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The Democrats founded the KKK

Southern Democrats founded the KKK. And when the Civil Rights Act passed, those same people switched to the Republican party. And that party welcomed them.

So name all those politicians who switched parties?

You want literally thousands of names. How 'bout you actually learn about the subjects you claim to know about?

If you'd love a couple archtypical examples, there's Strom Thurmond, and you can compare his route to that of former KKK grand wizard Robert Byrd.

If you'd like another example, here's South Carolina's presidental voting history. You'll note they voted Democrat from post-reconstruction until 1964. After that, they've voted for Republicans except for the anti-Nixon-aftermath of 1976.

So odd that there's such a change if there was no realignment.

Why didn't the black vote change until the 80s if the realignment was earlier?

Actually, the "black vote" changed approximately around 1972. There's also the fact that the realignment took a while to completely work itself through since individual politicians were better or worse.

Even if we take this all at face value, that means that the Democrats were the racists when that meant literal slavery and the KKK

You realize the KKK isn't gone, right? Also, there's quite a few people y'all need to clean out if you're going to attempt to claim purity.

were the racists when racism in the days when the media tells us that milk and the OK hand sign are racist dogwhistles and white people are bad because they have white privilege.

Well, if you actually paid attention to race you'd realize there's just a teeny-tiny mountain of problems you're ignoring to belittle black people. But hey, that's not exactly surprising.

Yea! The election process is too democratic! Who cares what the ordinary people of the country wants! They should only elect who I want to be in charge!

Thats what you just wrote. I just took all the bush beating out of it.

Uhm, you do know that over 2.8mil more people voted for Hillary right? Right?

The people voted for Hillary. The electoral college voted for Trump.

https://www.270towin.com/2016_...

The people don't vote for the President. The electors in the electoral college do.

Will you ever get tired of winning a race that nobody runs?

Yea! The election process is too democratic! Who cares what the ordinary people of the country wants! They should only elect who I want to be in charge!

Thats what you just wrote. I just took all the bush beating out of it.

Uhm, you do know that over 2.8mil more people voted for Hillary right? Right?

The people voted for Hillary. The electoral college voted for Trump.

https://www.270towin.com/2016_...

Like Obama and coal? Regardless what you think of coal, he did what you fear in a hypothetical.

I spoke with a small business owner who used coal to heat his factory. The equipment to meet the new environmental compliance was too expensive for his budget, and he couldn't move to gas due to coal costing $1,000 and gas costing over $5,000 per month to provide the same heat.

That roll-out should have accounted for this and included things like on-site solar installation aid, subsidies to install commercial-scale heat pumps, and so forth. Many far-more-liberal candidates would look at such a thing and simply decide the factory owner shouldn't come crying to the government for a bail-out.

Easier and more expedient to change the elections and system to favor me and use the courts to force my agenda. That'll show 'em! If you can't beat 'em change the rules.

You seem to have issue with the rules working against your favor half the time, yet don't seem to want the system to stabilize something other than an extreme.

Do you know what happened in 2016? A lot of Democratic voters were ready to vote Bernie. Yes, that's right: Bernie Sanders. They'll get behind Cortez if she runs, I'd wager. Here's the trick, though: those far-left progressives? They have a habit of taking their ball and going home when their candidate loses.

That's right: if it was Bernie-Trump, the Democratic party loyalists would have voted and the Bernie progressives would have voted. Trump would have been crushed. Can you imagine how that would have panned out?

Now, if each party had nominated two candidates by STV, the strong Bernie supporters would have been essentially tossed out in the first round: the Democrats would have nominated Bernie by a slim margin through the progressive vote, and those progressive voters would have lost all voting power for the next round. The remaining Democrats would have nominated Hillary.

The same would have happened with the Republicans, likely nominating Donald Trump (who got 42% of the votes!) plus Kaisch or Rubio (I'd assume Rubio).

Why two? Why not a Condorcet primary?

The primary represents those registered to the party. That mean the middle-Democrat versus the middle-Republican. A double- or triple-nomination elects the farther-extreme and more-centrist candidate, or the distribution three ways. Independent American voters and those in the swing set thus have nominees closer to their own views, and can vote for them in the General Election if they so choose.

There's a large span of "Never Trump" Republicans.

Do you know what that means?

It means a lot of middle-ground Republican votes went to Hillary. Given the span of candidates, those may very well have voted Rubio-Hillary, with others voting Hillary-Rubio, and others voting Bernie-Hillary or Hillary-Bernie. Hillary would have still defeated Bernie in the Condorcet election; Trump would have lost.

The question, then, comes down to this: Can Marco Rubio beat Hillary Clinton under those circumstances?

