General Chat / 2016 Elections

I was referring to the dramatic vilification of Trump, and thereby half of America. The rest is an alright read, but really it boiled down to Dems picking just the flat out wrong person. It really was a good representation of establishment vs anti-establishment. Hilary's flaws personify the worst in the establishment, and Trump's, those of an outsider. The choice was essentially chosen for Dems, and GoP got swept to the antithesis of their candidate.

Still, just incredibly short-sighted to even have those two.

 

Trump is deserving of all the vilification he gets. As for his supporters? There are some racist, bigoted, and sexist supporters, sure, but the majority of them are simply hardworking lower class uneducated white folk who have become disaffected with the establishment party politics. They aren't Trump and Trump isn't them - he simply knew what he was doing in selling them the bullshit they wanted to hear. 

 

and I agree, Bernie was the superior candidate in almost all fronts, even polling higher than Hillary vs. Trump in a direct matchup. He was consistent, had a strong message, had the same populist movement going that Trump energized with the right, and would've destroyed Trump's chances as an outsider vs. the establishment considering Bernie had the same message to dismantle corruption within elite politics. Shame shame shame on the DNC and the corrupted democratic elites. They brought this upon all of us. 

I feel that Trump is far more alike his supporters in an economic sense then Clinton is with Hers.  That showed and probably ended up being a deciding factor.

 

As for the Trump v. Bern scenario.  Seeing as Bern was much more left than Clinton, I doubt that he would of really done much better.  Most people believe that Trump is far more central in his alignment than Clinton, and therefor Bern.  That really helped him capture a lot of votes that no one really expected to make a different, and isolate a lot of "for sure" voters on the left.  Perhaps a different VP would of helped, but who knows.  In the end he still kind of won, the establishment he was fighting against ended up costing his "party" the election which they had not excuses to lose in.

What really sucks about this is that we elect based on the electoral college. Clinton got well over a million votes more than Trump to win the "popular vote." It's just a fact, a million more Americans want one person for president, but with this system we get another, just like Bush-Gore in 2000. Add in a few more million for people who cannot vote and the people that went third party or write-in and it's probably a fact that only around 40-45% of Americans wanted Trump to win.

 

The one who gets more votes winning just seems too logical to go against, tho yes it has been our system for decades. For example, the winner of a football game is the team that scores more points, plain and simple. What if after a game they take a 21-20 final score and make it like 23.4 to 23.1 based on analytics, QB rating, overall yards +/-, ect... in favor of the team that had "lost" 21-20. Maybe not the best analogy, but whatever.

 

This looks like a step back for America, but I don't think it's a step off a cliff like some people make it out to be. Trump seems to be able to reason and has made a few turnarounds along the way. I have some hope that he'll not fully push us back to the days of Bush, but I guess we'll need to wait and see.  

I think the electoral college at times is a necessity, otherwise small states would be ignored and only big cities would matter.  Just look at a state like NH, Penn, Wisconsin, Michigan, Florida.  All decided by far less than 1% of the possible voting population, literally every vote mattered there.  No matter if you were one of 900 people in your county or one of 10 million.  If the race was decided completely based on majority vote, people in small towns and small states would be ignored in favor of those in big cities with a higher concentration of the populous.

 

Just look at NH for a moment, literally decided by >1,000 votes, one of the smallest margins of victory for a state in recent times.  Each ballot mattered, each vote mattered...

 

The college is probably a necessary evil, a lot of people dont like it, but it probably protects the interests of more people than it nullifies.

Fair point, but as a counterpoint I'd say that the electoral college also causes other areas to be ignored in non-battleground states.

 

For example, I live in New York. During the general election, nobody pays any attention to the state because they know that New York City contains about half of the state's population and it's completely unwinnable for Republicans. New York City is overwhelmingly liberal (as an example of how drastic this is, Secretary Clinton received 88.73% of the vote in Bronx county while Donald Trump received 9.59% and other boroughs reported similar numbers).

 

Because of the electoral college, people write the state off because of the insurmountable liberal vote coming from New York City, and supporting liberal votes from places like Albany, Syracuse, Buffalo and Rochester.

 

Without the electoral college though, middle and upstate New York would be highly contested. These areas contain significant populations in their own right and have a lot of moderate voters. The map is evidence of this. New York isn't alone either, states like Illinois and Maryland are ignored but without the electoral college there would be a good deal of pretty large population centers with a lot of moderate voters that would be hotly contested. Conversely, Democrats could make a play for the large population centers of Texas like Dallas / Fort Worth / Arlington, Houston and San Antonio which are democratic areas but those votes don't matter at all because the rest of the state is a blowout. Because of this there's no focus at all on this huge chunk of voters.

