Again, the winner of the World Series is the team that wins four games, not the team that scores the most runs total.
And again, the winner of the presidency is whomever the EC votes for. It's really amazing how you keep making my point for me, over and over.
The EC was founded specifically to give the right of the electors to vote for whomever they pleased, and there has been no effort to change this on the federal level (which is the only one that matters in terms of legitimacy of the votes.) It is thus entirely fair and playing by the rules to try to convince the electors to defect. Don't like it? Then you should be arguing for a change in the rules. Just be prepared to deal with some people who believe the EC should be reformed in other ways as well, like removing this anachronistic compromise that gave the agrarian slave states (now red states) more power than was rightfully theirs.
If you're hoping for a simple popular majority election of presidents, I guarantee you that's not going to happen.
Depends on how the next generation of leftists decide to behave. If they can consolidate power a bit in blue states, they could use states' rights (a cause I'd often wished to see championed on the left as well, but we've seen very little beyond marijuana) to make life quite a bit more difficult for the red states. For all the many flaws of the Democrats, the Republican base is not nearly as sturdy foundation as most people think; it's built on the idea of getting the working class to vote against welfare... whist blue states subsidize the crap out of red states. Social conservativism is the glue that holds it all together, but it's widely recognized (especially with the election of Trump) that this glue is waning in importance.
it doesn't endear the president or his party to the people when he repeatedly ignores their will and presses through legislation that the people don't want.
People want healthcare reform even stronger than Obamacare is, not less strong. You think the Republicans want *that*? Obamacare was just a modified form of Romneycare, after all. People also want stuff like minimum wage increases (which I strongly oppose) and more taxes on the rich (which I'm ambivalent about--it depends on the details of implementation), but the point is people are not by and large huge fans of this corrupt, halfassed and hypocritical economic "conservativism" Republicans have been peddling since Reagan. The myth has been selling itself for a long time, but it'll correct itself if/after the left ever gets its act together.
The other possibility is Trump and his followers might reform the right directly, but you'll forgive me if I say this no longer sounds remotely realistic. It would've been interesting if Trump turned out to be extremely clever and principled (merely using bombast to cleverly troll the media), but that ship sailed months ago.
The Democratic establishment is arrogant, elitist, corrupt, and out of touch.
Never said they weren't; however, the numbers imply pretty strongly that it's more the elitism and the related lack of strength/interest that have them hurting in recent years. The Republican party may hold the keys to the kingdom today, but they are living on borrowed time. Trump himself obviously shows just how out of touch they were.
Also worth noting Republicans are at least as corrupt as most Democrats and oppose many genuinely free-market ideas (I was particularly impressed by their blatant efforts to prevent Tesla from selling direct to consumers for no reason other than to protect the rent-seekers running dealerships). The main difference is they have remained energized, engaged and willing to fight tooth and nail.
Anyway, once again, turnout numbers show pretty clearly that the main issue among Democrats is a lack of strength/interest. Some of that stems from perceptions of corruption (especially regarding Hillary), but a lot of it is people being turned off by all the weakness and capitulation. If the right is going to insist that the left is being aggressive and unreasonable, they might as well actually be a bit aggressive, eh?
Trump saying Judge Curiel's inability to impartially judge him in a court of law is the very definition of racism.
Except no, no it isn't. It's not reasonable to ask or demand someone to recuse themselves for such a reason, but an allegation of bias has nothing to do with asserting that someone is biologically inferior. Replace "Mexican" (even though he wasn't, yes yes) with "Scientologist" or "Democrat" or something if you can't see how the internal logic of his statement, unreasonable as it was, had nothing whatsoever to do with racism.
One of the biggest reasons the left bungled this election, from what I could see, is they latched onto and doubled down on the stupidest possible attacks whilst ignoring the mountain of very reasonable and rational attacks at their disposal. The fact that the right wing wasn't able to see clearly on this matter either, shows just how hypersensitive politicians as a whole are when it comes to blunt, ill-conceived remarks that haven't been put through the PC filter. Almost no one I talked in person to thought the "Mexican" judge comments were racist, not even the former Obama supporters.
The rest of your post is, I'm sorry to say, undisguised witch hunt politics. I'm against it when people like McCarthy do it and I'm against it now. There were plenty of policy-based issues you could have focused on--specific immigration issues and a rejection of police reform--but instead the left chose to focus on sound bites and guilty-until-proven-innocent SJW tactics, and it turns out few people outside of the echo chamber care about this.
Not even Latinos really cared, it turned out. I think I read somewhere that Trump got more of the Hispanic vote than Romney did?
Well, if they're not up for it now, the Democrats have 4 years to prepare a hardball strategy to vote as they deem fit
Funny you should say that, as the majority around here have been describing such a thing as "rigging the system" and arguing that the only fair thing for them to do is elect Trump.
As far as being realistic goes, the left as it stands probably doesn't have the guts or the endurance to try to kick up a fuss now, but they absolutely should be working on a long term strategy to influence the EC and to flood the media with messages about how the imbalance in electoral representation is a leftover compromise to give the former slave states extra power. Inspiring an actual revolt might be unrealistic, but they could probably kick up enough of a fuss to push through a reformation that would prevent (or at least make highly unlikely) this sort of thing from happening again.
Both candidates went into the race knowing the rules. Crying baby over the "popular vote" is like saying you should've gotten the 100m dash gold medal because your running style was more beautiful. Might be true, but you knew that it's a race for speed when you started.
That's a fine position to take as long as you'd take the exact same position if the Democrats began openly trying to appeal to the EC to elect some third party (like, I don't know, McMullin.)
