Author Topic: Vote(d) 2012 ... can't mediate the Ho Ho's  (Read 128602 times)

Offline Libertad

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Re: Vote 2012 ... (whiteknuckling the last few days)
« Reply #580 on: November 07, 2012, 01:49:49 AM »
Obama Won the Election!  Beck, Trump, and Rove Go Nuts!
« Last Edit: November 07, 2012, 01:58:51 AM by Libertad »

Offline FlaminCows

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Re: Vote 2012 ... (whiteknuckling the last few days)
« Reply #581 on: November 07, 2012, 01:53:42 AM »
Also, the Electoral College actually makes a lot of states that wouldn't matter important.  The population of the US is very compacted in a small number of states and most especially in a small number of urban areas.  It wouldn't make much sense for New York, Boston, Chicago and LA to dictate the presidency to people in Louisiana or Montana.

It would make a lot more sense than the reverse! As it is now, the lower-populated states dictate the presidency for the higher-populated ones. If a person runs for office and carries, say, these states: Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming. He'd be President, of course. Those states combined have less than 18% of USA's population.

What this means, basically, is that a vote in Wyoming is worth sixty-six times as much as a vote in California. Who's dictating it for whom, then? Imagine if some group that fought for suffrage (women, African-Americans, native Americans, whatever) and were told that yes, they are allowed to vote, but their vote only counts for a fraction of white male property owners' votes. It would be an outrage. Yet this is how it works right now due to the Electoral College, with those in higher-populated states being unfairly shafted in the presidential elections.

New York, Boston, Chicago and LA are not entities. The people in them are not a hivemind. They are just ordinary people, with no less right to choose their president than the ordinary people in the countryside.

P.S. Woo! Obama won! My Tennessee vote evidently didn't do jack, but whatever. Yay!

Offline bhu

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Re: Vote 2012 ... (whiteknuckling the last few days)
« Reply #582 on: November 07, 2012, 02:03:12 AM »
Obama Won the Election!  Beck, Trump, and Rove Go Nuts!

Trump already has.  All night long.  He's actually called for revolution.

Offline veekie

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Re: Vote 2012 ... (whiteknuckling the last few days)
« Reply #583 on: November 07, 2012, 02:06:16 AM »
Link? Good for a laugh.
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Offline Zionpopsickle

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Re: Vote 2012 ... (whiteknuckling the last few days)
« Reply #584 on: November 07, 2012, 02:15:49 AM »
Also, the Electoral College actually makes a lot of states that wouldn't matter important.  The population of the US is very compacted in a small number of states and most especially in a small number of urban areas.  It wouldn't make much sense for New York, Boston, Chicago and LA to dictate the presidency to people in Louisiana or Montana.

It would make a lot more sense than the reverse! As it is now, the lower-populated states dictate the presidency for the higher-populated ones. If a person runs for office and carries, say, these states: Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming. He'd be President, of course. Those states combined have less than 18% of USA's population.

What this means, basically, is that a vote in Wyoming is worth sixty-six times as much as a vote in California. Who's dictating it for whom, then? Imagine if some group that fought for suffrage (women, African-Americans, native Americans, whatever) and were told that yes, they are allowed to vote, but their vote only counts for a fraction of white male property owners' votes. It would be an outrage. Yet this is how it works right now due to the Electoral College, with those in higher-populated states being unfairly shafted in the presidential elections.

New York, Boston, Chicago and LA are not entities. The people in them are not a hivemind. They are just ordinary people, with no less right to choose their president than the ordinary people in the countryside.

P.S. Woo! Obama won! My Tennessee vote evidently didn't do jack, but whatever. Yay!

I am not going to argue that the Electoral College is a great system, the flaws you have pointed out are very true.  However, direct democracy tends to have the problem of boiling campaigns down into simply appealing to the least common denominator is a small minority of highly populated areas.  It removes the need to really appeal to anyone who is not a member of the majority and says straight up 'you're minority, well fuck you cuz you don't matter'. 

Basically, the ugly truth is that large groups of people tend to be short sighted viscous bastards who will vote only for their self interests regardless of how it effects others and thus true democracy tends to be an ugly affair of mob rule.  The Electoral college system forces a candidate to appeal to numerous different disparate groups of people as opposed to simply selecting the dominate group at the exclusion of all others. It does so very poorly but it does make a candidate reflect the broad swath of the national populace as opposed to simply the most prevalent.

