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On November 10 2016 21:55 Dan HH wrote:Show nested quote +On November 10 2016 21:43 Nebuchad wrote:On November 10 2016 21:41 Dan HH wrote:On November 10 2016 21:31 Nebuchad wrote:On November 10 2016 21:28 Dan HH wrote:On November 10 2016 21:26 Excludos wrote:On November 10 2016 21:24 Laurens wrote:On November 10 2016 21:19 Simberto wrote:On November 10 2016 20:58 Acrofales wrote:On November 10 2016 20:23 Excludos wrote:
[quote]
I would say the word "fairly" is up for debate here, considering he didn't win the majority vote (or at least seems like he won't based on the numbers right now).
I haven't followed this thread long so I apologise if this has been discussed to death already, but the american "Democracy" is too screwed up. First off not all US citizens, even those born and raised in the US without any criminal history, is allowed to vote.
Secondly, your vote might be completely pointless depending on what state you live in. If you're in a sure Democrat or Republic state, you might as well not vote because it's going to count for exactly nothing (I'm not saying not to vote. Always vote. At least that way there's a chance, even if it's tiny). Then there's the problem with the Electoral College being unfairly distributed, or the fact that it's existing at all. It's purpose was two folds: Logistical (which isn't relevant anymore), and to give "the little guys in the rural areas a bigger voice compared to those elitist people living in the big cities", the latter which is ridiculous. Even if you combine the biggest 100 cities in US, you're still not up to 20% of the whole population.
The EC is actually working against it's purpose right now, as the presidential candidates are not only ignoring the largest cities, but also the smallest states for all of their rallies. So the entire purpose of it right now is to give hillbilly Joe in the least populated states the largest vote for no apparent reason (which is usually republican, given that all 4 presidents who won without winning the popular vote have been republican).
That's not even touching on the way the whole system is built to support two parties backed by large corporations and donations in a way that would be counted as corruption in every other country. Fairly certain you're just spouting drivel here. Yes, if you just take the population of just the city municipalities, you're probably right (haven't done the math). But what you're then saying is that LA has under 4million inhabitants, whereas the LA metropolitan area, which is what you can reasonably count as "elitist people living in big cities", has 12.8million inhabitants (LA county + OC). This doesn't count Ventura and other surrounding metropolitan areas, which would add up to a further 10million inhabitants. The same goes for NYC: the city itself has an official population of 8million, but the NYC-Newark-JC area has 20million inhabitants. That means that taking those two areas together you are already over 10% of the population. All we need to do is add Chicago (10million), Dallas-Fort Worth (7million) and Houston (6.5million) to easily break 20% of the US population. Giving a voice to sparsely populated rural areas is a perfectly valid goal. A discussion can (and should) be had over how much their influence should be (how much more should voters in sparsely populated areas be weighted than those in densely populated areas), but I have lived in enough areas to know that what is good policy for cities is often terrible policy for the countryside. I agree with you that the Electoral College in its current format is outdated. I just disagree with you on that a strictly proportional vote is really better. I don't really understand the reasoning in this statement. Isn't one of the main ideas of democracy that all people have an equal vote, no matter who they are? Why should rural farmers have more votes than people in cities? If we are following this route, why not give more votes to smarter people? Or richer, as they have more at stake? This whole idea that rural people should have more votes seems to mostly be justifying that it has historically been like this in the US, and thus there must be a reason for it. To me, it seems fundamentally undemocratic to give people living in cities less votes just because rural people have historically been given overproportional representation and would be sad to lose that. The entire argument is dumb. The system is known to everyone beforehand. Discussions after the facts about "if we did it in X way then candidate Y would have won" are useless. I can assure you that thousands of voters did not bother to vote because they live in states where one of the parties is 100% gonna win. Whether he wins with 100 votes or 50000 votes is irrelevant, winner takes all. If you tell these people beforehand "oh every single vote will count now" obviously voter behavior will change. All of this certainly does not mean that it's a good system, but trying to fit current data in a different system is just silly. Why is it dumb just because we're discussing it after the fact? Yes, it won't change anything, but that doesn't make the system any less broken. Yes, the system is broken, but his point is that the very existence of the electoral system influences the result of the popular vote, so you can't extrapolate that without the electoral system Clinton would have still won the popular vote. You can't in general but I'm pretty sure you can in this case. Clinton won almost every big city, even in deep red states where the democratic vote doesn't matter. Sure, but is there a reason to assume that the removal of the electoral system would have translated into an increase in turnout in big cities more so than in the rest of the country? No, but I don't need an increase in turnout to make that point, you need a decrease in turnout to make the opposite point I don't see it that way. The premise here is that without the electoral college turnout would increase, especially in deep blue and deep red states, as that would mean everyone's vote matters. For Clinton to still win the popular vote in that scenario, this turnout increase would have to be either somewhat uniform between blue/red or more so in places supporting her. Whereas there's a distinct possibility that it would increase more in red than in blue places, which was the whole point of my example below that line
Yeah you could be right. Given that California has such a wige gap and even states like Texas don't, it's probable that there is more red not voting in Cali than there is blue not voting in Texas.