Fact: Trump hasn't won anything yet. If you are going to use the "them's the rules" argument, you should be aware of the full ramifications of that stance. The actual rules of the game aren't what you or any of these pro-EC shills seem to think they are. Trump isn't legally entitled, at a federal level, to a goddamn thing from the electors and if the Democrats had any balls whatsoever they'd be making a bigger deal out of this.
Except no, he didn't win anything yet. He will not have won until the EC votes him in.
That's the entire point to this story. If you want to argue "the popular vote isn't relevant!" than we are perfectly free to do the same regarding the electoral pledges. None of it matters; only the EC votes do.
The one system that was perfectly okay before the election, until now that some of the losers are sore and are concocting all the justifications for a change in the outcome after-the-fact?
A lot of people were against it before the election and are against it now, but this is still a lame cop-out. Either you are for this system, in which case Donald J. Trump has not technically won *anything* yet and electors are free (at the federal level) to vote for whom they please, or you are in favor of EC reform (of some sort.) Which is it? There is no middle option.
A reformation requires federal-level effort and possibly an amendment. 29 states are not allowed to unilaterally decide to change how this country elects presidents.
Unlike Napoleonic legal systems, where such changes are codified precisely in laws, in the US, such changes take place gradually and involve custom and common law.
Common law doesn't overturn black letter law. There is no precedent supporting the revocation of the rights of electors, at a federal level, to vote for whomever they please.
As for the Democrats playing dirty or unreasonable over the last 8 years, eh, you're on you're own there. I have a hard enough time convincing my own father to stick his head outside of the Fox news bubble once in a while. What the Republicans have done with debt negotiations and Scalia's replacement and trying to repeal Obamacare every 10 minutes and use of the filibuster is unprecedented in American history. I don't begrudge the Democrats using any "nuclear option" in the face of such obstructionism.
Democratic supporters are committing acts of violence in the streets, and Democrats are making death threats to Republican electors. How much more aggressive do you want Democrats to become?
The Democratic establishment is not aggressive (everything compared to the Republicans, of course), only individual Democrats and other leftists are. This disconnect will probably be rectified at least somewhat over the next decade.
Both sides stand to benefit here if the Democrats grow a spine. The weak vs. the stupid has not led to be terribly effective balance of power in this country, and just to wrap this up in a little bow, one of the reasons to pursue electoral college reform (in a highly aggressive manner, if need be) is to partially remove the disproportionate amount of power that the stupid are wielding. This won't lead to a permanent collapse of the Republican party, but it will accelerate its evolution.
Again with the either misrepresenting or misunderstanding what I'm saying.
Elector revolts are built into the system. It isn't "changing" anything at all to work towards encouraging an elector revolt. The broader point in doing is to drive home the fact that the EC is broken in more ways than one and encourage reform.
If you want to argue that the EC is perfect as-is, you should know exactly what it is you're arguing for. (And frankly the Democrats need to be a hell of a lot less timid about playing hardball.)
You see no difference between electors breaking their oath and electing Hillary and the electors upholding their oaths and voting for Trump. Or even breaking their oath and picking one of their own as President. Or picking some random person to be President. All of those outcomes are the exact same to you.
Electors from 21 states took no such oaths. Furthermore, for the other 29, we did not agree as a nation to impose oaths or other requirements to not change votes. If specific states chose to impose requirements, that's their business. Specific states are not allowed to unilaterally change the rules for electing the president. (That's the very definition of unconstitutional.)
And the rules are this: The electoral college decides. Period. If you think that isn't good enough, you should be campaigning for EC reform.
No, what you are trying to do is create a false equivalency between popular votes and electoral votes. They are not equal.
So why are you apparently arguing that a marginal victory in the popular vote in certain states should override the federally recognized right of electors to change their minds and cast their vote freely?
The electoral college would be no less "working fine" if electors decided to elect Hillary. And the Democratic establishment really should stop being so magnanimous and pursue strategies like this. It's not like the Republicans have been respecting any customary civilities these past 8 years.
How did you just type those two paragraphs without realizing that doing away with the EC will guarantee the straight unalloyed democracy and mob rule you seemingly wish to avoid?
How did you just read multiple posts of mine and fail to realize that the point is to use one ridiculous anachronistic bit of the EC (elector revolts) as a battering ram against disingenuous jackasses who argue that another ridiculous bit of the EC (giving more weight to rural voters and permitting losers of the popular vote to win the presidency) is perfectly fine?
The options are these: you think that the EC is a-ok as it currently stands, or you think it needs reform of some sort (we can debate and disagree on the details later.) I'm arguing against the ahistorical and despicably self-serving middle position here. That's all I've been doing the entire time.
Which just goes to show how provincial you are.
Take a look at the continental-states-by-county maps from the recent election. Notice that the blue counties are, almost without exception, the sites of large cities or suburbs, while the red counties are primarily rural.
Was that supposed to be some kind of point against me? Pretty sure that's my entire point. Giving country bumpkins extra sway in Washington isn't a great idea.
This isn't a partisan thing to say, either. The Republican party is long overdue for an overhaul. If a sane right wing emerged in this country, not only might I vote for it at least occasionally but they will presumably/hopefully cause the left in this country to get its act together.
"Whatever Alexander Hamilton's reasons for doing anything probably had little to do with anyone else's view.
Go find me someone who viewed the electoral college differently... specifically, go find someone of that era who believed the EC was (rightly) there to give the slave states more AND that electors should never revolt. That's the argument you're implying here.
