U.S. Politics

[Xann]

11 hours ago, maqroll said:

Greetings from a victorious Standing Rock! Pics to come. 

Was it you that turned the tide?

[dont_do_it_doug.]

Can somebody explain in plain English to me what the craic is at Standing Rock? 

I am due some holiday.

[Davkaus]

 

Donald Trump has just nominated a guy to be in his cabinet, that he went on this bizarre rant about.

I still see videos like this and wonder "how the **** did he say this stuff, and win?!". I like "I know a lot about knives and belt buckles", he has to sneak a little bragging in to every topic. 

Also, they missed his eyes with the sunny delight.

[Xann]

8 hours ago, dont_do_it_doug. said:

Can somebody explain in plain English to me what the craic is at Standing Rock? 

I am due some holiday.

Bit of weird audio at the start...

 

[il_serpente]

That video is about Keystone XL pipeline running from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico.  The Dakota Access pipeline runs from North Dakota through South Dakota and Iowa to Ilinois.  One of the key concerns isthe same:  risk to the environment as the pipeline crosses a key water source.  In the case of Dakota Access, the pipeline would go under the Missouri River, the primary source of drinking water for local tribes and part of or adjacent to ancient sacred tribal lands.   The thing that has generated the most outrage in this case is the apparent total dismissal of the concerns of the Native Americans by the power structure.

[maqroll]

Tribal elders have asked people to decamp and head home...I just hope some of the environmentalists there take heed. 

So I'm back in Minneapolis at some random hotel bar

 What a scene to there...must have been at 25K people there today. 

I joined a sweat lodge ceremony my second night...one of the most challenging things I've ever done. 

Amazing commitment by all the people who have been there for months, it's almost a flawless system. 

It was a very humbling experience. 

[HanoiVillan]

As I have noted over the last month, the American electoral system is distinctly sub-optimal. It doesn't make an awful lot of sense for the person who got the most votes in two of the last five elections to lose, and this will cause  a crisis of legitimacy sooner or later. 

Lest anyone think this is only a partisan point, here's somebody else acting a stupid role within the system:

'DALLAS — I am a Republican presidential elector, one of the 538 people asked to choose officially the president of the United States. Since the election, people have asked me to change my vote based on policy disagreements with Donald J. Trump. In some cases, they cite the popular vote difference. I do not think president-elects should be disqualified for policy disagreements. I do not think they should be disqualified because they won the Electoral College instead of the popular vote. However, now I am asked to cast a vote on Dec. 19 for someone who shows daily he is not qualified for the office.

Fifteen years ago, as a firefighter, I was part of the response to the Sept. 11 attacks against our nation. That attack and this year’s election may seem unrelated, but for me the relationship becomes clearer every day.

George W. Bush is an imperfect man, but he led us through the tragic days following the attacks. His leadership showed that America was a great nation. That was also the last time I remember the nation united. I watch Mr. Trump fail to unite America and drive a wedge between us.

Mr. Trump goes out of his way to attack the cast of “Saturday Night Live” for bias. He tweets day and night, but waited two days to offer sympathy to the Ohio State community after an attack there. He does not encourage civil discourse, but chooses to stoke fear and create outrage.

This is unacceptable. For me, America is that shining city on a hill that Ronald Reagan envisioned. It has problems. It has challenges. These can be met and overcome just as our nation overcame Sept. 11.'

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/05/opinion/why-i-will-not-cast-my-electoral-vote-for-donald-trump.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region&region=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region

So this guy is a 'faithless elector', who will withhold his vote, as one of Texas's electoral college delegation, despite Trump clearly winning the state, based on whatever this guy's disagreements are. This is a dumb, broken system. 

[LondonLax]

I believe there are 7 electoral collage voters who have come out as 'faithless electors' so far, though oddly enogh the first 6 were in democrate states saying they would vote for a different republican as a protest vote when they were supposed to be voting for Hillary.

Such a bizarre system yet many Americans genuinely seem to think the rest of the world sees their system as some sort of a shining beacon for other countries.  

Edited December 6, 2016 by LondonLax

[chrisp65]

The Clinton campaign spent $170,000,000 more than the Trump campaign.