All of Trump's voters would have likely voted Trump-Rubio. Many of Rubio's voters may have gone Rubio-Trump or Rubio-Hillary, but that still puts them down as a vote against Hillary and for Rubio. Many of Hillary's votes were, in fact, the Rubio-Hillary set who went absolutely against Donald Trump--which means Hillary is losing those votes in the Condorcet model, but more Democrats would have turned out to vote Bernie-Hillary and so would have made her a stronger candidate as well.

I would most estimate that Hillary would have won, simply by gaining the Bernie votes in the Condorcet general to replace those lost to Marco Rubio; although I could be underestimating the number of less-extreme Conservatives who pitched for Hillary just to avoid Trump. Polling suggests Hillary would have gotten 265 votes ag

However, if you are referring to the time frame from 1880 - 1948, then your argument might be valid.
  http://www.270towin.com/states...

Nope, that would be under a DIFFERENT party system. Two of them at that.

More to the point, the population of Florida has radically changed. In 1880, it was under 300,000. Even in 1920, it was still under a million. By 1950, it was three times that.

Ah, Air Conditioning.

Florida was a blue state? Since 1952 Florida has voted for the Republican candidate 12 times in the last 17 elections.

However, if you are referring to the time frame from 1880 - 1948, then your argument might be valid.
http://www.270towin.com/states...

She won her current home state of New York, and her home state of Illinois (also Reagan's home state) by pretty large margins. He took 31 decisively, she took 20 decisively, Maine is split, but he has a slight margin.

http://www.270towin.com/maps/s...

http://www.realclearpolitics.c...

The problem is he wasn't an DNC poster child. He didn't "pay his dues". He was a wildcard that they didn't want to deal with and look where that got them.

That's just not true. With the right selection of states, you'd only need the votes from 16% of the area of the US to get to electoral majority. Someone did the calculations for 2012, and here's an updated map for 2016. Now do those maps look representative of small states to you?

You do know there's a middle ground that a lot of us support, right?

Yes, I do, that's why I don't buy the right-wing's narrative about a mandate. Trump BARELY won on a technical victory. Hardly convincing.

Yet you can see them crowing over it. A landslide. Huh. Of negative ~3 million votes.

Ditch winner-take-all electoral voting and move to a proportional system. Then you'll have a decently representative election while still blunting the effects of peer pressure and groupthink in extremely populous locales.

We can do better than that, IRV would also be beneficial, as would methods to increase turnout.

I wonder if anyone has looked to see if Trump would have won without winner-take-all?

Depends on how you scale it, and you still have the Wyoming Problem which creates a distortion, as well as the question of third-parties(enough to swing the margin in some states), and I don't consider the district-based proportions to be fair at all, they're way too gerrymandered.

But yes, you can see it eventually, when the data comes in.

If you want a quick spreadsheet version based on state population...Clinton has ~256.4 electoral votes, Trump has 250.4, Gary Johnson, Jill Stein, Evan McMullin get whats left, some 31 electoral votes, probably 20 to Garry Johnson.

she won the popular vote by ~2 million, right? You also know what voter suppression is and that only 50% turned out, right? Check what your house is made of (glass) before throwing stones please.

I am not throwing any stones. I am sorry if you have to worry about your house after this election. I have nothing to do with it, I did not vote in this election nor any other US election, as I am not even in the US.

I just wrote in a discussion that I have an impression that the world has changed. You are absolutely right, - two million votes, 50%, doping, hackers, what's not, - this is my point exactly. This is how it works.

The current constitution of the United States does not rely on popular vote, as it wants to consider the opinion of all the states. Look at this map and an explanation: http://www.270towin.com/maps/2...

So you prefer Kang over Kodos, then?

Seriously - they both suck, and are singularly unqualified for the job. Most of us with more than two working neurons know this.

The problem is two-fold:
1) There is a huge mass of low-information sheep who don't really bother with politics (either by ignorance, stupidity, or laziness), but will nonetheless do whatever they're told by their ideological 'betters', mostly to look good in the eyes of their social peers - hell, there's even a satchel of soundbites and pre-digested 'debate' techniques that are supplied to them.

2) There are also two masses of howling hyper-partisan ideologues who each abandon logic and reason in order to 'win' at all costs.

The sad part is, the aforementioned masses comprise the majority of our populace. I'm certain that the US isn't the only country that has this affliction, but as the US is among (if not atop the list of all) world leaders, what happens here will affect the rest of the planet one way or the other. I fear that no matter who gets it, it will be to the detriment of us all.

I know on my part? I happily voted third-party (yes, I'm that disgusted with both the major candidates), but I live in a state where the outcome is pretty much predestined (thanks to the hivemind living in Portland, Salem, and Bend), so I could have written in my dog as President, and no one will notice here.