In case this isn't clear by now, I'm not a fan of electors revolting in principle but neither am I a fan of rural citizens being given further undue weight in Washington. And if people refuse to consider EC reform on the latter point, the former point should be used as a battering ram until they consider it. Whatever the purpose of the EC was and is, "whatever helps the Republicans the most" is not a reasonable interpretation. In fact, you cannot possibly get a more bad-faith interpretation than that.
I think Clinton would be an even worse president than Trump.
Well for establishing bias up front, I did not support Hillary but generally urged people around here to vote third party in lieu of the Trump protest vote.
And post-election, I have to say that statement seems pretty hard to support given a Republican congress and senate with likely multiple open SCOTUS seats. We KNOW the sorts of damage Trump is almost certain to be involved in, whereas the damage Hillary could do would be fairly minimal, with presumably independent-leaning compromise judges appointed to the SCOTUS. The handful of things Trump will likely be better on[1] than Hillary doesn't seem likely to make all that big of a difference.
That said, I'm interested much more in the long term than I am the next 4 years. I'd be interested in seeing this pursued for the sake of EC reform much moreso than to try to remove Trump, which would be a huge mess even with the best possible starting assumptions.
I don't think it would be "unfair" for them to start deliberating and altering the outcome of the election (the presidency isn't a prize, reward, or birthright, much as Clinton supporters don't seem to understand that), it would simply be foolishness.
But it wouldn't be "altering" the outcome. This is the newspeak I was alluding to that irks me so much. "HILLARY LOST. THOSE ARE THE RULES." Well no, sorry, she didn't lose anything yet. She won the popular vote. If she then went on to win the EC vote through a revolt, as unlikely as such a prospect is, there would be no reasonable tone of voice in which one could say that she lost something. On the contrary, she would have won fairly by the rules and by intuition. Specifically, she would have used one dumb anachronistic rule to nullify another dumb anachronistic rule, resulting in the winner actually getting to ascend to the presidency.
Pro-EC apologists like to imply it's a misrepresentation to pretend the popular vote even means anything. Sure, that's a fine interpretation... so long as you're willing to admit that (by the same logic) Trump hasn't won anything yet. It's up to the EC to decide.
In any case, all of this is academic. There isn't going to be an elector revolt.
Mainly because the Democrats are still run by cowards. Call me a starry-eyed optimist, but there's a slim yet significant chance that might not be the case any more in 4-8 years, and (assuming there's still resistance to all talk of abolishing this slave / agrarian era bullshit), there are a few ways I can think of that they could play hardball.
The best potential upsides to a Trump presidency are the changes it could potentially bring about on both the right and left.
electors weren't selected to deliberate or make decisions;
In terms of their original purpose, yes they were. Too lazy to dig deep but I found this earlier:
Alexander Hamilton: "A small number of persons, selected by their fellow-citizens from the general mass, will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated [tasks]."
About half the states already have laws against faithless electors.
They have punishments for faithless electors. As a country, we have not agreed on any major reformation of how our presidents are elected. Their votes are thus valid, as far as the country as a whole is concerned. If you want to change how the president is elected, you are free to argue for reform.
But in the mean time, as long as this obscenely stupid "what about the farmers!" logic is used to suppress EC reform, I'm all for the blue states reworking their extradition laws to (among other things) provide safe havens for rebel electors. Yeah yeah, just let me dream...
1. Very hard to say because he's such an inconsistent spazz, but it's conceivable he'll end up doing better on foreign policy and immigration, though he'd first need to admit that a physical wall is moronic.
The focus on this is a laughable anachronism. The urban/rural split was a big deal when large sections of the populace was agrarian and famines still happened from time to time. Also, the free vs. slave state thing was a big deal. Nowadays, there is no reasonable argument for making one vote from a rural citizen more power than one vote from an urban citizen.
The former slave states can keep their two senators apiece, that's fine, but there's no reasonable justification for giving them more influence over the presidency.
Remember the Florida recount in the Bush-Gore 2000 election? If the presidency were decided by the POPULAR vote you'd have to recount the WHOLE COUNTRY in such a situation.
Um, no. He won by half a million on the nationwide stage, i.e. not enough to demand a recount. Everyone admitted that Gore won. Furthermore, even if this weren't the case, saving us the trouble of a larger recount has got to be one of the worst conceivable justifications I've ever heard for the electoral college.
You misunderstand the purposes of the electoral college.
Obviously, it is you who misunderstand it: Alexander Hamilton described the framers' view of how electors would be chosen, "A small number of persons, selected by their fellow-citizens from the general mass, will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated [tasks]."
There are probably better quotes available if I kept digging but that's the essence of it right there: electors were NOT expected to blindly vote based on their constituency. There's a reason why there is no such compulsion at the federal level, and no compulsion at all in 21 states. Many of the founding fathers were distrustful of straight, unalloyed democracy.
The electoral college was one of many firewalls designed to prevent mob rule from getting out of control.
The basis for them asking is that they're sore losers. Just look at the reasoning being used in support of subjugating the actual election results through an electoral college revolt. Yes, technically they can vote for whomever they want. The basis of them rejecting the vote counts in their respective states is hogwash.
Again, this betrays your ignorance or intellectual dishonesty. Hillary hasn't lost anything yet. She won the popular vote. It's up to the EC to decide whether or not she wins the presidency.
TThe basis of them rejecting the vote counts in their respective states is hogwash.