Anyway I would still defend the macro position even if it made it easier for Trump to win.
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Democrats who are focusing on the electoral college post-election are part of the reason why Hillary became our candidate in the first place. That is not the place where effective reform can or should be done.
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On November 10 2016 22:17 farvacola wrote:
Democrats who are focusing on the electoral college post-election are part of the reason why Hillary became our candidate in the first place. That is not the place where effective reform can or should be done.
The fact that your system is so broken that half of the population doesn't think their votes even matter (and they don't) isn't a problem for you..?
You're making the mistake of thinking this is about Hillary or Trump. It's not, I would be equally annoyed if the results was swapped. Democracy is suppose to be equal vote for everyone, not "your vote might matter 10 times more than other votes, or they might get thrown away depending on what state you live in"
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On November 10 2016 22:08 mahrgell wrote:
It is only broken if you beliebe the president is directly elected by the American people.
If you simply see it as: president is elected by the states and the people who their state is voting for.... it is almost perfectly fine. Yes, there remains the issue that some states have a higher ev/pop ratio than others... this is still left to fix. But the general idea of some intermediate step in a federal republic is really nothing unusual or systematically broken.
And similar systems exist in many european states and the eu is mostly strctured that way too...
It really isn't, as you're not voting for who you want to run your state (You do that too, but that's not the same process), you're voting for who you want to run -all- states. We don't have a central president that "runs europe" that we vote for by voting for a representative in our country that might or might not choose what I wish he/she would do. There is no "president of EU" that controls all our lives and decides who we go to war with, what reforms we need, or whether climate change is going to get any focus during the next 4 years or thrown aside because "it's not real", contrary to what 95% of the scientific community believe.
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On November 10 2016 22:36 Excludos wrote:Show nested quote +On November 10 2016 22:17 farvacola wrote:
Democrats who are focusing on the electoral college post-election are part of the reason why Hillary became our candidate in the first place. That is not the place where effective reform can or should be done. The fact that your system is so broken that half of the population doesn't think their votes even matter (and they don't) isn't a problem for you..? You're making the mistake of thinking this is about Hillary or Trump. It's not, I would be equally annoyed if the results was swapped. Democracy is suppose to be equal vote for everyone, not "your vote might matter 10 times more than other votes, or they might get thrown away depending on what state you live in"
Again this nation isn't a democracy and I dare you to find a nation that is actualy a democracy. Its a representative republic and we're electing representatives to represent us on a state by state basis to vote for president.
We're a union of states not a single kingdom or singular nation-state. this is how a system like this works. Its like the UN, does it really matter how many people live in China or india when the littelist nations get an equal vote as the big nations? and the only advantage the big nations that really matter have is a veto on the security council?
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On November 10 2016 22:36 Excludos wrote:Show nested quote +On November 10 2016 22:17 farvacola wrote:
Democrats who are focusing on the electoral college post-election are part of the reason why Hillary became our candidate in the first place. That is not the place where effective reform can or should be done. The fact that your system is so broken that half of the population doesn't think their votes even matter (and they don't) isn't a problem for you..? You're making the mistake of thinking this is about Hillary or Trump. It's not, I would be equally annoyed if the results was swapped. Democracy is suppose to be equal vote for everyone, not "your vote might matter 10 times more than other votes, or they might get thrown away depending on what state you live in"
We are not and have never been a straight up democracy, and yes, there are troubling problems regarding turnout and the distortions inherent to an electoral mediation of the popular vote.
