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5930 Posts
I mean, if I wanted a functional democracy I would probably be a bit concerned about gerrymandering. The number of seats lost is not respective of anything if the seats are disproportionately difficult for one party to win.
Joh Bjelke-Petersen - the closest thing Australia had to an actual fascist - basically ruled the state of Queensland for like 30+ years because of hardcore gerrymandering that gave rural regions disproportionate representation. This ruined any attempts of both Liberal and Labor parties (our urban right and left parties respectively) to claw enough seats away from his Country Party.
It doesn’t mean Liberal and Labor parties were super impotent, it means Joh cooked the books for close to three decades. He lost only because the Labor PM sprung a snap election while he was in the US.
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On November 07 2018 16:12 convention wrote:Show nested quote +On November 07 2018 14:36 Introvert wrote:
If Walker holds I will be even happier after tonight. Another person the left hates, maybe able to squeak it out.
Dems do what the out party does in midterms, while the Senate look good, and the state level is alright for the GOP and well. 2020 has a lot of red states, but they are very red, and in presidential election years, they will prob stay that way.
with a president like trump, many were hoping a wipe out ala 2010. not so.
meanwhile Democrats running as moderates won lots of red seats. the presidential race, however, isnt set up that way. I'm so interested in how the next two years go on. if trump can hover at 45%ish percent...
for some context
As someone who lives in WI, please tell you have a reason for supporting Walker that goes past "the left hates." He has completely messed up the state. But I guess who cares about the state as long as the left hates the person in charge, right? Maybe the left hates Walker because he is really really bad and should be hated. Is that truly a valid reason to support someone?
doesnt matter, he lost, 4th election in a blue year too much for him. Milwaukee apparently said they reported all but still had votes left. RIP Walker, you had a good run and won some amazing elections.
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On November 07 2018 16:14 Kyadytim wrote:Show nested quote +On November 07 2018 15:39 Introvert wrote:On November 07 2018 15:22 ChristianS wrote:On November 07 2018 15:09 Introvert wrote:On November 07 2018 14:51 ChristianS wrote:On November 07 2018 14:36 Introvert wrote:If Walker holds I will be even happier after tonight. Another person the left hates, maybe able to squeak it out. Dems do what the out party does in midterms, while the Senate look good, and the state level is alright for the GOP and well. 2020 has a lot of red states, but they are very red, and in presidential election years, they will prob stay that way. with a president like trump, many were hoping a wipe out ala 2010. not so. meanwhile Democrats running as moderates won lots of red seats. the presidential race, however, isnt set up that way. I'm so interested in how the next two years go on. if trump can hover at 45%ish percent... for some context https://twitter.com/jabeale/status/1059973986526920704 If we're interpreting public opinion, why not use popular vote totals rather than number of seats changed? Otherwise you could just be reading how tough a map it was, how gerrymandered it was, how many seats they had to lose, or some similar confounding factor. because that isnt how we do elections? seems like a hard concept for some. also any popular vote result that doesnt account that CA has a primary system where the top two can be Democrats doesnt matter anyways. and trump at 45 is based on recent polls. again, this election looks a lot like a regular midterm, besides the Senate. on to the next fight. I feel good about where we are anyways. the most radical of the Democrats lost most races, while the moderates won. should be a good lesson going forwards. and expect the GOP to learn from the Democrats on the fundraising, I'm sure that put many of these people over the top. GOP dont let the Democrats be the best st something for long. But you're not talking about how we do elections, you're talking about whether voters repudiated Trump's agenda. CA issues aside, popular vote is the most straightforward way to answer what the voters thought. Net seat change is really weirdly roundabout - the number is just as affected by how poorly the minority party did last time as how well they did this time. In the extreme case Republicans could have won every seat last time, and Democrats could flip 217 (!) seats. By your measure that would be the biggest repudiation of the President's agenda of all time - and yet they wouldn't even have taken a majority! The "typical midterm" line is strange too, considering a "typical midterm" is a repudiation of the President's agenda. Maybe it's not a record-breaking repudiation, but at a bare minimum if voters favored the opposition party by 8 points, it's almost tautological to say that reflects them opposing the party in power. you haven't made the case for why the national total should matter at all. there are hundreds of individual elections. to determine if there is the national vote matters you have to work out if that fact affected anything. the fact that people are voting in local elections matters. I'm sure you can argue for the national vote mattering, but it's not self-evident, at least in most cases. The national vote total is a better reflection of that nebulous concept called "the will of the people" than the ratio of actual winners, because first past the post across a series of parallel elections can cause the percent of offices won to diverge from the percent of votes won. You should be making the case that the results of our antiquated system of apportioning offices based on frequently redrawn geographic areas is a better way of measuring what voters actually want than just looking at the total number of votes, not the other way around.
