Of course this should normally be a domestic affair for the people of the United States of America. But this year seems so extraordinary in many ways. I’m following events with interest, hope and alarm (not necessarily in that order). In 2016, I posted my thoughts on the imminent election, never for one moment thinking that the US would elect Donald Trump as president. Boy, was I wrong. Can I be wrong again? What do others think? Not that we have long to wait.
Vote early and vote often!
Anyone who supports Trump in any way has lost the right to accuse anyone of hypocrisy.
Do you even THINK about what you write? Leftist indoctrination in action!
I bet you think that Trump’s election in 2016 was illegitimate. That he personally conspired with the Russians to steal the election.
I supported Trump because he was legitimately elected.
So, according to you, on that basis alone, I don’t have the right to accuse anyone of hypocrisy.
Now let’s say that Joe Biden was legitimately elected and that you support Joe Biden.
Anyone who supports Biden in any way has lost the right to accuse anyone of hypocrisy.
See how that works? No, I don’t suppose that you do. Fascists never do.
Not as destructive as it would be if he had won. One step at a time. Next step is win the electoral college.
So you no longer support him?
Nope, it was the Jesuits.
It think he won the electoral college, that makes it legitimate. I think the Russians helped, I think he did everything to hide that fact. I think he tried to extort the leader of another to help his re-election, but he was a Ukrainian.
I thought he was legitimate, and do not support him. That is as American as apple pie. The Republicans are the guys accusing people of not to be legitimately elected. Being born in a foreign country., for instance.
On the basis that the support of a lying , hypocritical, grifter renders one’s judging other’s values questionable? Sort of. I apologize , you certainly have that right of free speech.
The guy you support says it is impossible, but let’s say it, over and over and over again.
If Biden is equivalent to Trump, yes.
It seems the supporters of fascists never do either.
You refer to the electoral college system that skews results against urban populations. It’s how things are but is it democracy?
Kind of true, but misleading. The electoral college skews in favor of smaller states, much like the Senate. Each state gets as many votes in the electoral college as they have representatives, including Senators. In theory, this could mean an electoral college victory despite a 10 million popular vote loss. But for the last century and probably the next, only the Republicans can do this, because the states with the largest populations mostly swing Democratic.
Note that many large cities, which vote for Democrats, are located in states that vote Republican for the most part. Miami, Houston, Dallas, St. Louis, Indianapolis, New Orleans, and until this election Phoenix, Detroit, Philadelphia. The electoral college is a state system, not a city system.
Flint,
OK, but what was misleading? The electoral college system favours rural America because states with small populations are over-represented in the electoral college.
I’m not sure doing away with the electoral college is a good idea. The same debate is going on here in Spain and it leads to some obvious contradictions. Should we disenfranchise the “rural rubes” because they’re easily fooled by the populist right? That doesn’t seem to be a progressive thing to do. The current system isn’t working, but I think one person, one vote may be a step in the wrong direction.
dazz,
What is the reason that someone who lives in a rural community with less people deserves to have his vote effectively carry more weight than someone who lives in a city?
Flint,
A farmer in Montana’s vote right now definitely carries more weight than a resident of East LA or someone from New York city.
Because they are not Uighurs? Is that it? So their vote counts more? Am I right?
At least they get to vote.
The rationale is, as you surely know, that urban areas are much more densely populated than rural areas, but the main problem, I think, is gentrification and segregation of people by wealth between the cities and the country. Without the electoral college, rural people would have no representation whatsoever, and that would exacerbate the divide between the two. Maybe we need to close the gap first, then get rid of the electoral college, but what do I know.
OMagain,
In the US barely half the eligible population votes. In 1996 it was less than half.
So half the population doesn’t even care about voting even when they can, so what makes you think its priority in other people’s lives in other countries? Maybe safety, security, and quality of life are more important.
OMagain,
In Switzerland, even though they have mandatory voting in some areas, only around 35% of the eligible population votes.