Yes, it's hogwash. But also the basis of granting citizens of Wyoming 4x more electoral representation than citizens of Michigan is hogwash. And someone winning the presidential vote by 2M people but still losing due to some slavery-era agrarian compromise bullshit is hogwash. These things are ALL hogwash, and reasonable people should not let people like the EC-apologist goons around here get away with calling only some of these things hogwash or implicitly/explicitly deny that the EC requires a reformation.
Death threats are stupid and self-defeating in multiple ways. Beyond that... well, I've said elsewhere that I generally agree on the "chaos" front, but at the same time this sabre badly needs rattling so that the pro-EC peanut gallery will eat some crow and admit that it needs reforming. If such an effort accidentally succeeds and elects Hillary, oh well. I'd risk that.
Presumably this is one of the reasons why that guy in Utah decided to jumped in the race at the last minute. (Although the scenario where Congress elected him due to no one garnering enough EC votes may have been a bit more likely.)
Regardless of the mechanism, it would be unprecedented, chaotic and highly problematic if a third party were elected... but if it were ever going to happen, now would be the time, eh?
Moreso than actually arguing for a revolt (like I said, I can see some strong arguments against it, in practice), I was interested more in using this issue as a counterpoint against these increasingly tiresome "hey, the electoral college makes perfect sense and isn't anachronistic at all! Don't blame me if you failed social studies!" people. The electoral college system is obviously in painful need of an overhaul and if they refuse to even talk about it, a sustained campaign to get electors to change their votes (not just in this election, but in all future elections, too) might just force people to realize how ridiculous this system is.
If people accidentally got Trump un-elected from overenthusiastic sabre-rattling, I can't say I'd be too annoyed... but that wasn't my primary goal. It's obscene that this system is still around. Should've been fixed after 2000 for sure.
The fact that one candidate got more votes than Trump is relevant mainly because we're being told to ignore it. I wasn't for either one (though I would've admittedly preferred to see Hillary win.)
The question is, do you support the electoral college system, or do you support some form of perversion?
FTFY
Elaborate?
The electors exercising their own judgment would not be a perversion. That's exactly how it was designed to operate... as a safety valve vs. hysterical mob rule and all that. I'm not particularly a fan of it in principle; I'm just looking for a little consistency from all of these smug 'electoral college fundamentalists' running around here lately.
So if the quirks of the electoral college mean that your candidate is elected despite receiving millions fewer votes, that's democracy. If the quirks of the electoral college mean that the person who received more votes is elected, that's rigging. Gotcha.
Do you realize how sad this sounds? Electors changing their vote is a feature, not a bug. THE SYSTEM WAS INTENTIONALLY DESIGNED TO GIVE THE ELECTORS FREE WILL. You want us to ignore the legal rights of the electors[1] that the founding fathers intentionally gave them, whilst respecting this ridiculous antiquated divide between city folk and country folk, as if a majority of the voter base in the south were still involved in agriculture or as if the slave vs. free state divide still existed. Or perhaps you have some other compelling reason why rural voters continue to be given more power than urban voters?
In actuality, both of these things were intentional parts of the EC and both are absurd anachronisms, but you want us to respect only the one that results in your candidate winning, whilst denouncing the other as "rigging".
1. That right remains *completely* untouched in at least 21 states, but even in the 29 remaining states they are, at a federal level, allowed to vote for whomever they please without prejudice, so it would be wildly inaccurate to refer to any of these electors switching as "rigging".
He is saying that, but more importantly he's trying to hijack the conversation away from the very interesting and relevant question of "So, are you a hypocrite or aren't you about this EC stuff?" back to these ancient talking points that have been used to deflect criticism away from the electoral college before even 2000.
Heh, the Trump-bots are out in force today, modding this flamebait and modding up all those non-sequitur cliches about "you know, if all we cared about was the popular vote then they wouldn't ever have to care about rural voters".
Rules are rules. If Trump supporters are allowed to handwave away concerns about the popular vote, then Hillary supporters should be able to handwave away concerns about the electors changing their votes.
Rules are rules. Under the rules the popular votes doesn't count. It's like saying the winner of the World Series is the team that scored the most run, not the team that won more games.
You on autopilot still? Or are you an astroturfing bot?
I'm agreeing with you! And the rules are the electors could elect Hillary Clinton for president if they felt like it. That's the main topic here. If your opinion of the EC is "rules are rules" then you shouldn't have any problem with this whatsoever, right? Citizens should be able to ask the electoral college to exercise their conscience to elect Hillary President and if they do so then that's fine because the rules allow that, right?
I would like to see your feet held to the fire for a bit, because the political views your comments imply are reprehensible.
Pretty sure you're over-extrapolating, whatever it is you think you're seeing. The broad points I'm making here is that the electoral college needs reformation. I've repeatedly said that I'm probably not for an actual, fully successful EC revolt at this time for various complicated reasons ("it would be chaos", for the short version), but rhetorically yes, these intellectually barren EC-apologists need to have their feet held to the fire.
But if you think that their feet shouldn't be held to the fire, i.e. people should be permitted to continue to assert there is nothing wrong whatsoever with the EC whilst simultaneously implying it would be illegal or unfair the system for electors to change their votes... well, that's something I find rather reprehensible. When a man lies, he murders some part of the world.
I don't see anything "hypocritical" about believing that the electoral college system is "fine and dandy as it is". As far as I'm concerned, I have always strongly opposed majoritarianism.
Well, are you in favor of an elector revolt or aren't you?
I'm all for having sensible checks on the power of mob rule (which I realize is not strictly synonymous with majoritarianism but there's a lot of overlap) but the problem is most checks against the power of mob rule are either ineffective (as I'd argue the EC is) or prone to all sorts of abuses that are usually worse than mob rule.