wait, do you know what I am arguing? I am arguing that election results matter more.
you just identified the problem. the "will of the people" only has one tangible metric: elections. as the saying goes "all politics is local" and that's just we saw. people dont vote in a national vote, they vote for and against specific candidates. aggregate votes mean far less than actual results. btw, in 2010 when dems got stomped they were strangely silent on total votes. in fact I think obama after a midterm also said something like "those of you who voted I hear you. but the 2/3rds of you who didnt vote, I hear you to." disconnected. certainly didnt teach him a thing.
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On November 07 2018 13:07 On_Slaught wrote:
The next 2 years will be interesting if nothing else. I read somewhere (was it here?) that Muellers initial report could come out as soon as this week. I expect that the firing of Sessions will be shortly before or after that happens.
Dems winning the house drastically increases the odds of another Saturday night massacare.
Mueller is a republican i only recently did find out. He is off course an independent investigator but would he bring down trump unless something really horrible did happen. The balance of power got restored somewhat already and going for impeach does feel a bit like overreach as others also have said,the election result was not That great in the end and republicans clearly have a lot of support left.
Report should come soon,maybe things can calm down then.
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On November 07 2018 16:14 pmh wrote:Show nested quote +On November 07 2018 13:37 ghrur wrote:On November 07 2018 13:30 Plansix wrote:On November 07 2018 13:25 ghrur wrote:
It's actually really scary that the House of Representatives, the chamber aimed to be representative of the people, shows something like +8% of the votes in favor of Democrats while their house majority will be something around +3-4%. Doesn't seem very... representative. Honestly, Idk why geography should play into House elections and have such a large impact. Really, that should be left to the Senate. The states control their districts, not the federal government. The states elect their representatives and send them to the house/senate. And yes, that system is super flawed and leads to abuse like we see today. There is a push at in a number of states to have independent commission set the districts. It's not just because of the state level. The national level is flawed too. California has 12.15% of the country's population, but only 11.5% of the representatives. The current system basically has Californian voters giving away their voting powers to low population states even in the one chamber that's supposed to be representative of the populace. Basically... >435 please. Its even worse in the senate,which arguably is more powerfull then congress. Sort of gerrymandering by nature,lots of democrats live in california or nort east part of usa. Both sides can be happy i guess though the democrats probably did hope for more,The senate kinda hurts. Maybe this isnt such a bad outcome overall.
The "natural gerrymandering" inherent in the senate is a pretty serious long-term issue. Based on the population changes of the states, some projections have republicans regularly winning a majority (or maybe it was a supermajority) of the senate while only receiving a third of the total votes by mid century.
More immediately, the problem is that because of these issues even if you ignore gerrymandering and the various voter suppression things republicans are accused of, democrats reasonably believe that the existing system is rigged against them and their interests. Steps that increase democrats' trust in the system being fair will push republicans to believe that democrats just rigged the system against them.
Even if you take Trump and his rhetoric out of the equation, the United States' democracy is under a lot of stress in ways that are both not sustainable and getting worse.
Long term, this is probably going to break the country unless liberals are willing to live as second class citizens when it comes to voting power or conservatives willingly give up some of the disproportionate voting power the current system has given them.
Alternatively, the US population gets more evenly distributed somehow.