They won California by 4,200,000 votes more than Trump. A single state that dominates those statistics, California alone gave a majority to Clinton that accounts for all of the 'popular vote' surplus plus millions more.

They won New York with 1,500,000 more votes than Trump. 

Two states gave Clinton a surplus of 5.7 million votes.

The democrats spent a total $534,000,000 on their campaign. But either didn't understand the established system, or simply couldn't persuade enough people across the whole of America. For instance, hindsight is a wonderful thing, but for all those mountains of votes in California and New York, she missed winning the 20 electoral college votes for Pennsylvania by just 47,000 votes in a state of 6 million voters. All that effort to win one and a half million surplus votes in New York when a spit away she was losing Pennsylvania by 0.8% of the vote. Bad system, or spectacular tactical failure? (it's both)

The system is clunky. The alternative is to simply allow money, California and New York to dictate to all other states who will be president.

wiki election data

 

[HanoiVillan]

50 minutes ago, LondonLax said:

I believe there are 7 electoral collage voters who have come out as 'faithless electors' so far, though oddly enogh the first 6 were in democrate states saying they would vote for a different republican as a protest vote when they were supposed to be voting for Hillary.

Such a bizarre system yet many Americans genuinely seem to think the rest of the world sees their system as some sort of a shining beacon for other countries.  

Just checked and it seems you're absolutely right! What a stupid mess. And what narcisism, to think that your opinions are more valid than the millions of people you're supposed to be representing. 

I'm genuinely interested in hearing a defence of this system. I can't imagine what it would look like, except 'that's how it's always been and it's too difficult to change it'. 

[HanoiVillan]

30 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

The system is clunky. The alternative is to simply allow money, California and New York to dictate to all other states who will be president.

wiki election data

 

Another way of saying 'California and New York' here is to simply say 'people'. 

[chrisp65]

12 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

Another way of saying 'California and New York' here is to simply say 'people'. 

Yet another way of saying 'California and New York' here is to say 'two of the fifty states that came together to form a federal republic'. Though perhaps an even simpler way of saying 'California and New York' here is to simply say 'money'.

Who's to say that if the rules of the game had been different, the Trump team wouldn't have changed tactics and concentrated on losing California and New York by lesser margins? A couple of speeches about making California the electric car centre of the world and boom, he gets a few hundred thousand extra votes there. He tells the people of New York he'll freeze rent increases, boom, a few hundred thousand votes there. Doesn't even need to be true, does it. But he didn't bother, they were lost causes under the rules of the game. If they needed to win a 'popular vote' they could have worked harder in states they knew weren't theirs to win. Where was Trump in the closing hours of campaigning? Florida. Spouting shit to anyone that would turn up for a free badge. He won Florida by 1% and bagged 29 elec college votes. Michigan he won by less than 1%. Similar in Pennsylvania. Visiting close polling industry states and promising jobs. Fighting where he had a chance of winning. Bob Mook the Clinton Campaign Manager actually mocked the Trump campaign as late as the 5th November for appearing haphazard and seemingly 'just visiting as many places as possible'. Yeah, what a dumbass.

You simply can't extrapolate the final tally in one game to a different game, that's way too simplistic. The other team might have changed their whole approach. 

By all means argue for a first passed the post total popular vote system in the future. Where all candidates can aim their tactics at that game with those rules. I suspect the result is not as clear cut as imposing different rules retrospectively on an already run race.

 

 

 

[Davkaus]

Quote

Who's to say that if the rules of the game had been different, the Trump team wouldn't have changed tactics and concentrated on losing California and New York by lesser margins? 

 

Spot on. It's only fair to point out that if the presidential race was decided by the popular vote, Trump's campaign team would clearly have campaigned differently. They won by the established rules of the system.

There are some good arguments in favour of PR, and when it comes to such a simple choice, rather than confusing the matter with local representation vs national government as we do, PR seems vastly superior. 1 person, 1 vote, it need not be anymore complicated. Why should some people's vote have 4 times as much power just because there's fewer of them?

Either way, it's never going to change, it'd need the states that benefit from the EC system to vote in favour of losing their advantage.