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Again, the winner of the World Series is the team that wins four games, not the team that scores the most runs total.
And again, the winner of the presidency is whomever the EC votes for. It's really amazing how you keep making my point for me, over and over.
The EC was founded specifically to give the right of the electors to vote for whomever they pleased, and there has been no effort to change this on the federal level (which is the only one that matters in terms of legitimacy of the votes.) It is thus entirely fair and playing by the rules to try to convince the electors to defect. Don't like it? Then you should be arguing for a change in the rules. Just be prepared to deal with some people who believe the EC should be reformed in other ways as well, like removing this anachronistic compromise that gave the agrarian slave states (now red states) more power than was rightfully theirs.
If you're hoping for a simple popular majority election of presidents, I guarantee you that's not going to happen.
Depends on how the next generation of leftists decide to behave. If they can consolidate power a bit in blue states, they could use states' rights (a cause I'd often wished to see championed on the left as well, but we've seen very little beyond marijuana) to make life quite a bit more difficult for the red states. For all the many flaws of the Democrats, the Republican base is not nearly as sturdy foundation as most people think; it's built on the idea of getting the working class to vote against welfare... whist blue states subsidize the crap out of red states. Social conservativism is the glue that holds it all together, but it's widely recognized (especially with the election of Trump) that this glue is waning in importance.
it doesn't endear the president or his party to the people when he repeatedly ignores their will and presses through legislation that the people don't want.
People want healthcare reform even stronger than Obamacare is, not less strong. You think the Republicans want *that*? Obamacare was just a modified form of Romneycare, after all. People also want stuff like minimum wage increases (which I strongly oppose) and more taxes on the rich (which I'm ambivalent about--it depends on the details of implementation), but the point is people are not by and large huge fans of this corrupt, halfassed and hypocritical economic "conservativism" Republicans have been peddling since Reagan. The myth has been selling itself for a long time, but it'll correct itself if/after the left ever gets its act together.
The other possibility is Trump and his followers might reform the right directly, but you'll forgive me if I say this no longer sounds remotely realistic. It would've been interesting if Trump turned out to be extremely clever and principled (merely using bombast to cleverly troll the media), but that ship sailed months ago.
The Democratic establishment is arrogant, elitist, corrupt, and out of touch.
Never said they weren't; however, the numbers imply pretty strongly that it's more the elitism and the related lack of strength/interest that have them hurting in recent years. The Republican party may hold the keys to the kingdom today, but they are living on borrowed time. Trump himself obviously shows just how out of touch they were.
Also worth noting Republicans are at least as corrupt as most Democrats and oppose many genuinely free-market ideas (I was particularly impressed by their blatant efforts to prevent Tesla from selling direct to consumers for no reason other than to protect the rent-seekers running dealerships). The main difference is they have remained energized, engaged and willing to fight tooth and nail.
Anyway, once again, turnout numbers show pretty clearly that the main issue among Democrats is a lack of strength/interest. Some of that stems from perceptions of corruption (especially regarding Hillary), but a lot of it is people being turned off by all the weakness and capitulation. If the right is going to insist that the left is being aggressive and unreasonable, they might as well actually be a bit aggressive, eh?
Trump saying Judge Curiel's inability to impartially judge him in a court of law is the very definition of racism.
Except no, no it isn't. It's not reasonable to ask or demand someone to recuse themselves for such a reason, but an allegation of bias has nothing to do with asserting that someone is biologically inferior. Replace "Mexican" (even though he wasn't, yes yes) with "Scientologist" or "Democrat" or something if you can't see how the internal logic of his statement, unreasonable as it was, had nothing whatsoever to do with racism.
One of the biggest reasons the left bungled this election, from what I could see, is they latched onto and doubled down on the stupidest possible attacks whilst ignoring the mountain of very reasonable and rational attacks at their disposal. The fact that the right wing wasn't able to see clearly on this matter either, shows just how hypersensitive politicians as a whole are when it comes to blunt, ill-conceived remarks that haven't been put through the PC filter. Almost no one I talked in person to thought the "Mexican" judge comments were racist, not even the former Obama supporters.
The rest of your post is, I'm sorry to say, undisguised witch hunt politics. I'm against it when people like McCarthy do it and I'm against it now. There were plenty of policy-based issues you could have focused on--specific immigration issues and a rejection of police reform--but instead the left chose to focus on sound bites and guilty-until-proven-innocent SJW tactics, and it turns out few people outside of the echo chamber care about this.
Not even Latinos really cared, it turned out. I think I read somewhere that Trump got more of the Hispanic vote than Romney did?
Well, if they're not up for it now, the Democrats have 4 years to prepare a hardball strategy to vote as they deem fit
Funny you should say that, as the majority around here have been describing such a thing as "rigging the system" and arguing that the only fair thing for them to do is elect Trump.
As far as being realistic goes, the left as it stands probably doesn't have the guts or the endurance to try to kick up a fuss now, but they absolutely should be working on a long term strategy to influence the EC and to flood the media with messages about how the imbalance in electoral representation is a leftover compromise to give the former slave states extra power. Inspiring an actual revolt might be unrealistic, but they could probably kick up enough of a fuss to push through a reformation that would prevent (or at least make highly unlikely) this sort of thing from happening again.
Both candidates went into the race knowing the rules. Crying baby over the "popular vote" is like saying you should've gotten the 100m dash gold medal because your running style was more beautiful. Might be true, but you knew that it's a race for speed when you started.
That's a fine position to take as long as you'd take the exact same position if the Democrats began openly trying to appeal to the EC to elect some third party (like, I don't know, McMullin.)