I'm glad I'm not enough of an idiot to post my political opinions here.... I just do it on facebook!

yeah I was always a bernie guy too. I don't think its a coincidence that hillary lost the white, blue collar vote in states like michigan and wisconsin, which is exactly the crowds that voted for bernie in the primaries and people bashed him for only appealing to.

 

if anyone reckons the first-past-the-post system is good, check out cgpgrey's videos on it. its a statistical shitbag of a system.

 

I don't really care about trump, I think he's too inept to actually do the things he promised. but I am worried about the supreme court justices, the impact on environmental progress, and for lgbt rights...

 

to console myself, I spent all morning looking at the 'year in summary' photo albums of obama. he's so pretty

https://www.facebook...77369589067605/

Thanks Zach.

Everyone breathe...... trump doesn't even really want the job. He won't last a year. He has contractors to fleece, and pussies to grab.

I think the electoral college at times is a necessity, otherwise small states would be ignored and only big cities would matter.

This is completely untrue. (1.55 & 3.30)

 

Something else; Trump didn't really win votes. Clinton just lost a lot of people who voted for Obama.

2004: Kerry, 59million. Bush, 62million

2000: Gore, 51million, Bush 50.5million

1996: Clinton, 47million, Dole 39million, Perot 8million

Donald Trump’s EPA Transition Team Is Being Run By A Climate Change Denier. Spectacular...

This is completely untrue. (1.55 & 3.30)

 

Something else; Trump didn't really win votes. Clinton just lost a lot of people who voted for Obama.

2004: Kerry, 59million. Bush, 62million

2000: Gore, 51million, Bush 50.5million

1996: Clinton, 47million, Dole 39million, Perot 8million

 

 

@Point 1, I think you misunderstand why candidates focus their visits on certain states and what "visits" mean.  States like Ohio, Florida, NC, or swing states are visited often because they are believed to best represent the variance in people in the country.  A balance of highly populated urban areas, and low populated rual areas, this has nothing to do with the number of votes, simply the fact the states are easy to swing between one side and the other with a bit of attention.  Second, visiting states or in goring others in terms of visiting them doesn't have anything to do with their platform and the people they appeal to.  Conservatives ignore the states they are the strongest in because they know they will get all their votes because their platform resonates best with that states.  Same goes for Liberals with Big States and Big Urban States.  Just because 

 

@Point 2, this falls into the first point.  This video believes that because a candidate doesn't personally visit an area that means they don't care about it and their platform doesn't include that state.  Its quite easy to post some big numbers to falsely support any point, which he has done here.

 

Here, watch some of these:

https://www.youtube....h?v=ec9-vGUQkmk\

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gc5jmSDaWN0

 

But I don't know why I'm arguing with you, its clear your disappointed your favored candidate wasn't elected and your blaming the EC, which has been the same for 230 years, and I doubt has ever been an issue in your mind before yesterday.

 

Plus, this happens every election, the losing party always says the electoral college is the reason they lost etc.... its an issues that will never be considered an issue as long as there is someone sitting in office.

 

But yes, the reason Clinton lost is due to losing tons of votes that she was expected to get.  Whether this is due to her campaign not resonating with the people they expected too, or simply people not voting because they thought Clinton would win in a landslide because that what the media told them would happen.

 

 

@Bill, I'd urge you to read some more centrally oriented literature, that site has a hyper leftist viewpoint and shouldn't be taken as your own source for information, especially on the opposite side of the spectrum.

^This isn't a political issue to any reasonable person. I just picked a random link but the New York Times, LA Times, USA Today and thousands of media outlets worldwide are reporting the same story and in many cases have published other stories about the negative impacts this could have on the climate.

 

There is no reasonable debate on climate change at this point. According to the United Nations, there were 175 states that were part of the Paris agreement as of April and more have since signed on including 20 in late September. As of now the number is about 192. Honestly aside from Iraq, North Korea, Nicaragua, Syria and Uzbekistan I'm having a really hard time finding a country that isn't a part of this agreement. The vast majority of the world and the science community acknowledges that this is a major problem. Having a president that refuses to do so is a national embarrassment.

 

There are some areas where I have no problem finding some reasons for optimism and some common ground with the Republicans and with Donald Trump (the economy being the largest, Russian relations are up there also) but it's insane to elect a president that doesn't believe in man made climate change.