However, talking about how messed up the electoral system only gets us so far; in order to change it, we need a constitutional amendment, and given the divisive state of the US, actually passing one of those is nigh impossible right now. So yes, I acknowledge the problems you're pointing out, only right now, there are other paths towards reform that we can actually put into action that are far more rewarding than a focus on the electoral college.
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Claims that Austin Trump protesters were bussed in.
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On November 10 2016 22:43 farvacola wrote:Show nested quote +On November 10 2016 22:36 Excludos wrote:On November 10 2016 22:17 farvacola wrote:
Democrats who are focusing on the electoral college post-election are part of the reason why Hillary became our candidate in the first place. That is not the place where effective reform can or should be done. The fact that your system is so broken that half of the population doesn't think their votes even matter (and they don't) isn't a problem for you..? You're making the mistake of thinking this is about Hillary or Trump. It's not, I would be equally annoyed if the results was swapped. Democracy is suppose to be equal vote for everyone, not "your vote might matter 10 times more than other votes, or they might get thrown away depending on what state you live in" We are not and have never been a straight up democracy, and yes, there are troubling problems regarding turnout and the distortions inherent to an electoral mediation of the popular vote. However, talking about how messed up the electoral system only gets us so far; in order to change it, we need a constitutional amendment, and given the divisive state of the US, actually passing one of those is nigh impossible right now. So yes, I acknowledge the problems you're pointing out, only right now, there are other paths towards reform that we can actually put into action that are far more rewarding than a focus on the electoral college.
I agree with all of what you're saying. But out of curiosity, what other reforms do you have in mind that would be more rewarding?
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Hyrule19029 Posts
Unsubstantiated tweets and other things meant only to rekindle old arguments will be actioned from now on.
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Makes sense. If I were organizing an enormous protest, I would pull sympathizers from all over the countryside. This is shocking how?
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On November 10 2016 21:26 oneofthem wrote:
looking forward to trump restricting globalization.
on the positive side, germany now the leader of the free world.
We need much more of this because hysterics are one of the reasons Trump won, and continued insensitivity on that subject will buoy more support in the future. Hell, Merkel for her part might be trying to preserve her legacy in the eyes of the world to the detriment of her own country.
+ Show Spoiler +
On November 10 2016 22:17 farvacola wrote:
Democrats who are focusing on the electoral college post-election are part of the reason why Hillary became our candidate in the first place. That is not the place where effective reform can or should be done.
It's like like the size of the wounding from a repeat event dictates the feasibility that totally unprecedented change would happen. A plurality of states would oppose any constitutional amendment changing it, and they have to overwhelmingly like an amendment for it to join the others in the Constitution. Reminder: Republicans gained governor's seats on their original 62% and still hold over 2/3 state legislatures.
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On November 10 2016 22:46 Excludos wrote:Show nested quote +On November 10 2016 22:43 farvacola wrote:On November 10 2016 22:36 Excludos wrote:On November 10 2016 22:17 farvacola wrote:
Democrats who are focusing on the electoral college post-election are part of the reason why Hillary became our candidate in the first place. That is not the place where effective reform can or should be done. The fact that your system is so broken that half of the population doesn't think their votes even matter (and they don't) isn't a problem for you..? You're making the mistake of thinking this is about Hillary or Trump. It's not, I would be equally annoyed if the results was swapped. Democracy is suppose to be equal vote for everyone, not "your vote might matter 10 times more than other votes, or they might get thrown away depending on what state you live in" We are not and have never been a straight up democracy, and yes, there are troubling problems regarding turnout and the distortions inherent to an electoral mediation of the popular vote. However, talking about how messed up the electoral system only gets us so far; in order to change it, we need a constitutional amendment, and given the divisive state of the US, actually passing one of those is nigh impossible right now. So yes, I acknowledge the problems you're pointing out, only right now, there are other paths towards reform that we can actually put into action that are far more rewarding than a focus on the electoral college. I agree with all of what you're saying. But out of curiosity, what other reforms do you have in mind that would be more rewarding?
Right now, I'm focused on addressing the concerns of the poor, white, and rural populations that swung Midwestern states towards Trump. Part of pushing popular consensus towards passing something as monumental as a constitutional amendment will require that our most vulnerable populations have better access to education imo.
