it does is get in the way of a democratic election.
The Electoral College system enables smaller states to have a fairer influence on the election. If the election were a straight popular vote, the candidates would consolidate their campaigning to only major population centers, leaving a large portion of the country behind.
There have been close elections where one candidate won the popular vote and the other won the electoral vote. That hasn't led to the electoral college being abolished.
If you're talking about faithless electors, they have so far never affected the outcome of an election. If they did, I'm sure the calls for reform would become even louder than they are now.
If the electors were intended to be able to exercise their own judgement, it hasn't really worked that way in practice.
Sadly I think the day is approaching when we may well be grateful there's a way to stop a demagogue from taking power.
We are a federal republic, not a unitary state; the President presides over the United States, not the people of the several states, and should thus be selected by the states. As you might imagine, I'd like to repeal the 17th Amendment as well: the people are represented by our … Representatives; we don't need to also have super-representative Senators; right now, the states have no voices in the federal government, which just seems wrong.
I'd be open to a system in which the state legislature allocates two electoral votes and a popular election allocated the state's remaining electoral votes, mirroring the federal system of representatives and senators.
If he actually got installed by the House, there'd be widespread unrest. We know he knows that's not a realistic option, because a) reps would never do something that would upset their constituents so seriously and b) if they did, there's a real likelihood of armed resistance. So what's the end game here? He just felt so bad that Utah may go Trump he felt he had no option but to step in and make sure that it didn't go down in history as a pro-Trump state? That's the only benefit McMullin can offer, and it's only valuable if Trump gets elected and actually turns out to be Hitler 2.0. Then Utah can have a clean nose.
In practice the only thing McMullin is doing is making a Clinton presidency more likely. Ross Perot served the same function in 1992, taking ~20% of the popular vote, probably 15% of which would've gone to Bush had Perot not been in the race.
Given McMullin's background as both a CIA operative and an international banker, I think it's fair to ask just where his intentions lie.
If you want to talk stereotypes, I'd say Evan exemplifies the positive stereotypes often associated with the LDS community -- kind, dependable, patient, hard-working, etc.
With regard to his personal motivations -- he's clearly a patriot, as his record of service as an intelligence officer more than sufficiently demonstrates. I think his motivation is largely to do something, anything, to provide an alternative to the choice between Trump and Clinton. I would likely do the same if I had the same opportunity set that he currently does.
I've known other field intel officers in real life, and while I enjoy their friendship and admire them for many things, there's no doubt that they're a little different than everyone else. That's not usually a problem in the course of everyday life, but setting oneself up as a political candidate for high office is not everyday life anymore.
While you need to be both intelligent and highly skilled to work for intel agencies, you also need to have, at best, a fluid view of personal integrity and authenticity. I don't see how this is based on "Hollywood stereotypes", since movies usually portray spies as superheroes.
>If you want to talk stereotypes, I'd say Evan exemplifies the positive stereotypes often associated with the LDS community -- kind, dependable, patient, hard-working, etc.
As a member of the LDS community you reference, he sets off my bullshit detector. He's baiting Mormons hard by using specific inside-baseball phrases. He's exploiting the opportunity created by the heavy LDS distaste for both candidates. He'll only rank significantly in states with high LDS populations (evangelicals are generally suspicious of Mormons, and more likely to be comfortable with Trump).
I'm sensitive to this kind of thing. I actually think were McMullin not Mormon, no one in Utah would be paying attention. And I don't think that's the right way to vote.
>I think his motivation is largely to do something, anything, to provide an alternative to the choice between Trump and Clinton.
Ah, but if he's as smart as you say, he knows that there is no alternative to the choice between Trump and Clinton at this point. That ship has sailed. So what's his real motive?
If we do believe the apocryphal account, there are still a couple of issues. First, it doesn't imbue a duty to vote for a Mormon guy. If the Constitution really were in maximum danger, it'd be dubious that voting in a normal election would be the mechanism used to save it.
Second, it doesn't say that a Mormon will save the Constitution by becoming president or anything like that. It says the Elders of Israel (that is, the men of the Church) will save it. That means more than voting for one guy. It probably means something more like being instrumental in a major cultural adjustment that would cause the principles in the Constitution to be valued again. This is harder than voting, so people don't prefer this interpretation.
It may not even be literal -- the Constitution could be suspended/ineffective in what we now know as the U.S., but "saved" by Mormon elders who set up a separate government that substantially respects its principles.
Whether one accepts this apocryphal prophecy or not, it does not mean Mormon candidates should be favored, and IMO, it shouldn't be a significant factor for Mormon voters.
[0] http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/blog/church-statement-on-white...
I'd love it if Mormons got a more realistic/normal perspective on the White Horse "Prophecy", as the author advocates at the beginning of the article, but I don't think saying that we have to vote for a specific candidate to invoke it (just not the candidate you would expect) really helps anything.