We never had good news before so what is the difference?
Sure back in the 1950-1990 we had our "trusted" news on TV. However they tried to cover a Whole days of activity around the world in 1 hour. The first half covering Local and State News, the second half World and National News. So much of the coverage didn't spend more than a few minutes on the topic.
The News Papers had much more depth to them. However during newspapers popularity there was a much lower literacy rate, so a good portion of the population couldn't fully read them, and just read what they could. So the headlines. Which is much shorter than a Twitter post.
Political Bias, Corruption and special interests were just as part of the media in the past as it is now, it may be worse, however why would the media cover its own problems that will make you lose faith in it.
For example look at the Electoral college results for presidential elections You see nearly solid political US results during during the time of TV News. Then with the internet and cable news you see the Maps becoming more diverse.
While it may because of more polarization, but it is also because people are getting exposed to different ideas thus need to make their decisions from more data.
The Media liked JFK, so his indiscretions were ignored. The Media didn't like Nixon so he was kicked out of office. TV News made it easy to push an agenda.

Now Social media had made politics very messy. And some good and bad has come out of it. People are less trustful of the establishment candidate and want someone more outside. Hence the Trump and Sanders supporters, who feel that they had been told what to do for so long that they are trying to get a new voice free of this is how it is done. But this also creates the Problems with the Trumps and Sandars who are focused on particular issues and not the general complexities of running a government. Because of the wide coverage they can just talk about what drive the person passions and gloss over the details and complexities, as social media being more end user driven will focus on the reasons why they are voting for or against a person. While the more formal News did try to keep the information more broad and civil.

The information I gave was taken from the following page:

http://www.270towin.com/2016-s...

Please note that it is for the year 2016, not 2014

Democrats used to be the party of the South... democrats used to love nothing more than segregation and related issues.

That didn't change until the civil rights movement where in the whole race issue stopped being a viable way to get votes.

Suddenly the democratic party became the party of diversity. Pretty much overnight. You can look at the regional voting maps and in the span of about two election cycles the democrat party completely flipped with the republicans.

Look at it:
http://www.270towin.com/histor...

So... if some demographic is dying off for the republicans, you can expect that they'll just find someone else and adjust the platform as required.

I think part of the reason you're seeing more of a libertarian bent to the party is because that is the future. The older generations weren't so keen on that stuff.

You could well see the republicans slow identify less with the title "conservative" as well as attracting the generation that found that comforting becomes less profitable.

The big fight looming for the republicans is between the evangelical religious right and the socially liberal libertarians.

We'll see what happens but that is going to be an ugly fight unless it is handled very carefully.

Both groups have gotten along under the conservative banner because they're both conservative in their own way. The religious right is socially conservative. Things they believe are largely similar to what most of America believed 100 years ago. And libertarians are fiscally conservative in that their notion of economic policy is generally more acceptable from a traditional american perspective.

But... if the conservatives go away... the religious right and the libertarians likely can't coexist under the same tent.

This will drive portions of both as well as anything remaining to jump to the democrats if that is more agreeable. Also there are portions of the democrat party that might easily jump to the republicans if the republicans change what they are to any extent. A lot of democrats only stay away from the republicans because of the religious right or because the libertarians. If either of those factions is ejected, suppressed, or switches sides, then there is a good chance that some portion of the democrat party might switch in sympathy.

What you can expect in the end is that both parties should represent a credible half of the political power.

Notions of either party annihilating the other are ignorant. That is not how these systems work. Either party can get annihilated for a few elections at most. Eventually what happens is that the party down in support will horse trade until it gets enough votes that it feels it is credible.

Both parties are doing this against each other all the time. Which is why support wobbles around.

The other thing you have to appreciate is that politics often change as people grow older. People that vote one way or say they vote one way at point X in their lives might vote another at point Y.

In the end, a good thing about first past the post is that it does tend to encourage all political energies to polarize and thus you rarely get one party that dominates uncontested especially on the national level.

Virginia is overwhelmingly Democratic at the state executive level, so it's not that surprising that they voted Democratic at the Federal level. Most of VA's population growth over the past decade has been in the urban and suburban NOVA and Tidewater areas as well, which are Democrat voting strongholds.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

PA has been voting Democratic for decades, so it seems neither of us know WTF you're talking about.
http://www.270towin.com/states...

Really, this guy got two up votes? Perhaps you should do some research on The Civil Rights Act of 1964, Dixiecrats and how there was an amazing shift (scroll to bottom) in which party southern states supported in the late 60's.

Attempting to claim modern day Republicans were responsible for spearheading Women's and Civil Rights is laughable.