I feel that Trump is far more alike his supporters in an economic sense then Clinton is with Hers.  That showed and probably ended up being a deciding factor.

 

As for the Trump v. Bern scenario.  Seeing as Bern was much more left than Clinton, I doubt that he would of really done much better.  Most people believe that Trump is far more central in his alignment than Clinton, and therefor Bern.  That really helped him capture a lot of votes that no one really expected to make a different, and isolate a lot of "for sure" voters on the left.  Perhaps a different VP would of helped, but who knows.  In the end he still kind of won, the establishment he was fighting against ended up costing his "party" the election which they had not excuses to lose in.

 

It's not so much just a difference of economics - Hillary won a majority of voters who were poor (but mainly poor minorities) - it's a question of rural vs. urban identity.

 

Look at the voter county maps. It's a sea of red (rural areas) vs. islands of blue (urban centers). Rural Americans are oftentimes white and poor / middle-class. The poor concentrations in urban centers are oftentimes minority hubs. The difference is more a question of lifestyle.

 

The irony is that Trump's economic policies benefit the rich white establishment much more so than Hillary's plan...It's also ironic that all these poor rural white folk voted for a billionaire, silver-spoon-in-mouth, urbanite who has shown to have zero care for the rural poor besides the canvassing he did to win their votes. He is literally the opposite of the poor rural community he is vouching to help fix.

 

And let's NOT FORGET, that Hillary won the popular vote. More people who voted wanted Hillary to be president than Trump. The electoral college was the reason she lost, the same reason Gore lost to Bush. I would also encourage you to NOT write off the complaints against the EC because in the past 5 elections, 2 were determined by the EC that pushed a candidate with less votes into the white house. Is that really the will of the American people? No. But I also don't propose a ban on the EC either, it's a rather complex issue that can't be solved with a simple answer.

"The specifics of each country's plan, though, are voluntary.  There are no sanctions for failing to control pollution or put economic policies into practice.  The legally binding portion of the Paris accourd does little more than require governments to continue to convene at high profile global climate summit meetings, making public pledges to tackle global warming at home and submit those plans to be published on the UN website"

 

So basically, these agreements are a bunch of PR hogwash, and do little to nothing to actually fight the issue, and rather just say "he it would be nice if you attended our meeting".

 

I do think that true anti-climate change leaning people are a bit silly, however I'd encourage you to look a bit deeper into the issue.  

 

Personally, I believe that the only reason Rights put anti-climate change change material in their platforms is simply to contrast the left, who put pro-climate change material in their platforms.  This is how election politics work and how the country has been run for the better part of a century.  Its believed to be more dangerous to agree on issues up front rather than contrast the other sides opinion.  I don't like it, but that is how it is.

 

Not only that, but what was Clinton's policy on climate change?  I'm not really sure to be honest, she sure didn't make it seem very important compared to Obama in either '08 or '12.  But I have a hunch to say its far closer to Trumps than Obama's before her...

 

Granted, if you take a step back and look at this issue.  What does pro-climate change legislation actually do?  Well for one it certainly increases the amount of regulation on business, especially manufacturing.  What does regulation do?  Well it certainly decreases profit because more money needs to be spend on moderating that regulation.  What do companies do when profit is decreased?  Well two things, lay people off, or move somewhere that has less regulation or allows them to pay their employees less.  Manufacturing moving to 3rd world and eastern countries with less regulation doesn't fix the problem, it just puts it somewhere else with people who aren't able to do anything about it.  

 

It would be great if the world came together and was about to do something about climate change, but its just not going to happen.   To much money is at stake for countries just to hand over their economy for a better tomorrow.  Yea, it sucks, but its the way it is.  So what should we do, well, allowing business to grow and possibly develop cheep solutions and alternatives, or even preparing down the line for taking measures to protect our people form the consequences that are likely eminent no matter how much money is spent on climate change fighting legislation and business.

If the race was decided completely based on majority vote, people in small towns and small states would be ignored in favor of those in big cities with a higher concentration of the populous.

 

Just look at NH for a moment, literally decided by >1,000 votes, one of the smallest margins of victory for a state in recent times.  Each ballot mattered, each vote mattered...

 

This makes no sense to me. How can you prefer this system over a system where every vote weighs exactly the same? I mean, a (simplified) system where you just count all votes in the end and make the one with the mayority president is the the one where "Each ballot matters, each vote matters", isn't it?

 

And another thing, just out of interest, how you come to say that Hillary is "left"? To my standards she is not near being left, especially on the foreign policy.