. . . and if Romney were not Mormon, he'd be running as incumbent this year.
Not necessarily. Not if neither Trump nor Clinton win a majority of the electoral votes.
Now, at the moment, that looks unlikely. Trump is self-destructing so badly that Clinton will probably win a majority, with or without Utah. But if McMullin wins Utah, and Johnson wins New Mexico and maybe another state, it might be possible.
Then we'd need Congress to not just vote for Trump and Clinton. That would take more statesmanship and less partisanship than I've seen from Congress in a while.
So realistically, there's not much hope. But there's still a chance...
As its title implies, the OP article describes how there is a small, but nonetheless real possibility that Evan could send the vote to the House. And as such, I'd reject the basic premises of this question.
We're going to give Evan the benefit of the doubt and assume that throwing American democracy into legitimate chaos (not just a sideshow, like it's already become) is not his motive. So what is his motive?
But you just compared him to a Hollywood stereotype. Which is it? Is he Jack Bauer or Peter Priesthood?
[0] http://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/the-ele...
Perhaps now that Trump successfully "hijacked" the GOP from the establishment and Sanders gave Clinton a serious run for her money in the primary, there will be more flexibility on independent ballot access and other third-party friendly laws, since major politicians may see that as a last resort. McMullin may be a case study for them, so I can see how he'd act as supporting evidence for this type of movement, but it'd only ever be enacted out of fear that the establishment will be unable to control the party structure moving forward.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-ross-perot-myth/
basically, those who voted for perot were evenly split between both parties, so he actually didn't influence the outcome of the election through votes cast.
Did he torture people to death?
I just don't like it when people admire what was shown in this TV series. (yes, I felt it was cool back then, but I've realised sine then that this series really just indoctrinated me to accept torture)
Conservatives need a morally defensible party. Democrats need alternative policy proposals to keep them honest. America needs new ideas.
I just don't like Trump, and really don't like HRC.
Really sad, because 2 major Mormon candidates in the primary would've required Mormons to pay some consideration to the policies instead of just voting for the candidate that was most like themselves.
It's strange - Governor Johnson is polling much better overall than McMullin, and is actually on the ballot on all 50 states unlike McMullin, but McMullin works better "in the system" than Johnson. He's Republican (or republican flavored independent?) so it's less of a risk for the GOP to tacitly support him. Whereas if Johnson were to succeed at this gambit, that could be the beginning of the end for the Republican party so he won't get as much support from the GOP.
[0] http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/election-update-the-craz...
Pretty much every CO I know, knows this is the reality of the job, and still does it. I have immense respect for them, because I saw that path and knew I just couldn't bring myself to risk that much for that little reward. Career Case Officers are really the best of us - neutral, loyal, incredibly hardworking, smart, multi-talented, flexible and above all else dedicated. Obviously there are outliers and not all are good eggs, but I'd say it's more true than not.
This opposed to the vast majority of career politicians who are mostly egomaniacs who don't really ever sacrifice much and aren't particularly principled.
This is where the disconnect was for me - politicians would create intelligence requirements, for example a PIP, which doesn't go through the same NIPF process, which Intelligence Officers would have to fill. Sometimes these were really dangerous and at then the resulting intelligence, was barely glanced at because by the time it was collected, the politicians had moved on to another hot topic. Joseph Kony is a great example of this. We already had intelligence collection requirements for this person and groups, but once it became a popular issue then all of these new priorities got leveraged and tasks got re-prioritized to that - which they shouldn't have probably. Now, understand that that is how the system is supposed to work, with the IC responding to political requests.
The problem is, incompetent politicians really make like hell for the intelligence community. It's just like a shitty CEO barking at the CTO to change everything to RUST overnight. That's the environment that the IC lives in daily - very little consistency, and high risk.
Anyway, that's why someone like this guy to me has a much better view and idea of how the world works, and how to make things actually happen for a purpose, rather than his ego. I don't think your average person realizes the importance of good intelligence, it informs everything.
There is a reason that the PDB is the first event for the President everyday.
I don't doubt that case officers are hard workers. I question how relevant that specific set of experience is in the much broader case of running a country of 300 million people.
Had 1800 not gone for Jefferson, there could well have been an insurrection.
Also, we've had no election like this in the modern era, so who knows how different the nation's response will be compared to the response of the nation in its earliest years.
Or did you mean that the actions of the establishment cause others (outside the establishment) to become ever more willing to consider violent revolution? If so, I think I agree, though I consider it a bit unfair to blame the establishment for this particular mess (other than for Hillary, who is clearly an establishment politician).