[HanoiVillan]

33 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

Yet another way of saying 'California and New York' here is to say 'two of the fifty states that came together to form a federal republic'. Though perhaps an even simpler way of saying 'California and New York' here is to simply say 'money'.

Who's to say that if the rules of the game had been different, the Trump team wouldn't have changed tactics and concentrated on losing California and New York by lesser margins? A couple of speeches about making California the electric car centre of the world and boom, he gets a few hundred thousand extra votes there. He tells the people of New York he'll freeze rent increases, boom, a few hundred thousand votes there. Doesn't even need to be true, does it. But he didn't bother, they were lost causes under the rules of the game. If they needed to win a 'popular vote' they could have worked harder in states they knew weren't theirs to win. Where was Trump in the closing hours of campaigning? Florida. Spouting shit to anyone that would turn up for a free badge. He won Florida by 1% and bagged 29 elec college votes. Michigan he won by less than 1%. Similar in Pennsylvania. Visiting close polling industry states and promising jobs. Fighting where he had a chance of winning. Bob Mook the Clinton Campaign Manager actually mocked the Trump campaign as late as the 5th November for appearing haphazard and seemingly 'just visiting as many places as possible'. Yeah, what a dumbass.

You simply can't extrapolate the final tally in one game to a different game, that's way too simplistic. The other team might have changed their whole approach. 

By all means argue for a first passed the post total popular vote system in the future. Where all candidates can aim their tactics at that game with those rules. I suspect the result is not as clear cut as imposing different rules retrospectively on an already run race.

I don't disagree with any of that. You're right, maybe he'd have won an election under a different system.

My point is simply limited to 'eventually, you're going to run into problems if your system keeps choosing people who didn't even win a plurality of the vote'. With a side order of 'people didn't vote for one candidate in Texas or Washington or wherever else only for some bloke to decide he doesn't really agree with their vote and to change it at his convenience, and this is also going to lead to problems'. 

[StefanAVFC]

By pointing out Clinton's popular vote margin, I'm not sure people are even saying she should have won. Just that the US now has a president that the minority actually elected.

[TheAuthority]

As 45% of the population who are voting age didn't actually vote, you could argue that the majority winner was "None of the Above."

[villakram]

Wrong, wrong and wrong, it can change and there is a good chance of having ~270 EC votes mandated to be distributed to the winner of the national popular vote by the 2020 election. There are currently 165 EC votes committed to this and more in the pipeline. Please visit the site below and educate yourself or listen to the recent Ralph Nader radio hour episode: “We’re not going to re-litigate or redo the results of this election.  This election was run under a set of rules.  It’s not useful to change the rules of the game after the game is over with so that you can get a different result… If you really want to do something, change the rules now in time for the next election.”  Stephen Silberstein of National Popular Vote on reforming, on not abolishing the Electoral College.

https://ralphnaderradiohour.com/what-to-do-about-the-electoral-college/

Shut your moaning and whining. Get out and contact your representative and change this.

http://www.nationalpopularvote.com

Also, please note that Trump has stated on numerous occasions that he thinks the EC is silly, including in his 60min interview **after** winning the election.

[Davkaus]

13 minutes ago, villakram said:

Wrong, wrong and wrong,

You are Donald Trump and I claim my five pounds.

Edited December 6, 2016 by Davkaus

[il_serpente]

13 hours ago, Davkaus said:

 

Spot on. It's only fair to point out that if the presidential race was decided by the popular vote, Trump's campaign team would clearly have campaigned differently. They won by the established rules of the system.

 

Clinton's team would have campaigned differently also.  I know she spent very little time or money in California and I suspect the that she didn't put too much effort into New York, either, because it was always going her way, yet she won those two by a huge margin.  We'll never know if those margins would have changed significantly if both candidates actually put in an effort there instead of both ignoring them.  Clinton's team made some serious errors regarding where to put the effort, but it's not accurate to say that they wasted time and money getting those surplus votes in California and New York.

[jon_c]

17 hours ago, TheAuthority said:

As 45% of the population who are voting age didn't actually vote, you could argue that the majority winner was "None of the Above."

So, Richard Pryor then.