Yes it does, but that’s not what you said. You said it skews against URBAN populations, and that’s not quite the case because, as I pointed out, there are quite a few very large urban populations inside states with otherwise small populations. Nearly the entire population of Arizona is in Phoenix and Tucson, nearly all Nevada residents are in Las Vegas, etc. Houston is the 4th largest city in the US.
Most observers of US voting patterns have attributed low voter turnout to two factors: that the two parties often look pretty identical; and the country is running smoothly so there’s really no need to try to change it. Notice that in Switzerland, even with mandatory voting, people are satisfied with their government and if it ain’t broke, why try to fix it? Conversely, when the US is polarized and the need for change (and resistance to change) are high, turnout is high. I read that the 2020 election had the highest percent of registered voters actually voting since 1900. Biden was elected decisively, both in popular and electoral vote. So people did feel that getting rid of Trump was worthy of going to vote him out.
(As an interesting statistic here, exit polls of thousands of voters indicated that for prior voters, the vote was even between Biden and Trump, while Biden won more than 2/3 of first time voters.)
Flint,
Well, where I live the President is elected by the People’s Congress. If there were a general election he would win easily anyway.
If a country can have 60-70 percent of the population not caring to vote, it tells you that being able to vote is not necessarily an important component of life for many many people. In fact in many places the majority of people apparently don’t care about this.
Where does the “60-70 percent of the population not caring to vote” figure come from? Out of approximately 240 million eligible citizens in the USA, more than 150 million voted in 2020. That puts the non-participation rate at half of your estimate.
Well, as I said, voter turnout depends on (1) whether the voters see a real need for change, and if everything is fine, there’s no need; and (2) whether voters believe their votes CAN make a needed change. Either if people are already content, or if they believe the system will ignore them, they’ll stay home.
This election featured both a record turnout, and a record number of first-time voters. But that’s not necessarily a good thing — what drove the turnout was hyper polarization. Both sides expected to win a “fair” election by a landslide, so no matter who wins, one side feels cheated.
You didn’t read all I had written. I said in other countries the people who choose to vote is sometimes even less. So wanting democracy is not necessarily a universal priority. Having competent leaders is much more important to most people. The US has starkly shown that having democracy, especially the crappy kind in America, doesn’t equate to competent leaders.
Various people have explained to you why these claims DO NOT FOLLOW from low participation rates (which you managed to get factually wrong too, not that it matters)
On this, at least, we agree. I still think the Uyghurs are worse off, though. You seem strangely silent on that topic: are we to conclude that you tolerate some forms of racism?
Flint,
https://www.vox.com/21561011/2020-election-joe-biden-donald-trump-electoral-college-vote-senate-democracy
If the trains run on time…
Um , no I didn’t. Only you could say that with a straight face.
I think black people are worse off. I think poor people are worse off. I think people without medical insurance are worse off. I think pretty much everyone except the top ten percent in America are worse off.
I think Jeff Bezo added 35 billion to his new worth during the pandemic. I think Mark Zuckerberg also did the same. I think they are not worse off. The country of course is much worse off. That appears to not be a priority of democracy.
DNA_Jock,
[redacted]
I believe the US electorate originally were white male landowners. When black citizens were first granted a vote it had three fifths of the value of white votes.
I don’t see how any system that doesn’t produce representation in line with votes cast can be called democratic.
ETA maybe I’m wrong about 3/5
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-fifths_Compromise
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disenfranchisement_after_the_Reconstruction_era
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/03/america-is-not-a-democracy/550931/
This too.
If your leader wants to put you in a cage and steal your organs voting them out would seem to be a priority. But you are fine with not giving people that option it seems, even in that case.
Are you paid to say that?
OMagain,
Who voted for these fuckwad judges?
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/samuel-alito-political-supreme-court_n_5fadf9f1c5b6dd8959789997
Why the heck should Samuel Alito or Clarence Thomas has ANY say whatsoever about how American people live their lives? Who the hell are they?
Why do they get so much power and authority? They are nobody. Why should anyone give a rat’s ass what they want? Yet you are forced to live according to their wishes.