Fact: Trump hasn't won anything yet. If you are going to use the "them's the rules" argument, you should be aware of the full ramifications of that stance. The actual rules of the game aren't what you or any of these pro-EC shills seem to think they are. Trump isn't legally entitled, at a federal level, to a goddamn thing from the electors and if the Democrats had any balls whatsoever they'd be making a bigger deal out of this.
That's the entire point to this story. If you want to argue "the popular vote isn't relevant!" than we are perfectly free to do the same regarding the electoral pledges. None of it matters; only the EC votes do.
The one system that was perfectly okay before the election, until now that some of the losers are sore and are concocting all the justifications for a change in the outcome after-the-fact?
A lot of people were against it before the election and are against it now, but this is still a lame cop-out. Either you are for this system, in which case Donald J. Trump has not technically won *anything* yet and electors are free (at the federal level) to vote for whom they please, or you are in favor of EC reform (of some sort.) Which is it? There is no middle option.
Unlike Napoleonic legal systems, where such changes are codified precisely in laws, in the US, such changes take place gradually and involve custom and common law.
Common law doesn't overturn black letter law. There is no precedent supporting the revocation of the rights of electors, at a federal level, to vote for whomever they please.
As for the Democrats playing dirty or unreasonable over the last 8 years, eh, you're on you're own there. I have a hard enough time convincing my own father to stick his head outside of the Fox news bubble once in a while. What the Republicans have done with debt negotiations and Scalia's replacement and trying to repeal Obamacare every 10 minutes and use of the filibuster is unprecedented in American history. I don't begrudge the Democrats using any "nuclear option" in the face of such obstructionism.
Democratic supporters are committing acts of violence in the streets, and Democrats are making death threats to Republican electors. How much more aggressive do you want Democrats to become?
The Democratic establishment is not aggressive (everything compared to the Republicans, of course), only individual Democrats and other leftists are. This disconnect will probably be rectified at least somewhat over the next decade.
Both sides stand to benefit here if the Democrats grow a spine. The weak vs. the stupid has not led to be terribly effective balance of power in this country, and just to wrap this up in a little bow, one of the reasons to pursue electoral college reform (in a highly aggressive manner, if need be) is to partially remove the disproportionate amount of power that the stupid are wielding. This won't lead to a permanent collapse of the Republican party, but it will accelerate its evolution.
Again with the either misrepresenting or misunderstanding what I'm saying.
Elector revolts are built into the system. It isn't "changing" anything at all to work towards encouraging an elector revolt. The broader point in doing is to drive home the fact that the EC is broken in more ways than one and encourage reform.
If you want to argue that the EC is perfect as-is, you should know exactly what it is you're arguing for. (And frankly the Democrats need to be a hell of a lot less timid about playing hardball.)
You see no difference between electors breaking their oath and electing Hillary and the electors upholding their oaths and voting for Trump. Or even breaking their oath and picking one of their own as President. Or picking some random person to be President. All of those outcomes are the exact same to you.
Electors from 21 states took no such oaths. Furthermore, for the other 29, we did not agree as a nation to impose oaths or other requirements to not change votes. If specific states chose to impose requirements, that's their business. Specific states are not allowed to unilaterally change the rules for electing the president. (That's the very definition of unconstitutional.)
And the rules are this: The electoral college decides. Period. If you think that isn't good enough, you should be campaigning for EC reform.
No, what you are trying to do is create a false equivalency between popular votes and electoral votes. They are not equal.
So why are you apparently arguing that a marginal victory in the popular vote in certain states should override the federally recognized right of electors to change their minds and cast their vote freely?
The electoral college would be no less "working fine" if electors decided to elect Hillary. And the Democratic establishment really should stop being so magnanimous and pursue strategies like this. It's not like the Republicans have been respecting any customary civilities these past 8 years.
How did you just type those two paragraphs without realizing that doing away with the EC will guarantee the straight unalloyed democracy and mob rule you seemingly wish to avoid?
How did you just read multiple posts of mine and fail to realize that the point is to use one ridiculous anachronistic bit of the EC (elector revolts) as a battering ram against disingenuous jackasses who argue that another ridiculous bit of the EC (giving more weight to rural voters and permitting losers of the popular vote to win the presidency) is perfectly fine?
The options are these: you think that the EC is a-ok as it currently stands, or you think it needs reform of some sort (we can debate and disagree on the details later.) I'm arguing against the ahistorical and despicably self-serving middle position here. That's all I've been doing the entire time.
Which just goes to show how provincial you are. Take a look at the continental-states-by-county maps from the recent election. Notice that the blue counties are, almost without exception, the sites of large cities or suburbs, while the red counties are primarily rural.
Was that supposed to be some kind of point against me? Pretty sure that's my entire point. Giving country bumpkins extra sway in Washington isn't a great idea.
This isn't a partisan thing to say, either. The Republican party is long overdue for an overhaul. If a sane right wing emerged in this country, not only might I vote for it at least occasionally but they will presumably/hopefully cause the left in this country to get its act together.
"Whatever Alexander Hamilton's reasons for doing anything probably had little to do with anyone else's view.
Go find me someone who viewed the electoral college differently... specifically, go find someone of that era who believed the EC was (rightly) there to give the slave states more AND that electors should never revolt. That's the argument you're implying here.
In case this isn't clear by now, I'm not a fan of electors revolting in principle but neither am I a fan of rural citizens being given further undue weight in Washington. And if people refuse to consider EC reform on the latter point, the former point should be used as a battering ram until they consider it. Whatever the purpose of the EC was and is, "whatever helps the Republicans the most" is not a reasonable interpretation. In fact, you cannot possibly get a more bad-faith interpretation than that.
