Math News — Majority Druels

So, the president was acquitted today, but as many news report notes, there were a majority of Senators who voted to convict. The more partisan outlets emphasize that it was a bipartisan majority. Whatever. There are 50 Democratic senators and 50 Republican senators. Seven of the Republicans joined the 50 Democrats in voting to convict, for a 57–43 vote (I think).

But in this case, the majority did not rule, for it takes a two-thirds vote to convict a president in impeachment. Two-thirds of 100 is 66.666666666666666666666666666666666, so actually 67 votes were needed to convict.

Now, this isn’t that remarkable. It makes sense that for certain things, a supermajority is necessary. Like passing a law requires a mere majority, but actually writing an amendment to the Constitution, that requires — I think that might require a three-quarters vote. I forget.

Still, the fact that they got a majority to vote against Trump but still lost definitely is reminiscent of the 2016 election, when the Democrats did get more votes than Trump but failed to get more electoral college votes and so Trump won the election.

Now, these situations have in common: 1) Trump “winning,” and 2) his win being sort of due to a technicality; like, he got away with winning even though the math seems to indicate he didn’t deserve to. If this story is told with the right kind of tone, the teller manages to imply that this is a case of Trump cheating.

It is not.

It is weird, though! A funny coincidence. It’s just the way the ball bounces sometimes though. It’s kind of like — here’s an analogy. I like to play tennis with my 79-year-old father, and he likes to play tennis with me. He could beat me until I was maybe 16 or 17 and he was, at that time, 53 maybe. Then I started beating him.

Now, like last month, it occurred to me that we should implement a rule whereby no one could win with drop shots. Seeing him, with his limited mobility, trying to lurch forward to keep the ball from bouncing twice — it occurred to me. We should just let it bounce twice! This rule would be advantageous to him. Of course, his pride rejected the offer; he didn’t want any charity. Actually, the more remarkable part of this story is not this offer on my part but the fact that I didn’t think of this 20 years ago. Basically I have been beating my senior citizen father in tennis by hitting drop shots. For shame!

What this has to do with Trump is … he’s simply taking what the rules are giving him. Very few people would ever refuse to win an election based on an Electoral College victory. The idea that Trump did something morally wrong by allowing himself to win in 2016 despite having less votes, or now by being acquitted of impeachment despite getting less votes — this idea is baldly absurd. Everybody takes advantage of rules that are in their favor. Well, at least, almost everybody.

There are probably saints who would refuse to accept these kinds of victories.

Anyway, this is an absurd talking point. Nobody is explicitly arguing that Trump should have refused these victories. But! But … It is being implicitly argued by his most-furious critics. Since their every sentence is designed to cause maximum damage to him, regardless of how doing so strains the truth. Of course I’m generalizing here. There are plenty of Trump critics who are perfect rationalists. However.

However. The amount of exaggeration and emotional arguing that one can find in print these days, well, it’s a lot. I mentioned yesterday that it might fall to mathematicians — or to logicians, at least — to identify exaggeration, to identify when facts are being stated objectively and when they are being modified, when judgemental adjectives are being piled on, when reports cease to be descriptive and begin to be chalk-full of opinion.

More on this shortly.

Note to self: I probably shouldn’t be writing about Trump; I’m never going to get any readers this way. Oy!