Electoral College

https://www.youtube....h?v=7wC42HgLA4k

(whoops. looks like chorkiels beat me to that)

 

Failure rate increases from 5% to 7% with this election.

The system that decides something as important as that of the U.S presidency should not have a failure rate of 7%. Purely by system analysis, this is not a desirable result.

 

First past the post voting is also something I wish would be changed. Maine passed a ranked voting system and I desperately hope more states will follow that notion.

 

I think the parties and candidates are just a result of the system that they're in, a product of their environment. It makes complete sense to me why things went the way they did. I feel like changes to the electoral college and first past the post voting could drastically change the types of candidates, policies, coverage, and attention in our representation all across the board. That's the kind of change I want to see. 

"The specifics of each country's plan, though, are voluntary.  There are no sanctions for failing to control pollution or put economic policies into practice.  The legally binding portion of the Paris accourd does little more than require governments to continue to convene at high profile global climate summit meetings, making public pledges to tackle global warming at home and submit those plans to be published on the UN website"

 

So basically, these agreements are a bunch of PR hogwash, and do little to nothing to actually fight the issue, and rather just say "he it would be nice if you attended our meeting".

 

I do think that true anti-climate change leaning people are a bit silly, however I'd encourage you to look a bit deeper into the issue.  

 

Personally, I believe that the only reason Rights put anti-climate change change material in their platforms is simply to contrast the left, who put pro-climate change material in their platforms.  This is how election politics work and how the country has been run for the better part of a century.  Its believed to be more dangerous to agree on issues up front rather than contrast the other sides opinion.  I don't like it, but that is how it is.

 

Not only that, but what was Clinton's policy on climate change?  I'm not really sure to be honest, she sure didn't make it seem very important compared to Obama in either '08 or '12.  But I have a hunch to say its far closer to Trumps than Obama's before her...

 

Granted, if you take a step back and look at this issue.  What does pro-climate change legislation actually do?  Well for one it certainly increases the amount of regulation on business, especially manufacturing.  What does regulation do?  Well it certainly decreases profit because more money needs to be spend on moderating that regulation.  What do companies do when profit is decreased?  Well two things, lay people off, or move somewhere that has less regulation or allows them to pay their employees less.  Manufacturing moving to 3rd world and eastern countries with less regulation doesn't fix the problem, it just puts it somewhere else with people who aren't able to do anything about it.  

 

It would be great if the world came together and was about to do something about climate change, but its just not going to happen.   To much money is at stake for countries just to hand over their economy for a better tomorrow.  Yea, it sucks, but its the way it is.  So what should we do, well, allowing business to grow and possibly develop cheep solutions and alternatives, or even preparing down the line for taking measures to protect our people form the consequences that are likely eminent no matter how much money is spent on climate change fighting legislation and business.

 

 

The deregulation of the market is what led to the 2008 recession because of an unregulated Wall street pushing subprime mortgages. In theory what you say may make sense, but in reality it only perpetuates corporate greed in the worst way that leads to the inevitable consequence of unfettered capitalism: a bubble economy, recession, higher wealth disparity, etc. History has shown that it doesn't work.

 

I think Hillary's plan was to push for more investment into renewable resources, to get off dependency on fossil fuels as soon as possible. Any economic pockets hit by this step will be aided by federally funded packages to help retrain workers in mining towns for new jobs in the industry. But let's face it : coal mining towns are done for. It is both unsustainable for the economy as it is for the environment, and the rural towns that have developed around the sites of coal mining are depressed regions of low-paying dangerous coal mining jobs. There needs to be a shift away from that infrastructure and that method of job-generation, and a push for more renewable energy research, implementation, and retraining of current low-skill jobs to push them towards these new technologies.

 

It's almost as if we're stymieing our own progress, given all the new innovative energy technology we're capable of, for the sake of small mining towns around coal plants that are completely rooted in the 20th century. However, while it's important to move forward with technology, we cannot forget the people that have built their lives around that defunct technology and we must work to bring them forward with us. Abandoning coal mining is fine, but abandoning people is not. 

 

P.S. The reason we don't know about Hillary's position on this (nor Trump's) is because it was NOT COVERED by the media during the election blitz that focused on the email scandal and the "grab them by the pussy" scandal. That is what our democracy has been degraded down to: real issues are spurned in favor of covering the latest scandal of the OPPOSING candidate. It's downright embarrassing. 

https://www.youtube....h?v=7wC42HgLA4k

 

 

Great explanation of a flawed system. Gawd. How embarrassing. I'm moving to France. Adieu, les États-Unis...Vive La France!