You are correct, you are confused. The 3/5 comprised was devised to calculate the number of members each state had in the House of Representatives, which is determined by population. 3/5 comprise was a effort to reduce the political power of States with a large slave populations by counting slaves as 3/5 of a person.
It is a Republic first democracy second. The Founders believed unchecked democracy was as undesirable as a monarchy. Democratic power needed to be controlled by educated , white, landowners like themselves. The Senate is by nature a unDemocratic institution.
They are members of a separate and equal branch of government.
They don’t, without the agreement three other justices.
It sure give that impression to an outsider!
Sigh. As has been said often enough, the purpose of power is power. The founders understood this very well – the whole purpose of not letting the riffraff vote (women, blacks, non-landowners) was to ensure that the fate of the nation remained in responsible hands, rather than devolve into the hands of the ignorati.
And sure enough, the US has a long history of those in power taking steps to retain it. Critical among these steps was to control the vote – but to control it in such a way as to appear democratic while maintaining the power of those who had it. Today we see an impressive arsenal of vote suppression techniques ranging from removing voting sites from districts where the opponents dominate, to crippling the mail service when opponents are more likely to use it.
All of this is because the purpose of power is NOT democracy or representative government or even the greatest good for the greatest number. Rather, it’s to use power to stay in power. If suckers at Vegas casinos had the ability to weight the dice or stack the deck, do you suppose they’d refrain for the good of the game? Is anyone surprised that SCOTUS decided that the best way to correct partisan gerrymandering was to leave it in the hands of those doing it? Does anyone think that if the Democrats held most state houses and the Court majority, the decision would be any different?
Personally, I think the nation would be better off if it were truly based on one voter, one vote. No gerrymandering, no electoral college, no deliberately biased Senate (created that way to ensure and retain that bias), all districts having almost the same number of voters, reversing the criminally irresponsible Citizens United decision, etc. But how to get there from here? This question was posed long ago – Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?.
And still, there’s no guarantee. The ignorati are still out there in all their multitudes, and Zuckerberg has more power than SCOTUS. In the words of Walt Kelly, we have met the enemy and they are us.
I can’t disagree. Many commentators have been saying that the real damage Trump is doing is undermining public confidence in our elections. I mostly disagree with this – I think the damage has been the way Trump has shown that very little of how our system of government works is based on laws or regulations, and how much rests on custom, tradition, and policy. Trump has spent years demonstrating that he can be incredibly destructive, corrupt, and self-serving without clearly breaking any laws. Obama was fact-checked and found to have told 18 lies in 8 years. Trump averaged more lies than that per day, and did nothing illegal. Nor did he lose any of his base, which is large enough to cement the re-election of those kissing his ring or end the careers of those who don’t.
Politicians have learned that violating their oath is beneficial if not essential to re-election, and they would rather risk nuclear war than risk losing an election. Time was, they believed they also had to at least appear to color inside the lines. NOW, they know better. We now live under a nation ruled by a simple piece of advice: If you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying.
We are a constitutional republic, not a democracy. Elections are left to the states, not to the popular vote. Please read Article 2 of the US Constitution. Then perhaps you will begin to understand how it is that we have the system that we do.
Because that’s how the republic was founded. Not only is it not a city system, it’s not (ETA: solely) a federal system. States matter.
So? This isn’t China phoodoo.
I blame Trump for the increase in voter participation.
Rich black people are worse off than poor white people?
O.M.G.
You have no business whatsoever opining on these matters. None.
This is hilarious, phoodoo. Thank you! I bet you don’t even know why.
Have you ever read the U.S. Constitution?
So it had nothing to do with the vote cast by a black man only being worth 60% of the vote of a rich white man?
Maybe this was actually an attempt at being equitable. Why should a state that doesn’t allow it’s black population to vote be accorded the same representation in Congress?
Which is to say that phoodoo should have asked the same questions of the executive branch and the legislative branch.
He doesn’t seem to be all that concerned about the undue influence that Biden might exert as President. Perhaps his influence should be limited based on the number of votes he failed to receive. LoL.
Or, if you’re not in power, to do anything, by any means, to get back into power.
Right?