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On November 10 2016 22:43 Sermokala wrote:Show nested quote +On November 10 2016 22:36 Excludos wrote:On November 10 2016 22:17 farvacola wrote:
Democrats who are focusing on the electoral college post-election are part of the reason why Hillary became our candidate in the first place. That is not the place where effective reform can or should be done. The fact that your system is so broken that half of the population doesn't think their votes even matter (and they don't) isn't a problem for you..? You're making the mistake of thinking this is about Hillary or Trump. It's not, I would be equally annoyed if the results was swapped. Democracy is suppose to be equal vote for everyone, not "your vote might matter 10 times more than other votes, or they might get thrown away depending on what state you live in" Again this nation isn't a democracy and I dare you to find a nation that is actualy a democracy. Its a representative republic and we're electing representatives to represent us on a state by state basis to vote for president.
The US is both a representative democracy and a republic. 'Representative republic' is a redundancy. This American misunderstanding of what republic means and seeing it as being mutually exclusive with democracy is really grinding my gears. Most republics are 'actual democracies' they're just not direct democracies which is what I assume you're referring to.
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On November 10 2016 22:14 oneofthem wrote:
lower urban turnout from some demos is also a thing that lost the election. should be taken just as seriously by policymakers as a situation that needs real attention
It's more a job for the party campaigners and DNC leadership grooming. They need to work on running candidates that inspire turnout by their character and speechcraft with a good message, not somebody like Clinton who might do the five policies that would help the urban poor and convince people they might as well stay home.
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On November 10 2016 22:56 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On November 10 2016 22:14 oneofthem wrote:
lower urban turnout from some demos is also a thing that lost the election. should be taken just as seriously by policymakers as a situation that needs real attention It's more a job for the party campaigners and DNC leadership grooming. They need to work on running candidates that inspire turnout by their character and speechcraft with a good message, not somebody like Clinton who might do the five policies that would help the urban poor and convince people they might as well stay home.
Yes, it is all about character and speechcraft. Those are the things that matter in politicians.
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On November 10 2016 21:26 oneofthem wrote:
on the positive side, germany now the leader of the free world.
no they are not, actually Germany might be the sole reason we are in this mess, they are indirectly responsible for brexit and rise of Trump's popularity, people were fine with normal liberal government but some of Merkel ideas make her look like far-left nut job which caused tensions and divided people in Europe.
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On November 10 2016 21:37 Excludos wrote:Show nested quote +On November 10 2016 20:58 Acrofales wrote:On November 10 2016 20:23 Excludos wrote:On November 10 2016 19:48 Liquid`Jinro wrote:On November 10 2016 18:51 Thax wrote:On November 10 2016 18:45 iPlaY.NettleS wrote:
I'm seeing a huge number of people on social media angry with Trump and "racist" white people that voted him in.
What I'm not seeing so much of is democratic supporters giving the DNC a grill over their shocking treatment of Sanders.The primaries were rigged against Sanders, who was destroying Trump in all the polls.
How about instead of protesting against Trump protest against the corrupt DNC and try to get some real change in that organisation.Then you've got a chance of getting a good candidate instead of an establishment shill like Clinton and with a decent chance of Trump being impeached in his first term the outlook could be good.
Personally i still think too many people are uninformed and just get their news from mainstream outlets who are completely discredited to anyone who is awake to the game.
Sites like HuffPo are hyperbolic right now, channel that anger toward positive change in your own party instead of this negativity.
