The margin of error in this case is an example of how utterly negligible 2% or so of the entire United States population is skewed. This is such a relatively insignificant number, the point was to show this is not an issue of "majority vote" and "minority rule". It is a comparison that it has not enough of a factor to be weighted as extreme or important and there was not even a close race. The fact that the Trump administration won 46% of the popular vote to the Hillary campaign's 48% shows there's not a significant enough difference to bring issue here, hence the 2000 election example used which was closer by both popular and electoral vote; there's no issue at all here. Had the 2008 election been 52% to 45% with an electoral victory for the McCain campaign despite massive losses under popular vote, there might be an argument; that never happened however.
The bare fact that the minority won looks bad no matter how you cut it. Saying that it could be worse is irrelevant.
And no, it is not that easy to communicate or sway voters because of density alone. It is far easier to influence 100,000 people in a single city than it is across an entire county of 100,000 people. This might be the 21st Century where this is easier than ever, but that does not solve the issue of concentration, because availability isn't the issue; mass is easier to market to. Getting more people together in a single place is easier to pander to and talk to their collective situation rather than make pock marks across multiple areas, especially when those people are predisposition to be more sympathetic or interested in your platform or product. This is generally true with just about any marketing.
I simply disagree with this entirely. Rural America is about as uniform, possibly even more uniform, than the urban demographic. It's easy as shit to sell things to.
The system already is a product of legitimacy. It is written, codified, documented, and implemented, no less it includes a history to base itself on that is not part of the modern era. This is not a new process, neither is it one that is not in part a representative democratic process. It is meeting its own criteria, with people crying foul now only because they lost, not because there seems to be any legitimacy to the argument. It is continuing to behave and be validated by its design and its historical track record.
By legitimacy, I mean people's faith that the system achieves what we are taught it is supposed to achieve. We say we are democratic, we are a government of the people and all that, so it is the voting side of representation that legitimizes it. Things that fly in the face of this statement delegitimize the system. It's sort of like a Pope having sexy parties all the time. A lot of politics comes down to illusion, and when the illusion is broken, the system breaks down.
People are undisciplined. If the general population is so hopeless that they cannot be bothered to cast their vote if they win or lose, they more or less lose the right to complain about it. I still voted for the Romney campaign despite the fact I knew the Obama administration was likely to sweep the electoral and popular vote again, which it did. That is discipline and execution of duty. My vote "might not have mattered", but I exercised my right and did what I was supposed to do, regardless of my feelings on it. I do not accept the thought that "peoples votes do not matter". They do, especially en masse.
I don't accept the idea that votes don't matter either, I generally try to do as much with a vote as I theoretically can, but I see how people get disillusioned and give up on the system.
The electoral voters are supposed to represent their people in ideology. Again, if I was a voter for my district, as much as it would hurt me to vote for the Clinton campaign personally, my objective is to represent the interests of the area I am responsible for as unbiased and impartial as I can be. I have a duty to perform, not a moral obligation to challenge what is "unjust". I would be out of my lane if I did that.
We don't really need to expand on this because we both agree on this particular point.
While this time I believe the electoral vote to have been in my personal favor, again I cannot fault it for the previous two elections which I Was strongly against. It did what it was designed to do and I resigned myself to going on with my life and keeping tabs on what I hoped would be a turning tide; which it was. This is not a matter of "technicality", this is a matter of the system doing exactly what it was meant to do. If anything that should legitimize the system because it worked as intended. Again, if the Trump administration had lost by 5%, they might have an argument, but this is a clear cut case that the United States' approach to voting for leaders works within its design. The popular vote was relatively close, especially if we look back to recent events and then further back. A 2% win of popular vote is very, very little.
This was not what the system was meant to do. It is an unfortunate quirk. The founding fathers tried to design a system where states were the basis of the electoral system, but where also too the system would be weighted so the popular vote followed the electoral (hence why it isn't one state one vote). This worked better at a time when the population was generally rural, but as the system becomes increasingly urban and in an uneven way, we get these quirks. I will note that they have happened before, and people have generally been pissed back then too. 1876 is pretty comparable actually, in the sense that the partu that won the popular but lost the electoral basically stated they wouldn't accept the election and the electoral winner had to make concessions before they could proceed into office.