On November 07 2018 16:30 Introvert wrote:Show nested quote +On November 07 2018 16:14 Kyadytim wrote:On November 07 2018 15:39 Introvert wrote:On November 07 2018 15:22 ChristianS wrote:On November 07 2018 15:09 Introvert wrote:On November 07 2018 14:51 ChristianS wrote:On November 07 2018 14:36 Introvert wrote:If Walker holds I will be even happier after tonight. Another person the left hates, maybe able to squeak it out. Dems do what the out party does in midterms, while the Senate look good, and the state level is alright for the GOP and well. 2020 has a lot of red states, but they are very red, and in presidential election years, they will prob stay that way. with a president like trump, many were hoping a wipe out ala 2010. not so. meanwhile Democrats running as moderates won lots of red seats. the presidential race, however, isnt set up that way. I'm so interested in how the next two years go on. if trump can hover at 45%ish percent... for some context https://twitter.com/jabeale/status/1059973986526920704 If we're interpreting public opinion, why not use popular vote totals rather than number of seats changed? Otherwise you could just be reading how tough a map it was, how gerrymandered it was, how many seats they had to lose, or some similar confounding factor. because that isnt how we do elections? seems like a hard concept for some. also any popular vote result that doesnt account that CA has a primary system where the top two can be Democrats doesnt matter anyways. and trump at 45 is based on recent polls. again, this election looks a lot like a regular midterm, besides the Senate. on to the next fight. I feel good about where we are anyways. the most radical of the Democrats lost most races, while the moderates won. should be a good lesson going forwards. and expect the GOP to learn from the Democrats on the fundraising, I'm sure that put many of these people over the top. GOP dont let the Democrats be the best st something for long. But you're not talking about how we do elections, you're talking about whether voters repudiated Trump's agenda. CA issues aside, popular vote is the most straightforward way to answer what the voters thought. Net seat change is really weirdly roundabout - the number is just as affected by how poorly the minority party did last time as how well they did this time. In the extreme case Republicans could have won every seat last time, and Democrats could flip 217 (!) seats. By your measure that would be the biggest repudiation of the President's agenda of all time - and yet they wouldn't even have taken a majority! The "typical midterm" line is strange too, considering a "typical midterm" is a repudiation of the President's agenda. Maybe it's not a record-breaking repudiation, but at a bare minimum if voters favored the opposition party by 8 points, it's almost tautological to say that reflects them opposing the party in power. you haven't made the case for why the national total should matter at all. there are hundreds of individual elections. to determine if there is the national vote matters you have to work out if that fact affected anything. the fact that people are voting in local elections matters. I'm sure you can argue for the national vote mattering, but it's not self-evident, at least in most cases. The national vote total is a better reflection of that nebulous concept called "the will of the people" than the ratio of actual winners, because first past the post across a series of parallel elections can cause the percent of offices won to diverge from the percent of votes won. You should be making the case that the results of our antiquated system of apportioning offices based on frequently redrawn geographic areas is a better way of measuring what voters actually want than just looking at the total number of votes, not the other way around. wait, do you know what I am arguing? I am arguing that election results matter more. you just identified the problem. the "will of the people" only has one tangible metric: elections. as the saying goes " all politics is local" and that's just we saw. people dont vote in a national vote, they vote for and against specific candidates. aggregate votes mean far less than actual results. btw, in 2010 when dems got stomped they were strangely silent on total votes. in fact I think obama after a midterm also said something like "those of you who voted I hear you. but the 2/3rds of you who didnt vote, I hear you to." disconnected. certainly didnt teach him a thing.
This absolutely does not apply to presidential elections, and considering how polarizing Trump has been, it's questionable if it applies to federal elections as well.
Anyway, I'm disagreeing with you. If somehow the US became so gerrymandered that democrats win 52% of the vote but republicans take 60% of the house seats (I'm looking at you, Wisconsin), is the will of the people for republicans to have a substantial majority?
To put this in more abstract terms, if you have three adjacent districts that two for party A and one for party B with a total of 1,000 people, but 600 of them live in one district, 300 in a second, and only 100 live in the other. Across the 1,000 people, 700 of them voted for candidates of party B, while 300 voted for candidates of party B.
If you only look at election results, party A won, but if you look at what people wanted, it was policies of party B. 550 people living in the large district who voted for the party B candidate are justifiable going to be unhappy acceding to a government that is implementing policies that they explicitly voted against.
tl;dr, You're arguing that we should use the results of a flawed system that enables minority rule as the standard against which we measure it to determine if we ended up with minority rule.
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On November 07 2018 14:36 Introvert wrote:If Walker holds I will be even happier after tonight. Another person the left hates, maybe able to squeak it out. Dems do what the out party does in midterms, while the Senate look good, and the state level is alright for the GOP and well. 2020 has a lot of red states, but they are very red, and in presidential election years, they will prob stay that way. with a president like trump, many were hoping a wipe out ala 2010. not so. meanwhile Democrats running as moderates won lots of red seats. the presidential race, however, isnt set up that way. I'm so interested in how the next two years go on. if trump can hover at 45%ish percent... for some context https://twitter.com/jabeale/status/1059973986526920704
Its somewhat interesting that Kennedy and Nixon are the only other Presidents in this period where the valence on seat shifts in the House and Senate have been opposed. I wonder if there's any particular reason for this that can be uncovered.