Clinton also destroyed Trump in the polls. Every Sanders-fanboy who has taken this election to vote Trump or even third party as some sort of big fuck you to the establishment has blood on their hands. Trump is going to destroy lives and it's as much their fault as it is of racist white people. Given that he won the elections fairly, I think it's really poor form to pre-emptively talk about him ruining lives. Maybe he'll be good. Maybe he will be awful. I strongly dislike him, but you gotta give him a chance to actually be president before talking about how bad he is at it. I would say the word "fairly" is up for debate here, considering he didn't win the majority vote (or at least seems like he won't based on the numbers right now). I haven't followed this thread long so I apologise if this has been discussed to death already, but the american "Democracy" is too screwed up. First off not all US citizens, even those born and raised in the US without any criminal history, is allowed to vote. Secondly, your vote might be completely pointless depending on what state you live in. If you're in a sure Democrat or Republic state, you might as well not vote because it's going to count for exactly nothing (I'm not saying not to vote. Always vote. At least that way there's a chance, even if it's tiny). Then there's the problem with the Electoral College being unfairly distributed, or the fact that it's existing at all. It's purpose was two folds: Logistical (which isn't relevant anymore), and to give "the little guys in the rural areas a bigger voice compared to those elitist people living in the big cities", the latter which is ridiculous. Even if you combine the biggest 100 cities in US, you're still not up to 20% of the whole population. The EC is actually working against it's purpose right now, as the presidential candidates are not only ignoring the largest cities, but also the smallest states for all of their rallies. So the entire purpose of it right now is to give hillbilly Joe in the least populated states the largest vote for no apparent reason (which is usually republican, given that all 4 presidents who won without winning the popular vote have been republican). That's not even touching on the way the whole system is built to support two parties backed by large corporations and donations in a way that would be counted as corruption in every other country. Fairly certain you're just spouting drivel here. Yes, if you just take the population of just the city municipalities, you're probably right (haven't done the math). But what you're then saying is that LA has under 4million inhabitants, whereas the LA metropolitan area, which is what you can reasonably count as "elitist people living in big cities", has 12.8million inhabitants (LA county + OC). This doesn't count Ventura and other surrounding metropolitan areas, which would add up to a further 10million inhabitants. The same goes for NYC: the city itself has an official population of 8million, but the NYC-Newark-JC area has 20million inhabitants. That means that taking those two areas together you are already over 10% of the population. All we need to do is add Chicago (10million), Dallas-Fort Worth (7million) and Houston (6.5million) to easily break 20% of the US population. Giving a voice to sparsely populated rural areas is a perfectly valid goal. A discussion can (and should) be had over how much their influence should be (how much more should voters in sparsely populated areas be weighted than those in densely populated areas), but I have lived in enough areas to know that what is good policy for cities is often terrible policy for the countryside. I agree with you that the Electoral College in its current format is outdated. I just disagree with you on that a strictly proportional vote is really better. I specifically stated city, not city counties. That's the whole point of the EC after all, giving more voice to the people in the rural areas as opposed to those living together in cities, yet the 100 biggest cities (not their counties) don't add up for more than 20% of the entire population. The 10 biggest cities only make up 8%. Not to mention even if we ignored that and said EC is working as intended: it doesn't. Like I mentioned, presidential candidates don't visit the smallest states, or the largest. They all gather around the middle of the tree as well as the few swing states that decides everything. Case in point on how broken this system is: You can win the presidential election with only 22% of the votes in US. How is this not fundamentally broken? The US prides itself in being a democracy, yet they break all 4 fundamental things about it: 1. Everyone is allowed to vote and all votes must count for equal. 2. Citizen participation. 3. The law must be the same for everyone. 4. protection of human rights. (more or less. My wording is wrong but the idea is the same)
Ok, so as I pointed out, you're technically right, but it is meaningless, as calling Orange County or Hoboken "rural" in the rural vs. city discussion is ignoring the fact that these suburban areas are just as much not rural as the inner city: you're making a theoretical point without looking at the fact that the population now IS in fact far more urbanized than it was when the system was invented.
Now my argument for Simberto is that a democracy is not so much about the power of every voter, but about how you want the country to be run. The cities occupy a very small geographic portion of the country, whereas they have a vast majority of the population, and an even vaster percentage of the economic and cultural power. The question is thus whether you want vast stretches of wasteland because your government only focuses on cities, or whether you want to do something to help rural communities. There are multiple ways of doing this as a government. You can trust that lawmakers will consider them (as is what happens with black, latino and other minorities). However, that clearly doesn't work too well. The rural minority has the luck that it is (1) far easier to explicitly target them, and (2) their proportional increase in power is already baked into the constitution. Furthermore, this type of system is not even unusual, because a similar proportional system is in place in many European countries (France, Spain, and England spring to mind).
Anyway, the proportion of the EC as such is far less problematic than the first past the post system, which assigns every single vote from a state to either one or the other candidate. Florida is republican by 1% of the vote, yet Trump takes every single one of its 29 EVs. Worse still is probably the states, that are blue (or red) by such a vast margin that not only republicans (or democrats) stay home, but democrats (or republicans) stay home as well, because their vote really doesn't make a difference. California, Texas and New York are the most obvious examples.
The fact that the record turnout in 2008 is 57% is really pathetic. Compare that with France (a president with a comparable amount of power): turnout in 2012 was 80%. And that election was JUST for the president. Not a combined ballot for congressmen and a whole host of local choices.