Whether it is true or not, many in the electorate blame neo-liberal policies pushed by the last couple of administrations for the current state of inequality in the first world, like NAFTA. People on the right blame immigration. That coupled with what many consider shady politics that is subverting the fairness of the democratic process, many people are angry. Many on the left realizing that Trump is a terrible candidate for their interests, a few have chosen to vote for Clinton, who despite being an establishment figure, at least has adopted some of the positions the populists ask for. I am on the left, and I think that in Trump vs. Clinton, we have more of a chance to hold her feet to the fire than Trump.
However, McMullin is the safest candidate that the moneyed interests could ever hope for. He for example is for free-trade in his public opinions. He is for lowering taxes on the rich. He doesn't have a strong stance on money in politics[0]. But if the moneyed interests who contribute a lot to campaigns for almost all the representatives do push the house to vote on McMullin in non-majority situation, you can bet people both on the left and the right will be irate. The leftists will see even the lifeline they have in Clinton fade. The right will be irate that the repubs didn't even choose their own nominee. Many people will be angry.
It doesn't have to end in violence or even revolution, but if the Trump campaign should teach anyone any lesson, is that it took a tape full of lewd comments to finally make it a sure bet for HRC. A candidate who called Mexicans rapists, promised to discriminate against Muslims, who called McCain a loser was tied with HRC until a few weeks ago. That's how upset they are.
[0] The only thing I could find from McMullin on money in politics. I am being charitable to him in not interpreting this as a favorable opinion on the current system in campaign finance.
https://www.evanmcmullin.com/is_our_country_s_future_worth_m...
The issue is Trump's talk about the election being rigged. For the people who really support him, if he loses, there's the possibility of violence. Frighteningly, whether it erupts or not may well come down to Trump's choice of words in his concession speech.
But even if it goes to violence, I think that the violence will be lessened if the "not Hillary" people are split off from the "definitely Trump" people.
[0] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/07/us/mormon-videos-leaked.ht... [1] http://www.wweek.com/news/2016/10/03/mormon-leaks-video-feat... [2] http://www.anamericandreamrevealed.com/2015/03/the-role-of-l...
The reason that story got no legs outside of the far-left press is that nobody who isn't blindingly anti-religion cares if a candidate/official looks to his/her spiritual leaders for guidance. In fact, normal people assume that happens. The Smith video doesn't show anything abnormal.
I was concerned by a couple of things about it, like him sharing what might have been classified information with the church leaders, and also indicating that his support for the Iraq war was so that the church could eventually send in missionaries.
If that is not abnormal, then it is a pretty disturbing example of how religion influences our government.
Americanizing Iraq was the underlying subtext and principle during the invasion discussion. I know there was the superficial justification of WMD, but Republicans often spoke of things like "bring them democracy" and "bring them freedom", i.e., teach them the American way. For most of the people that supported the invasion whom I talked to around that time, this was the salient point and driver of their interest, not the potential possession of WMD.
Smith doesn't say that missionary work is the sole reason he voted for the war, but I'm sure it was an important and desirable side effect for him, and he discusses that. Most religious people would say the opportunity to spread their religion to new people is desirable. That's why missionary programs exist (Mormons are neither the first nor the only religion with a missionary program).
Smith was certainly laying it on thick, no one can doubt that. I would guess that politicians are wont to do so. The Quorum of the Twelve, the body to whom Smith is presenting in the video, is the second-highest body in the Church and it's a big deal to talk to them. Thus, while his presentation was annoying, it wasn't improper in a substantial way. Accidentally disclosing a minor possibly-but-not-definitely piece of confidential information is the only infraction here.
Yes, which is why I find it disturbing. The LDS religion has a strong "kingdom building" ethos where service to their god is equated to furthering the aims of the church corporation itself, which is considered to be the kingdom of their god on Earth. It is codified into the rituals in their temple that every "worthy" adult participates in regularly. Not every member shares the same interpretation of the scope of that commitment, but if a Mormon senator gives a reason for entering into a war as being the expansion of the LDS organization specifically, then that seems problematic to me. I would be concerned about something like this from any other specific religious organization as well.
There are plenty of cultural mormons (New Order Mormons in our special lingo) in US politics (Harry Reid, for example), for whom the threats of the church do not hold sway. But devout mormons actually believe that their prophets talk directly with god, and actually believe they will never see their family again if they don't heed the counsel of their prophet. Anybody who believes in the virtue of a separation between church and state should be terrified of the prospect.
I'm at the very least grateful that mormon values would not tolerate Trump, our generation's Andrew Jackson, but while McMullin holds a much better image and temperament, he still has shown that he is as married to the mormon church as he is his wife. When mormon politicians like Gordon Smith state they are willing to trade in their professional ethics in exchange for their temple recommend, you should take that as a threat.
http://www.anamericandreamrevealed.com/2015/03/the-role-of-l...