Donald Trump had less votes than Mitt Romney did in 2012. So where were the progressives during this election? Ring of Fire’s Mike Papantonio, Sam Seder and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. discuss voter turnout in this year’s presidential race.
Transcription of the above video:
Sam:
Pat and Bobby, we were talking about how we were … Everybody was caught of guard. My understanding is that event he Trump campaign had no idea, at least based upon the internal polls they had that they were going to win. The strategy obviously was for the Trump campaign to go so hard at Hillary Clinton on negativity that it basically kept her voters at home.
That’s what happened. By all accounts Donald Trump had less votes than Mitt Romney did, when he lost in 2012, but Hillary Clinton had even more, or even less votes than Barack Obama. She has 6.6 million votes, that just never materialized and that is compared to Obama’s totals four years ago, which was not … Almost I think, almost close to 10 million votes, less than Obama in 2008. How did that happen?
Pap:
I do have a take. Here it is. Progressives showed up. They showed up, because they understood how absurd it was not to show up. I’m wondering, whether or not they went down a ballot. When you look at these initiatives. These are very progressive initiatives we’re talking about, ballot initiatives. Marijuana, right to die, gun control, minimum wage, all of these progressive issues that passed are far from Republican issues, but they passed.
It almost leads you to believe, did they go to the polls, walk in and leave the first top of the ballot empty? You almost have to wonder that, because Jill Stein didn’t pick up enough, she didn’t even registered. Gary Johnson barely registered. Sam, as you’re pointing out, where the hell did they go?
Bobby:
One of the things that people should look at and one of the first calls that I made when I got off the plane last night and saw where things were going, was to Greg Palace, who’s on a series now of expose on impact of the disposal of voting rights act on this election. He had just come from Dayton and he said at the vote in Dayton, was essentially lily White, because so many blacks were turned away from the polls. He said the same thing was happening in North Carolina, that there were massive purges of black voters in those states. People were handed provisional ballots, which of course are never counted and were not counted last night. They’re never counted.
They give them the provisional ballots to get them to leave the polling place, but they had disenfranchised many pollers and that’s something that the Democrats ought to be … I wrote two letters to the Attorney General over the past four months, asking her to look at these issues and to look at the hacking issues and the purge issues. I don’t think that the Democrats are paying attention to those issues at all and there’s a lot of black voters around the country. We have no idea…
Pap:
Do you think Bobby that it was enough though to have changed this?
Bobby:
You can … I think in the 2004 election, the suppression of the vote in Tioga County definitely changed the results in the election.
Pap:
Yeah, I agree with that for sure, yeah.
Bobby:
If you’re asking, some of the state margins were so narrow, that yeah, I think it could’ve changed the results.
Pap:
Because you have 500,000 votes. Sam, what does this do? Are Clintons gone now? Is this a pivot? What happens to DNC? Don’t we start rebuilding the DNC? I say we ought … Full disclosure, I’m not a Democrat, but don’t the Democrats start rebuilding in saying we have some fundamental problems that we have to … We can’t have another Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Donna Brazile kind of problem again, that we have to be honest with ourselves. Isn’t that helpful?
Sam:
Yeah. People get … People, it seems to me, have gotten fixated on this notion of the DNC as some type of powerful force. It really is just an office with a dozen people working in there frankly, but I think and I imagine, yes, I think we’re not going to have … I think the Clintons are going to … I would imagine we’re not going to see much of them anymore in the future.
I think all of Clinton in exile apparatus is going to go into the wind. One of the things that we have now that we didn’t have in the same way in 2004 and in 2000, when we went through this period the last time. Of course we went through that period … The last time it was a very different era. It was one that was largely in the shadow of 911 for most of that period of time and also we should say that, the Republican party had not set such a precedent of trampling norms, of the way that we govern in this country.
With all that said, this is a very easy exercise for people to do. What is the … Who is the most prominent Democrat in the country? I think your answers are going to be Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, not even a Democrat, but [crosstalk 00:06:16] …
Pap:
I totally agree.
Sam:
They have proven that both between the two of them, they are both fearless in going after … I mean Elizabeth Warren has been very explicitly going after Donald Trump. She does not … She’s not afraid of them.
Pap:
No, she’s not.
Sam:
Bernie Sanders has shown his ability to raise money. I think there’s going to be a re-shaping of the Democratic party, it seems to me, although…
Bobby:
Let me just mention one thing, instead of pointing fingers at the progressives. Let me just point out one really horrendous and intractable systemic problem here, which is the role of the media. The changing role of the media and the relationship the media has, the Citizen’s United Case. The 2012 election was roughly about one and half billion dollars from all directions. This election was 10 billion dollars.
Pap:
Oh God.
Bobby:
There’s about eight and half billion dollars extra that was brought into this election by the Citizen’s United Case. Where did that money end up? Money, 90% of that money ended up with the media, because it spent on advertising. That’s why you don’t see any complaints about Citizen’s United in the main stream media, because they are making a killing. Look at what Trump did. Famously less than the president of CBS said that, Donald Trump is very bad for America, but he’s very good for CBS.
Pap:
Yeah, yeah.
Bobby:
CNN made a billion dollars of extra revenue, because… From just from covering Donald Trump.
Pap:
Yeah and they will put…
Bobby:
That’s free advertising. Donald Trump is a trained medium master. He’s a carnival barker and he knows how to attract attention and he knows how to appeal the lowest common denominator. If you give somebody like that a bull horn the size of CNN and the size of CBS, he’s going to get traction. That I really I think ultimately, he was able to harness all of these discontents and alienation that are happening in our country and devices and negative way …