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It many European countries, "correction representarives" is given to make the parlament represent the popular vote. It mainly bnefits small parties, so there is usually a threshold of 4-6% to get them, and the formula is usually quite complicated.
I am sure this could be implemented in the US as well, and it would solve a lot of democratic problems, including "wasted" votes.
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On November 07 2018 16:36 Kyadytim wrote:Show nested quote +On November 07 2018 16:14 pmh wrote:On November 07 2018 13:37 ghrur wrote:On November 07 2018 13:30 Plansix wrote:On November 07 2018 13:25 ghrur wrote:
It's actually really scary that the House of Representatives, the chamber aimed to be representative of the people, shows something like +8% of the votes in favor of Democrats while their house majority will be something around +3-4%. Doesn't seem very... representative. Honestly, Idk why geography should play into House elections and have such a large impact. Really, that should be left to the Senate. The states control their districts, not the federal government. The states elect their representatives and send them to the house/senate. And yes, that system is super flawed and leads to abuse like we see today. There is a push at in a number of states to have independent commission set the districts. It's not just because of the state level. The national level is flawed too. California has 12.15% of the country's population, but only 11.5% of the representatives. The current system basically has Californian voters giving away their voting powers to low population states even in the one chamber that's supposed to be representative of the populace. Basically... >435 please. Its even worse in the senate,which arguably is more powerfull then congress. Sort of gerrymandering by nature,lots of democrats live in california or nort east part of usa. Both sides can be happy i guess though the democrats probably did hope for more,The senate kinda hurts. Maybe this isnt such a bad outcome overall. The "natural gerrymandering" inherent in the senate is a pretty serious long-term issue. Based on the population changes of the states, some projections have republicans regularly winning a majority (or maybe it was a supermajority) of the senate while only receiving a third of the total votes by mid century. More immediately, the problem is that because of these issues even if you ignore gerrymandering and the various voter suppression things republicans are accused of, democrats reasonably believe that the existing system is rigged against them and their interests. Steps that increase democrats' trust in the system being fair will push republicans to believe that democrats just rigged the system against them. Even if you take Trump and his rhetoric out of the equation, the United States' democracy is under a lot of stress in ways that are both not sustainable and getting worse. Long term, this is probably going to break the country unless liberals are willing to live as second class citizens when it comes to voting power or conservatives willingly give up some of the disproportionate voting power the current system has given them. Alternatively, the US population gets more evenly distributed somehow. Show nested quote +On November 07 2018 16:30 Introvert wrote:On November 07 2018 16:14 Kyadytim wrote:On November 07 2018 15:39 Introvert wrote:On November 07 2018 15:22 ChristianS wrote:On November 07 2018 15:09 Introvert wrote:On November 07 2018 14:51 ChristianS wrote:On November 07 2018 14:36 Introvert wrote:If Walker holds I will be even happier after tonight. Another person the left hates, maybe able to squeak it out. Dems do what the out party does in midterms, while the Senate look good, and the state level is alright for the GOP and well. 2020 has a lot of red states, but they are very red, and in presidential election years, they will prob stay that way. with a president like trump, many were hoping a wipe out ala 2010. not so. meanwhile Democrats running as moderates won lots of red seats. the presidential race, however, isnt set up that way. I'm so interested in how the next two years go on. if trump can hover at 45%ish percent... for some context https://twitter.com/jabeale/status/1059973986526920704 If we're interpreting public opinion, why not use popular vote totals rather than number of seats changed? Otherwise you could just be reading how tough a map it was, how gerrymandered it was, how many seats they had to lose, or some similar confounding factor. because that isnt how we do elections? seems like a hard concept for some. also any popular vote result that doesnt account that CA has a primary system where the top two can be Democrats doesnt matter anyways. and trump at 45 is based on recent polls. again, this election looks a lot like a regular midterm, besides the Senate. on to the next fight. I feel good about where we are anyways. the most radical of the Democrats lost most races, while the moderates won. should be a good lesson going forwards. and expect the GOP to learn from the Democrats on the fundraising, I'm sure that put many of these people over the top. GOP dont let the Democrats be the best st something for long. But you're not talking about how we do elections, you're talking about whether voters repudiated Trump's agenda. CA issues aside, popular vote is the most straightforward way to answer what the voters thought. Net seat change is really weirdly roundabout - the number is just as affected by how poorly the minority party did last time as how well they did this time. In the extreme case Republicans could have won every seat last time, and Democrats could flip 217 (!) seats. By your measure that would be the biggest repudiation of the President's agenda of all time - and yet they wouldn't even have taken a majority! The "typical midterm" line is strange too, considering a "typical midterm" is a repudiation of the President's agenda. Maybe it's not a record-breaking repudiation, but at a bare