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Sweden33719 Posts
On November 10 2016 20:45 Impervious wrote:Show nested quote +On November 10 2016 19:48 Liquid`Jinro wrote:On November 10 2016 18:51 Thax wrote:On November 10 2016 18:45 iPlaY.NettleS wrote:
I'm seeing a huge number of people on social media angry with Trump and "racist" white people that voted him in.
What I'm not seeing so much of is democratic supporters giving the DNC a grill over their shocking treatment of Sanders.The primaries were rigged against Sanders, who was destroying Trump in all the polls.
How about instead of protesting against Trump protest against the corrupt DNC and try to get some real change in that organisation.Then you've got a chance of getting a good candidate instead of an establishment shill like Clinton and with a decent chance of Trump being impeached in his first term the outlook could be good.
Personally i still think too many people are uninformed and just get their news from mainstream outlets who are completely discredited to anyone who is awake to the game.
Sites like HuffPo are hyperbolic right now, channel that anger toward positive change in your own party instead of this negativity.
Clinton also destroyed Trump in the polls. Every Sanders-fanboy who has taken this election to vote Trump or even third party as some sort of big fuck you to the establishment has blood on their hands. Trump is going to destroy lives and it's as much their fault as it is of racist white people. Given that he won the elections fairly, I think it's really poor form to pre-emptively talk about him ruining lives. Maybe he'll be good. Maybe he will be awful. I strongly dislike him, but you gotta give him a chance to actually be president before talking about how bad he is at it. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeremy-symons/meet-trumps-pick-to-disma_b_12832350.htmlAlready starting to set back climate regulations 20+ years. I'd say he's off to an awful start already. EDIT - as a Canadian, this is the same fucking air we breathe too, so this kind of shit affects us as much as it does the USA.
I'll admit thats something I'm extremely worried about too... but that's different from the blanket anti trump sentiments expressed everywhere (and in the post I quoted ).
Still want to see what he actually pushes for and what ends up being just talk.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
germany doing pretty decently, plus, merkel is saying the right things but she also understands the need to control inflows.
saying the right thing is very important though, and that is a big part of 'leadership of the free world.' /s
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On November 10 2016 23:03 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On November 10 2016 21:37 Excludos wrote:On November 10 2016 20:58 Acrofales wrote:On November 10 2016 20:23 Excludos wrote:On November 10 2016 19:48 Liquid`Jinro wrote:On November 10 2016 18:51 Thax wrote:On November 10 2016 18:45 iPlaY.NettleS wrote:
I'm seeing a huge number of people on social media angry with Trump and "racist" white people that voted him in.
What I'm not seeing so much of is democratic supporters giving the DNC a grill over their shocking treatment of Sanders.The primaries were rigged against Sanders, who was destroying Trump in all the polls.
How about instead of protesting against Trump protest against the corrupt DNC and try to get some real change in that organisation.Then you've got a chance of getting a good candidate instead of an establishment shill like Clinton and with a decent chance of Trump being impeached in his first term the outlook could be good.
Personally i still think too many people are uninformed and just get their news from mainstream outlets who are completely discredited to anyone who is awake to the game.
Sites like HuffPo are hyperbolic right now, channel that anger toward positive change in your own party instead of this negativity.