I do have an interesting thought to throw out, something that has been more of a back-of-the-mind concern as a Kansas Citian watching the the political upheavals of the neighboring state of Kansas in the Brownback years - one quirk of the electoral system is that it technically rewards Republican governments for damaging economic growth in their own states. If St Louis were to catch back up, and Kansas City to keep on growing, Missouri will probably become a blue state. Whereas if the state government keeps its cities from developing, the Republican Party pretty much has the state in the future, at least in federal elections. Now, I don't think my state government is doing that - it's too busy trying to root out gays and strippers - but the idea that a party would have political motivation to depress its own citizens, and that I just happen to live in a perfect state for that strategy to be enacted, sorta makes me paranoid to be honest.
There's the problem, and makes my point of discussion things moot. I can't recommend you a goddamn book to read...videos are the best and easiest way to express a point. Especially when you yourself had a heart attack when I typed too much stuff. Well how can one remove thousand of words of typing? A video. But I digress.
I've said a billion times, I ain't got time. I'm kinda outnumbered here and I work for a living besides. I can't take on the entire Republican party all at fucking once. And youtube political videos suck a couple of rotten balls.
And No, because the popular vote has never been a thing. And no, the city thing is not a fallacy. If we only did a popular vote, they WOULD pander to cities. Because they could promise that city endless benefits, and make other states pay for them. Why wouldn't they do that? I won't argue the electoral college is perfect or flawless, but if you are arguing to remove it entirely for a popular vote. I reject that ideal for a very good reason.
Like you've done before and I will correct you again. We aren't a democracy. That is a clear distinction needed to be made. We do not get things done by mob rule and presidents have not all been elected 'because of representation of beliefs' because like I said, many people don't even know who believes what. And it's not just kids and teens either. There's no way I can convince you that the electoral college is needed, if I can't even provide evidence that you'll look at. So what's the point? Probably is none.
Missouri isn't about to pay for California and NYC.
It's more or less the other way around. Which makes sense, because the modern economy is highly specialized and it is hard to specialize in a rural environment, so that [
urlhttps://i0.wp.com/www.brookings.ed… sort of thing[/url] is sorta obvious. So the goofy meme that cities are sucking all the super-productive country folk dry is silly. More often than not rural Americans are just sucking socially acceptable government teats, like agricultural grants or social security.
Also, I didn't say we are a direct democracy, so your shoehorning that point in is impertinent. Democracy is the legitimizing factor in the government. Those are two different things. Because a monarchy claims divine election as the reason it exists does not mean it is now the kingdom of god. In the same sense, because we are a Republic that uses democracy as its claim to legitimacy doesn't mean we are a direct democracy. At the same time, the democratic elements are still our legitimizing factor.
Okay. Gotta take a breath. Let's move on.
@The Harbinger of Ferocity@mdk@Vilageidiotx
didn't get to see your meme, bro
I get that the point of the system is to make it less democratic, partly because there was some merit to it. I just think its reasonable to question whether it becomes unreasonable to give a voter from Montana so much more impact than one from New York. Id rather see more lower case D democracy than less. It will be interesting to see what the demographics look like a hundred years from now will we have rotten borough style states? Because there is no way the system will change, why would the three people who live in Wyoming sign off on a constitutional amendment that would make their vote less important.
Yeh, it probably won't change this is true. Not immediately anyway. We've went through politically tense periods in our history before, and we've came out of them. We're very possibly rocking our way into the seventh party system (i think that is the number anyway), and that could
possibly bring a more United USA. Fuck if I know. The future is wild. Four years ago none of us would have guessed we'd already have President Camacho.
Upsides: DOW up 16%. NASDAQ up 19.5%. Drilling & energy sector way up. Regulations way down. 600,000+ new jobs added. Unemployment down to 4.3%. Business and economic enthusiasm way up- record levels.
Downsides: HE'S MEAN!!!!
DOW and NASDAQ are temporary readers most of the time since they measure what is going on in the market today. If you actually look at those charts over long term periods (google is giving me five years) it isn't exactly special. Regulations being down is just a simple way of saying we are going to do the Great Recession again. Unemployment has been following a trend line down since 2010 and isn't super special either. The oil and energy sector being up is sort of obvious because the Republicans favor those industries so naturally they'll be super stoked, I mean, anybody could have predicted that.
On the flip, honestly, I don't think he is super mean. He's opened the door for some nasty fuckers, but that's the chaotic result of him being a shit communicator.
This is my age-long frustration with both parties I guess. Democrats focus on all the wrong shit, and Republicans just fuck shit up. All we can do is watch the fallout and hope we keep our asses.
Timemaster