minimum if voters favored the opposition party by 8 points, it's almost tautological to say that reflects them opposing the party in power. you haven't made the case for why the national total should matter at all. there are hundreds of individual elections. to determine if there is the national vote matters you have to work out if that fact affected anything. the fact that people are voting in local elections matters. I'm sure you can argue for the national vote mattering, but it's not self-evident, at least in most cases. The national vote total is a better reflection of that nebulous concept called "the will of the people" than the ratio of actual winners, because first past the post across a series of parallel elections can cause the percent of offices won to diverge from the percent of votes won. You should be making the case that the results of our antiquated system of apportioning offices based on frequently redrawn geographic areas is a better way of measuring what voters actually want than just looking at the total number of votes, not the other way around. wait, do you know what I am arguing? I am arguing that election results matter more. you just identified the problem. the "will of the people" only has one tangible metric: elections. as the saying goes " all politics is local" and that's just we saw. people dont vote in a national vote, they vote for and against specific candidates. aggregate votes mean far less than actual results. btw, in 2010 when dems got stomped they were strangely silent on total votes. in fact I think obama after a midterm also said something like "those of you who voted I hear you. but the 2/3rds of you who didnt vote, I hear you to." disconnected. certainly didnt teach him a thing. This absolutely does not apply to presidential elections, and considering how polarizing Trump has been, it's questionable if it applies to federal elections as well. Anyway, I'm disagreeing with you. If somehow the US became so gerrymandered that democrats win 52% of the vote but republicans take 60% of the house seats (I'm looking at you, Wisconsin), is the will of the people for republicans to have a substantial majority? To put this in more abstract terms, if you have three adjacent districts that two for party A and one for party B with a total of 1,000 people, but 600 of them live in one district, 300 in a second, and only 100 live in the other. Across the 1,000 people, 700 of them voted for candidates of party B, while 300 voted for candidates of party B. If you only look at election results, party A won, but if you look at what people wanted, it was policies of party B. 550 people living in the large district who voted for the party B candidate are justifiable going to be unhappy acceding to a government that is implementing policies that they explicitly voted against. tl;dr, You're arguing that we should use the results of a flawed system that enables minority rule as the standard against which we measure it to determine if we ended up with minority rule.
you are arguing that we should add votes for different people together. I dis.iss this out of hand because when. repubs win popular votes no one says jack all.
maybe I'll come to this later or next time I see it. it's too late now and tomorrow is a work day. but no, counting all votes and pretending they are all the same across the country is much weaker than actual results. but I consider it a good and amusing sign that we've already moved from happiness about winning the House to whining about other things.
also, looks like most of the ca gop seats that were competitive could go red. I hope that keeps up. good work ca gop, these are Clinton voting seats. keeping 3 of 5 would be awesome. that being said, ca counts slow and generally gets bluer... so who knows.
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5930 Posts
The other problem I have with that Twitter thread is that it completely ignores any context beyond seats gained/seats lost. Every major senate or governor Dem loss (Georgia, Texas, Florida, North Dakota, Missouri) in these midterms were in states where Trump was close to or above 50% in approval rating. With the internet and recent events, the majority of those races were practically made into national elections in terms of attention.
What it suggests is a lot of Republicans are voting for Trump and the opposite for Democrats. Its also why the Midwest/Great Lakes region snapped back so hard for the Democrats, handing them a lot of trifectas in the process, because Trump is pretty much underwater in every single one of those states. Except for Ohio, which he's above water in.
House seats are obviously a lot different and dependent of local demographics and individualised messages. Beto might have got pounded statewide but there's zero doubt that he carried several Texas House seats. Zero chance Hurd loses his seat if Beto wasn't driving up turnout.
Edit: Turns out US electoral infrastructure is bad and they don't know if Hurd is losing or winning right now.
On November 07 2018 16:37 TheYango wrote:Show nested quote +On November 07 2018 14:36 Introvert wrote:If Walker holds I will be even happier after tonight. Another person the left hates, maybe able to squeak it out. Dems do what the out party does in midterms, while the Senate look good, and the state level is alright for the GOP and well. 2020 has a lot of red states, but they are very red, and in presidential election years, they will prob stay that way. with a president like trump, many were hoping a wipe out ala 2010. not so. meanwhile Democrats running as moderates won lots of red seats. the presidential race, however, isnt set up that way. I'm so interested in how the next two years go on. if trump can hover at 45%ish percent... for some context https://twitter.com/jabeale/status/1059973986526920704 Its somewhat interesting that Kennedy and Nixon are the only other Presidents in this period where the valence on seat shifts in the House and Senate have been opposed. I wonder if there's any particular reason for this that can be uncovered.