I think Clinton would be an even worse president than Trump.
Well for establishing bias up front, I did not support Hillary but generally urged people around here to vote third party in lieu of the Trump protest vote.
And post-election, I have to say that statement seems pretty hard to support given a Republican congress and senate with likely multiple open SCOTUS seats. We KNOW the sorts of damage Trump is almost certain to be involved in, whereas the damage Hillary could do would be fairly minimal, with presumably independent-leaning compromise judges appointed to the SCOTUS. The handful of things Trump will likely be better on[1] than Hillary doesn't seem likely to make all that big of a difference.
That said, I'm interested much more in the long term than I am the next 4 years. I'd be interested in seeing this pursued for the sake of EC reform much moreso than to try to remove Trump, which would be a huge mess even with the best possible starting assumptions.
I don't think it would be "unfair" for them to start deliberating and altering the outcome of the election (the presidency isn't a prize, reward, or birthright, much as Clinton supporters don't seem to understand that), it would simply be foolishness.
But it wouldn't be "altering" the outcome. This is the newspeak I was alluding to that irks me so much. "HILLARY LOST. THOSE ARE THE RULES." Well no, sorry, she didn't lose anything yet. She won the popular vote. If she then went on to win the EC vote through a revolt, as unlikely as such a prospect is, there would be no reasonable tone of voice in which one could say that she lost something. On the contrary, she would have won fairly by the rules and by intuition. Specifically, she would have used one dumb anachronistic rule to nullify another dumb anachronistic rule, resulting in the winner actually getting to ascend to the presidency.
Pro-EC apologists like to imply it's a misrepresentation to pretend the popular vote even means anything. Sure, that's a fine interpretation... so long as you're willing to admit that (by the same logic) Trump hasn't won anything yet. It's up to the EC to decide.
In any case, all of this is academic. There isn't going to be an elector revolt.
Mainly because the Democrats are still run by cowards. Call me a starry-eyed optimist, but there's a slim yet significant chance that might not be the case any more in 4-8 years, and (assuming there's still resistance to all talk of abolishing this slave / agrarian era bullshit), there are a few ways I can think of that they could play hardball.
The best potential upsides to a Trump presidency are the changes it could potentially bring about on both the right and left.
electors weren't selected to deliberate or make decisions;
In terms of their original purpose, yes they were. Too lazy to dig deep but I found this earlier:
Alexander Hamilton: "A small number of persons, selected by their fellow-citizens from the general mass, will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated [tasks]."
About half the states already have laws against faithless electors.
They have punishments for faithless electors. As a country, we have not agreed on any major reformation of how our presidents are elected. Their votes are thus valid, as far as the country as a whole is concerned. If you want to change how the president is elected, you are free to argue for reform.
But in the mean time, as long as this obscenely stupid "what about the farmers!" logic is used to suppress EC reform, I'm all for the blue states reworking their extradition laws to (among other things) provide safe havens for rebel electors. Yeah yeah, just let me dream...
1. Very hard to say because he's such an inconsistent spazz, but it's conceivable he'll end up doing better on foreign policy and immigration, though he'd first need to admit that a physical wall is moronic.
urban/rural split.
The focus on this is a laughable anachronism. The urban/rural split was a big deal when large sections of the populace was agrarian and famines still happened from time to time. Also, the free vs. slave state thing was a big deal. Nowadays, there is no reasonable argument for making one vote from a rural citizen more power than one vote from an urban citizen.
The former slave states can keep their two senators apiece, that's fine, but there's no reasonable justification for giving them more influence over the presidency.
Remember the Florida recount in the Bush-Gore 2000 election? If the presidency were decided by the POPULAR vote you'd have to recount the WHOLE COUNTRY in such a situation.
Um, no. He won by half a million on the nationwide stage, i.e. not enough to demand a recount. Everyone admitted that Gore won. Furthermore, even if this weren't the case, saving us the trouble of a larger recount has got to be one of the worst conceivable justifications I've ever heard for the electoral college.
You misunderstand the purposes of the electoral college.
Obviously, it is you who misunderstand it: Alexander Hamilton described the framers' view of how electors would be chosen, "A small number of persons, selected by their fellow-citizens from the general mass, will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated [tasks]."
There are probably better quotes available if I kept digging but that's the essence of it right there: electors were NOT expected to blindly vote based on their constituency. There's a reason why there is no such compulsion at the federal level, and no compulsion at all in 21 states. Many of the founding fathers were distrustful of straight, unalloyed democracy.
The electoral college was one of many firewalls designed to prevent mob rule from getting out of control.
The basis for them asking is that they're sore losers. Just look at the reasoning being used in support of subjugating the actual election results through an electoral college revolt. Yes, technically they can vote for whomever they want. The basis of them rejecting the vote counts in their respective states is hogwash.
Again, this betrays your ignorance or intellectual dishonesty. Hillary hasn't lost anything yet. She won the popular vote. It's up to the EC to decide whether or not she wins the presidency.
TThe basis of them rejecting the vote counts in their respective states is hogwash.
Yes, it's hogwash. But also the basis of granting citizens of Wyoming 4x more electoral representation than citizens of Michigan is hogwash. And someone winning the presidential vote by 2M people but still losing due to some slavery-era agrarian compromise bullshit is hogwash. These things are ALL hogwash, and reasonable people should not let people like the EC-apologist goons around here get away with calling only some of these things hogwash or implicitly/explicitly deny that the EC requires a reformation.