Clinton also destroyed Trump in the polls. Every Sanders-fanboy who has taken this election to vote Trump or even third party as some sort of big fuck you to the establishment has blood on their hands. Trump is going to destroy lives and it's as much their fault as it is of racist white people. Given that he won the elections fairly, I think it's really poor form to pre-emptively talk about him ruining lives. Maybe he'll be good. Maybe he will be awful. I strongly dislike him, but you gotta give him a chance to actually be president before talking about how bad he is at it. I would say the word "fairly" is up for debate here, considering he didn't win the majority vote (or at least seems like he won't based on the numbers right now). I haven't followed this thread long so I apologise if this has been discussed to death already, but the american "Democracy" is too screwed up. First off not all US citizens, even those born and raised in the US without any criminal history, is allowed to vote. Secondly, your vote might be completely pointless depending on what state you live in. If you're in a sure Democrat or Republic state, you might as well not vote because it's going to count for exactly nothing (I'm not saying not to vote. Always vote. At least that way there's a chance, even if it's tiny). Then there's the problem with the Electoral College being unfairly distributed, or the fact that it's existing at all. It's purpose was two folds: Logistical (which isn't relevant anymore), and to give "the little guys in the rural areas a bigger voice compared to those elitist people living in the big cities", the latter which is ridiculous. Even if you combine the biggest 100 cities in US, you're still not up to 20% of the whole population. The EC is actually working against it's purpose right now, as the presidential candidates are not only ignoring the largest cities, but also the smallest states for all of their rallies. So the entire purpose of it right now is to give hillbilly Joe in the least populated states the largest vote for no apparent reason (which is usually republican, given that all 4 presidents who won without winning the popular vote have been republican). That's not even touching on the way the whole system is built to support two parties backed by large corporations and donations in a way that would be counted as corruption in every other country. Fairly certain you're just spouting drivel here. Yes, if you just take the population of just the city municipalities, you're probably right (haven't done the math). But what you're then saying is that LA has under 4million inhabitants, whereas the LA metropolitan area, which is what you can reasonably count as "elitist people living in big cities", has 12.8million inhabitants (LA county + OC). This doesn't count Ventura and other surrounding metropolitan areas, which would add up to a further 10million inhabitants. The same goes for NYC: the city itself has an official population of 8million, but the NYC-Newark-JC area has 20million inhabitants. That means that taking those two areas together you are already over 10% of the population. All we need to do is add Chicago (10million), Dallas-Fort Worth (7million) and Houston (6.5million) to easily break 20% of the US population. Giving a voice to sparsely populated rural areas is a perfectly valid goal. A discussion can (and should) be had over how much their influence should be (how much more should voters in sparsely populated areas be weighted than those in densely populated areas), but I have lived in enough areas to know that what is good policy for cities is often terrible policy for the countryside. I agree with you that the Electoral College in its current format is outdated. I just disagree with you on that a strictly proportional vote is really better. I specifically stated city, not city counties. That's the whole point of the EC after all, giving more voice to the people in the rural areas as opposed to those living together in cities, yet the 100 biggest cities (not their counties) don't add up for more than 20% of the entire population. The 10 biggest cities only make up 8%. Not to mention even if we ignored that and said EC is working as intended: it doesn't. Like I mentioned, presidential candidates don't visit the smallest states, or the largest. They all gather around the middle of the tree as well as the few swing states that decides everything. Case in point on how broken this system is: You can win the presidential election with only 22% of the votes in US. How is this not fundamentally broken? The US prides itself in being a democracy, yet they break all 4 fundamental things about it: 1. Everyone is allowed to vote and all votes must count for equal. 2. Citizen participation. 3. The law must be the same for everyone. 4. protection of human rights. (more or less. My wording is wrong but the idea is the same) Ok, so as I pointed out, you're technically right, but it is meaningless, as calling Orange County or Hoboken "rural" in the rural vs. city discussion is ignoring the fact that these suburban areas are just as much not rural as the inner city: you're making a theoretical point without looking at the fact that the population now IS in fact far more urbanized than it was when the system was invented. Now my argument for Simberto is that a democracy is not so much about the power of every voter, but about how you want the country to be run. The cities occupy a very small geographic portion of the country, whereas they have a vast majority of the population, and an even vaster percentage of the economic and cultural power. The question is thus whether you want vast stretches of wasteland because your government only focuses on cities, or whether you want to do something to help rural communities. There are multiple ways of doing this as a government. You can trust that lawmakers will consider them (as is what happens with black, latino and other minorities). However, that clearly doesn't work too well. The rural minority has the luck that it is (1) far easier to explicitly target them, and (2) their proportional increase in power is already baked into the constitution. Furthermore, this type of system is not even unusual, because a similar proportional system is in place in many European countries (France, Spain, and England spring to mind). Anyway, the proportion of the EC as such is far less problematic than the first past the post system, which assigns every single vote from a state to either one or the other candidate. Florida is republican by 1% of the vote, yet Trump takes every single one of its 29 EVs. Worse still is probably the states, that are blue (or red) by such a vast margin that not only republicans (or democrats) stay home, but democrats (or republicans) stay home as well, because their vote really doesn't make a difference. California, Texas and New York are the most obvious examples. The fact that the record turnout in 2008 is 57% is really pathetic. Compare that with France (a president with a comparable amount of power): turnout in 2012 was 80%. And that election was JUST for the president. Not a combined ballot for congressmen and a whole host of local choices.
I think this sums it up damn near perfectly.
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EPT