JFK got a good populaity bounce from the conclusion of the Cuban Missile Crisis. That probably helped him gain seats in the Senate and bandaid losses in the House. Dunno about Nixon.
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On November 07 2018 17:12 Introvert wrote:Show nested quote +On November 07 2018 16:36 Kyadytim wrote:On November 07 2018 16:14 pmh wrote:On November 07 2018 13:37 ghrur wrote:On November 07 2018 13:30 Plansix wrote:On November 07 2018 13:25 ghrur wrote:
It's actually really scary that the House of Representatives, the chamber aimed to be representative of the people, shows something like +8% of the votes in favor of Democrats while their house majority will be something around +3-4%. Doesn't seem very... representative. Honestly, Idk why geography should play into House elections and have such a large impact. Really, that should be left to the Senate. The states control their districts, not the federal government. The states elect their representatives and send them to the house/senate. And yes, that system is super flawed and leads to abuse like we see today. There is a push at in a number of states to have independent commission set the districts. It's not just because of the state level. The national level is flawed too. California has 12.15% of the country's population, but only 11.5% of the representatives. The current system basically has Californian voters giving away their voting powers to low population states even in the one chamber that's supposed to be representative of the populace. Basically... >435 please. Its even worse in the senate,which arguably is more powerfull then congress. Sort of gerrymandering by nature,lots of democrats live in california or nort east part of usa. Both sides can be happy i guess though the democrats probably did hope for more,The senate kinda hurts. Maybe this isnt such a bad outcome overall. The "natural gerrymandering" inherent in the senate is a pretty serious long-term issue. Based on the population changes of the states, some projections have republicans regularly winning a majority (or maybe it was a supermajority) of the senate while only receiving a third of the total votes by mid century. More immediately, the problem is that because of these issues even if you ignore gerrymandering and the various voter suppression things republicans are accused of, democrats reasonably believe that the existing system is rigged against them and their interests. Steps that increase democrats' trust in the system being fair will push republicans to believe that democrats just rigged the system against them. Even if you take Trump and his rhetoric out of the equation, the United States' democracy is under a lot of stress in ways that are both not sustainable and getting worse. Long term, this is probably going to break the country unless liberals are willing to live as second class citizens when it comes to voting power or conservatives willingly give up some of the disproportionate voting power the current system has given them. Alternatively, the US population gets more evenly distributed somehow. On November 07 2018 16:30 Introvert wrote:On November 07 2018 16:14 Kyadytim wrote:On November 07 2018 15:39 Introvert wrote:On November 07 2018 15:22 ChristianS wrote:On November 07 2018 15:09 Introvert wrote:On November 07 2018 14:51 ChristianS wrote:On November 07 2018 14:36 Introvert wrote:If Walker holds I will be even happier after tonight. Another person the left hates, maybe able to squeak it out. Dems do what the out party does in midterms, while the Senate look good, and the state level is alright for the GOP and well. 2020 has a lot of red states, but they are very red, and in presidential election years, they will prob stay that way. with a president like trump, many were hoping a wipe out ala 2010. not so. meanwhile Democrats running as moderates won lots of red seats. the presidential race, however, isnt set up that way. I'm so interested in how the next two years go on. if trump can hover at 45%ish percent... for some context https://twitter.com/jabeale/status/1059973986526920704 If we're interpreting public opinion, why not use popular vote totals rather than number of seats changed? Otherwise you could just be reading how tough a map it was, how gerrymandered it was, how many seats they had to lose, or some similar confounding factor. because that isnt how we do elections? seems like a hard concept for some. also any popular vote result that doesnt account that CA has a primary system where the top two can be Democrats doesnt matter anyways. and trump at 45 is based on recent polls. again, this election looks a lot like a regular midterm, besides the Senate. on to the next fight. I feel good about where we are anyways. the most radical of the Democrats lost most races, while the moderates won. should be a good lesson going forwards. and expect the GOP to learn from the Democrats on the fundraising, I'm sure that put many of these people over the top. GOP dont let the Democrats be the best st something for long. But you're not talking about how we do elections, you're talking about whether voters repudiated Trump's agenda. CA issues aside, popular vote is the most straightforward way to answer what the voters thought. Net seat change is really weirdly roundabout - the number is just as affected by how poorly the minority party did last time as how well they did this time. In the extreme case Republicans could have won every seat last time, and Democrats could flip 217 (!) seats. By your measure that would be the biggest repudiation of the President's agenda of all time - and yet they wouldn't even have taken a majority! The "typical midterm" line is strange too, considering a "typical midterm" is a repudiation of the President's agenda. Maybe it's not a record-breaking repudiation, but at a bare minimum if voters favored the opposition party by 8 points, it's almost tautological to say that reflects them opposing the party in power. you haven't made the case for why the national total should matter at all. there are hundreds of individual elections. to determine if there is the national vote matters you have to work out if that fact affected anything. the fact that people are voting in local elections matters. I'm sure you can argue for the national vote mattering, but it's not self-evident, at least in most cases. The national vote total is a better reflection of that nebulous concept called "the will of the people" than the ratio of actual winners, because first past the post across a series of parallel elections can cause the percent of offices won to diverge from the percent of votes won. You should be making the case that the results of our antiquated system of apportioning offices based on frequently redrawn geographic areas is a better way of measuring what voters actually want than just looking at the total number of votes, not the other way around. wait, do you know what I am arguing? I am arguing that election results matter more. you just identified the problem. the "will of the people" only has one tangible metric: elections. as the saying goes " all politics is local" and that's just we saw. people dont vote in a national vote, they vote for and against specific candidates. aggregate votes mean far less than actual results. btw, in 2010 when dems got stomped they were strangely silent on total votes. in fact I think obama after a midterm also said something like "those of you who voted I hear you. but the 2/3rds of you who didnt vote, I hear you to." disconnected. certainly didnt teach him a thing. This absolutely does not apply to presidential elections, and considering how polarizing Trump has been, it's questionable if it applies to federal elections as well. Anyway, I'm disagreeing with you. If somehow the US became so gerrymandered that democrats win 52% of the vote but republicans take 60% of the house seats (I'm looking at you, Wisconsin), is the will of the people for republicans to have a substantial majority? To put this in more abstract terms, if you have three adjacent districts that two for party A and one for party B with a total of 1,000 people, but 600 of them live in one district, 300 in a second, and only 100 live in the other. Across the 1,000 people, 700 of them voted for candidates of party B, while 300 voted for candidates of party B. If you only look at election results, party A won, but if you look at what people wanted, it was policies of party B. 550 people living in the large district who voted for the party B candidate are justifiable going to be unhappy acceding to a government that is implementing policies that they explicitly voted against. tl;dr, You're arguing that we should use the results of a flawed system that enables minority rule as the standard against which we measure it to determine if we ended up with minority rule. you are arguing that we should add votes for different people together. I dis.iss this out of hand because when. repubs win popular votes no one says jack all. maybe I'll come to this later or next time I see it. it's too late now and tomorrow is a work day. but no, counting all votes and pretending they are all the same across the country is much weaker than actual results. but I consider it a good and amusing sign that we've already moved from happiness about winning the House to whining about other things. also, looks like most of the ca gop seats that were competitive will go red. I hope that keeps up. good work ca gop, these are Clinton voting seats. keeping 3 of 5 would be awesome.
I don't even know where to go with talking to you. This isn't whining about other things. I wasn't happy that democrats took the house. I breathed a sigh of relief because republicans holding the house while democrats won the popular vote by a significant margin would accelerate civil unrest. It's still a problem.
Republicans are currently benefiting from a system that enables minority rule. They don't stop benefiting from it when they win the popular vote, they just end up with larger majorities than one would expect. In 2016, the gop won 49.1% of the votes for house seats to dems 48.0%, but ended up with 241 seats to 194, a 55.4% to 44.6% advantage.
Minority rule is minority rule. If a clear majority of voting Americans cast votes for candidates that support policies such as guaranteeing health coverage for everyone, and end up with a government controlled by candidates who promised to repeal laws that guarantee health coverage, you don't see a problem with that?
If a majority of voting Americans voted for candidates who promised to protect firearm ownership and ended up with a congress controlled by candidates who'd promised to restricting firearm ownership, the right would be screaming about tyranny. If Democrats were passing laws to make gun licenses unacceptable ID for voting but allowing bus and train passes, or reducing the number of polling places in rural districts, people on the right would be venting their frustrations by talking about armed uprising.