Hello, when you refer to Americans please don't conflate a meddling, incompetent President with Americans in general. Most Americans did not actually vote for that guy, he's lost most credibility in the US and among allies and other countries around the world. Thanks.

Technically, no American president has been voted for by "most Americans" since large swaths of the people have been excluded from voting for various reasons (age, gender, race, or ethnicity, depending on the time period). But your attempts to reference the current president fall short since he got the overall majority of the vote in both elections (52% in 2008 and 51% in 2012).

2012 General Election Turnout Rates, Voting-Age Population, 240,926,957, The final popular vote totals were 65,899,660 for Obama-Biden;
65,899,660 / 240,926,957 = 27.3%, pretty blantant that most Americans didn't vote for Obama. In fact with Obama's margin of only 4,967,508,that's close to expected voter fraud rates, it's hard to say how many votes he actually won by.

Likewise yourself. A mostly lifelong (until the last 3 years) resident, born and raised in Ballard. And I can tell you unequivocally that Seattle is extremely Democrat biased, and the city leans heavily to the left - exceedingly so. Puget Sound as a whole closely mirrors Seattle, and that makes the entire State lean so far Democrat that it exceeds the national margin of GOP/DEM voting results by several points. Washington is one of the most solidly Democrat states there are. Outside the rural districts in Eastern Washington (with extremely limited population), Washington is a guaranteed Democrat win - every election.

You'll have to bear in mind that the democrats and republicans used to occupy very different areas of the map then they do now, and philosophically were opposite from where they are now with respect to each other. Somehow the worst of the KKK and its ill all stayed in the same general zone. Just look at any interactive electoral college map (this one works fine) and look back in time for 1956, 1960, and 1964 to watch the change. The southern democrat as they existed then, do not exist now, but the people who made up that population still do.
And now, somehow, republicans think everyone will believe that they're not the same as they were 4, 8, or 12 years ago, when really, demographically, they trace their roots to slavery, and their policies have long followed.

• 2012: D+16
• 2008:D+17
• 2004:D+8
• 2000:D+5
• 1996:D+13

Hell, let's compare it to Mississippi (same website), which I think we can all agree is a quintessential red state.

• 2012:R+11
• 2008:R+13
• 2004:R+20
• 2000:R+17
• 1996:R+5

In short, WA is ignored because there is essentially zero chance it will go R in a national election (regardless of its Congressional delegation's composition). Are you being deliberately obtuse?

Ok. Let's try it a different way.

First go here: http://www.gasbuddy.com/gb_gastemperaturemap.aspx

Note the following states which have plentiful electoral votes: CA, WA, NY, MA, IL, MI, IN, all states that if flopping over to the Red side of this map: http://www.270towin.com/ helps demonstrate the effect.

Red states that aren't in question (mostly the US South and central Midwest from TX to ND), are enjoying inexpensive fuel today. It will continue to be the case for the next four weeks. Inflicted pain will hopefully make voters in the expensive states "throw the bums out".

Go ahead and track the gas prices for the past three months, and note the same expense distribution, generally (there is some flux, but there has to be some). Monopolies want friendlies in office. Drill, baby, drill, is their motto (among others).

Ummmm . . . hate to break it to you, but Texas is about as far from a swing state as possible. It is as predictably (as in, double-digit lead) red as New York, Maryland, and California are blue. Texans haven't voted for a Democrat for President since 1976. See http://www.270towin.com/states/Texas

Huh? CA voted for Reagan twice. So "California's electoral votes have gone Democrat for like 30+ years" is completely wrong. ("from 1952 through 1988, Republicans won every presidential election", http://www.270towin.com/states/California).

Though the governor is now a Democrat, Schwarzenegger was a Republican. Stop cherry picking.

Dude, did you brain wake up today?

Need I say more?

You'd be wrong. Texas is actually a purple state, slightly blue, that was gerrymandered into a red state.

(but then I'm a Texan)

Yeah. That's why the state has voted for Republican candidates in statewide elections like senator or presidential for the last... what... 30 years?

Actually, I looked it up. The last time Texas went Democrat in a Presidential election was 1976.

Now, sure. No state is completely red or completely blue, but I think it's safe to say that Texas is has a LOT more red than blue mixed in.

I also like http://www.270towin.com/
Click on states and turn them red and blue. You can have your own prediction.

http://www.electoral-vote.com/
Is an easy place to get lots of poll data, so you can decide which states are clicked red and blue easy.

btw:
If you follow the poll data for the other 49, ignore the VA&NH poll data and call VA red (reasonable considerring history), and NH red (weak, but not silly)

You can get a tie. 269-269. It's very close right now.