That's my entire thesis here.
Death threats are stupid and self-defeating in multiple ways. Beyond that... well, I've said elsewhere that I generally agree on the "chaos" front, but at the same time this sabre badly needs rattling so that the pro-EC peanut gallery will eat some crow and admit that it needs reforming. If such an effort accidentally succeeds and elects Hillary, oh well. I'd risk that.
Presumably this is one of the reasons why that guy in Utah decided to jumped in the race at the last minute. (Although the scenario where Congress elected him due to no one garnering enough EC votes may have been a bit more likely.)
Regardless of the mechanism, it would be unprecedented, chaotic and highly problematic if a third party were elected... but if it were ever going to happen, now would be the time, eh?
Moreso than actually arguing for a revolt (like I said, I can see some strong arguments against it, in practice), I was interested more in using this issue as a counterpoint against these increasingly tiresome "hey, the electoral college makes perfect sense and isn't anachronistic at all! Don't blame me if you failed social studies!" people. The electoral college system is obviously in painful need of an overhaul and if they refuse to even talk about it, a sustained campaign to get electors to change their votes (not just in this election, but in all future elections, too) might just force people to realize how ridiculous this system is.
If people accidentally got Trump un-elected from overenthusiastic sabre-rattling, I can't say I'd be too annoyed... but that wasn't my primary goal. It's obscene that this system is still around. Should've been fixed after 2000 for sure.
The fact that one candidate got more votes than Trump is relevant mainly because we're being told to ignore it. I wasn't for either one (though I would've admittedly preferred to see Hillary win.)
The question is, do you support the electoral college system, or do you support some form of perversion? FTFY
Elaborate?
The electors exercising their own judgment would not be a perversion. That's exactly how it was designed to operate... as a safety valve vs. hysterical mob rule and all that. I'm not particularly a fan of it in principle; I'm just looking for a little consistency from all of these smug 'electoral college fundamentalists' running around here lately.
That's called rigging an election.
So if the quirks of the electoral college mean that your candidate is elected despite receiving millions fewer votes, that's democracy. If the quirks of the electoral college mean that the person who received more votes is elected, that's rigging. Gotcha.
Do you realize how sad this sounds? Electors changing their vote is a feature, not a bug. THE SYSTEM WAS INTENTIONALLY DESIGNED TO GIVE THE ELECTORS FREE WILL. You want us to ignore the legal rights of the electors[1] that the founding fathers intentionally gave them, whilst respecting this ridiculous antiquated divide between city folk and country folk, as if a majority of the voter base in the south were still involved in agriculture or as if the slave vs. free state divide still existed. Or perhaps you have some other compelling reason why rural voters continue to be given more power than urban voters?
In actuality, both of these things were intentional parts of the EC and both are absurd anachronisms, but you want us to respect only the one that results in your candidate winning, whilst denouncing the other as "rigging".
1. That right remains *completely* untouched in at least 21 states, but even in the 29 remaining states they are, at a federal level, allowed to vote for whomever they please without prejudice, so it would be wildly inaccurate to refer to any of these electors switching as "rigging".
No one won the popular vote. All candidates were below 50%.
So sayeth the AC Trump-bot. Care to make an on-topic contribution about the ability of the electors to change their vote?
He is saying that, but more importantly he's trying to hijack the conversation away from the very interesting and relevant question of "So, are you a hypocrite or aren't you about this EC stuff?" back to these ancient talking points that have been used to deflect criticism away from the electoral college before even 2000.
Heh, the Trump-bots are out in force today, modding this flamebait and modding up all those non-sequitur cliches about "you know, if all we cared about was the popular vote then they wouldn't ever have to care about rural voters".
Rules are rules. If Trump supporters are allowed to handwave away concerns about the popular vote, then Hillary supporters should be able to handwave away concerns about the electors changing their votes.
Rules are rules. Under the rules the popular votes doesn't count. It's like saying the winner of the World Series is the team that scored the most run, not the team that won more games.
You on autopilot still? Or are you an astroturfing bot?
I'm agreeing with you! And the rules are the electors could elect Hillary Clinton for president if they felt like it. That's the main topic here. If your opinion of the EC is "rules are rules" then you shouldn't have any problem with this whatsoever, right? Citizens should be able to ask the electoral college to exercise their conscience to elect Hillary President and if they do so then that's fine because the rules allow that, right?
I would like to see your feet held to the fire for a bit, because the political views your comments imply are reprehensible.
Pretty sure you're over-extrapolating, whatever it is you think you're seeing. The broad points I'm making here is that the electoral college needs reformation. I've repeatedly said that I'm probably not for an actual, fully successful EC revolt at this time for various complicated reasons ("it would be chaos", for the short version), but rhetorically yes, these intellectually barren EC-apologists need to have their feet held to the fire.
But if you think that their feet shouldn't be held to the fire, i.e. people should be permitted to continue to assert there is nothing wrong whatsoever with the EC whilst simultaneously implying it would be illegal or unfair the system for electors to change their votes... well, that's something I find rather reprehensible. When a man lies, he murders some part of the world.
I don't see anything "hypocritical" about believing that the electoral college system is "fine and dandy as it is". As far as I'm concerned, I have always strongly opposed majoritarianism.
Well, are you in favor of an elector revolt or aren't you?
I'm all for having sensible checks on the power of mob rule (which I realize is not strictly synonymous with majoritarianism but there's a lot of overlap) but the problem is most checks against the power of mob rule are either ineffective (as I'd argue the EC is) or prone to all sorts of abuses that are usually worse than mob rule.