Republican success at winning numbers of seats does not send the message that people want Republicans in charge. It can't. It sends the message that Republicans have succeeded in abusing and breaking the electoral system, because that's the only message it can send.
To use a Starcraft analogy, the Republican party is playing Starcraft on a machine with hacks installed. They didn't install the hacks, but they're lying about having them and refusing to turn them off, and instead leveraging them for every advantage they can get. And then they're pointing to their ladder ranking and head to head winrates as evidence of how good they are at the game. Obviously, Democrats don't want to use ladder rankings or head to head winrates as a measure of comparative skill, because Republicans are hacking. And the underlying issue that I keep talking about is that Democrats are getting sick of playing Starcraft against a hacker.
In this analogy, playing Starcraft against someone is participating in the same democratic process with an opposing party and respecting its outcomes.
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On November 07 2018 13:30 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On November 07 2018 13:25 ghrur wrote:
It's actually really scary that the House of Representatives, the chamber aimed to be representative of the people, shows something like +8% of the votes in favor of Democrats while their house majority will be something around +3-4%. Doesn't seem very... representative. Honestly, Idk why geography should play into House elections and have such a large impact. Really, that should be left to the Senate. The states control their districts, not the federal government. The states elect their representatives and send them to the house/senate. And yes, that system is super flawed and leads to abuse like we see today. There is a push at in a number of states to have independent commission set the districts.
The history as to why the representation between only two parties is as jacked up as as it is falls back to 2010 and REDMAP, republicans made huge inroads at all levels of state and federal government that year. They secured seats in many swing states right before redistricting. So the alot of states that did not already have independent commissions making districts had heavy republican gerrymandering which the courts have been trying to settle to this day.
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Congratulations on retaking the house of representatives. That republican gain in the senate though.. How do people reinstate Ted Cruz? Sigh..
Meanwhile Trump is solidifying his feudal regime. 'They owe him'. More blurring of checks and balances to come next years. I think he takes 2020 without any good challengers from the blue side. It's going to be a long ride.
At least he'll probably have to show his tax returns. It'll be good to see how broke he is in reality compared to his billionaire image that is false. Or to see how much he's earning now through breaking ethical codes in the presidency. Though with how easily NYT's story about his earlier decades of tax evasions seems to be forgotten, it will probably be dust in the wind too.
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I don't understand fox news. At this point are talking heads like David Asman just drinking kool-aid or actually has agency which would confuse me even more.
There is something to be said that the republicans that tried to distance themselves from trump like john culberson lost. So you could try to be pointing things like that but to say they owe him is just boot licking for the sake of it.
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Ah, the end of Scott Walker, that union buster, anti labor asshole.
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Michigan turned out well for Dems, Ohio not so much. I'll take it 
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On November 07 2018 20:40 farvacola wrote:Michigan turned out well for Dems, Ohio not so much. I'll take it
Iowa and Kansas should be a concern for republicans.The trade tariffs are hurting farmers there.On the other hand trade deficits of 800 billion $ a year are unsustainable.It is a shame things have gotten to this stage.
My opinion a bad recession is coming.Dems should win in 2020, just a question of whether its an establishment like a Warren or a socialist nut like Cortez (I realise she is too young but someone like her - Sanders is too old i think).I’m leaning socialist nut, I can’t see the dems getting away with rigging the primaries again.
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If the demographic trends hold i think in 10-20 years we might see big democratic states go "No taxation without FAIR representation".
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On November 07 2018 21:39 Silvanel wrote:
If the demographic trends hold i think in 10-20 years we might see big democratic states go "No taxation without FAIR representation".
You think Illinois will be solvent in 20 years?
Hahaha!
Lowest credit rating of any state
Municipal bonds junk rating
Pension funds totally broke
Anyone follow economic news here?
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The fact that Kansas voted a Democratic woman in as governor is indeed one of the most noteworthy outcomes, I think.
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Interesting results in the end both sides have wins and things to be concerned about.
Republicans expanding Senate control is great for GOP, but losing many governor spots should concern them, as well as key states that Trump would need in 2020 (WI/MI/PA) going markedly blue last night. Also dealing with a D controlled House will be interesting for Trump for sure.
Dems winning House is great for them but was not as big of a wave as it probably should have been given the Trump landscape and post 2016 election wind at their backs. They’ll also need to take a close look at how their national media darling candidates all lost as well (O’Rourke, Gillum, Abrams) and what it means for 2020
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EPT