Offline Libertad

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Re: Vote 2012 ... (whiteknuckling the last few days)
« Reply #585 on: November 07, 2012, 02:19:00 AM »
Link? Good for a laugh.

He eventually deleted the Twitter posts, but somebody saved them.

It happened beforehand, but Glenn Beck said that America must be destroyed if Obama gets re-elected.  Last I heard he was drowning himself in ice cream:

Quote
There was a certain amount of vamping time, too. Glenn Beck's online network, The Blaze, had a blackboard straight out of the 1960s as a tote board. Beck killed time on the air by asking for cookie dough ice cream from the on-set food bar.

"Waffle cone, please," Beck said.

And Karl Rove stubbornly refused to believe that Obama won, insisting that Romney took all the swing states despite what the Fox News analysts told him.

The Far Right is imploding upon itself, and it's delicious.
« Last Edit: November 07, 2012, 02:32:08 AM by Libertad »

Offline zook1shoe

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Re: Vote 2012 ... (whiteknuckling the last few days)
« Reply #586 on: November 07, 2012, 02:29:36 AM »
i'm just happy its all over... no more ads for now. back to shitty stuff on tv :-p
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Offline FlaminCows

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Re: Vote 2012 ... (whiteknuckling the last few days)
« Reply #587 on: November 07, 2012, 02:59:35 AM »
I am not going to argue that the Electoral College is a great system, the flaws you have pointed out are very true.  However, direct democracy tends to have the problem of boiling campaigns down into simply appealing to the least common denominator is a small minority of highly populated areas.  It removes the need to really appeal to anyone who is not a member of the majority and says straight up 'you're minority, well fuck you cuz you don't matter'. 

Basically,  large groups of people will vote only for their self interests regardless of how it effects others and thus true democracy tends to be an affair of mob rule. The Electoral college system forces a candidate to appeal to numerous different disparate groups of people as opposed to simply selecting the dominate group at the exclusion of all others. It does so very poorly but it does make a candidate reflect the broad swath of the national populace as opposed to simply the most prevalent.

The electoral college does nothing to prevent rule of the mob. States are not entities either: two people from different parts of a state can be just as different as two people from different states. If you wanted to make a candidate appeal to numerous disparate groups of people you would have to group people by interest, not by state. States are meaningless historical boundaries. Appealing to the lowest common denominator of states is even worse than appealing to the lowest common denominator of everywhere. Even more people's opinions get shafted, and those minority groups you mentioned? They're more common in the higher-populated states. Different ethnicities, religions, lifestyles, career paths, special interest groups, schools of thought, subcultures, ambitions: these things thrive where people gather. What is the "majority" in the USA is even more of a majority in the lower-populated states!

The electoral college thus makes rule of the mob even stronger than it was before, by strengthening the vote of the states where the people are least disparate.

Offline InnaBinder

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Re: Vote 2012 ... (whiteknuckling the last few days)
« Reply #588 on: November 07, 2012, 06:55:51 AM »
My god the republicans are kind of getting their asses handed to them...

I expected this to be weeks of lawsuits and hand wringing...
It still will be. Looks like Romney might win the popular vote, but lose the electoral one. I call that motherfucking justice, bitches. Remember Al Gore? Maybe the whining and crying will actually cause some reform in our stupid-assed electoral system (like flushing it down the toilet like the outdated piece of shit it is).
The numbers I'm seeing this morning indicate this wasn't the (I think) 5th time for the popular vote winner to be the electoral vote loser, so the argument is academic for now, if interesting.
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Offline oslecamo

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Re: Vote 2012 ... (whiteknuckling the last few days)
« Reply #589 on: November 07, 2012, 07:33:59 AM »
The Wall Street Journal site itself (which is as pro-Romeny as it gets) is showing that Obama got 50% of the popular vote while Romney only grabbed 48%.

The Far Right is imploding upon itself, and it's delicious.
+1 to that, in particular after all the weeks I had to endure of them gloating in the Wall Street Journal that Romney on how Romney would curb-stomp Obama (they give the newspaper free in my uni, it helps practise my english and the non-political articles are actually quite good).

Offline RobbyPants

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Re: Vote 2012 ... (whiteknuckling the last few days)
« Reply #590 on: November 07, 2012, 08:11:18 AM »
i'm just happy its all over... no more ads for now. back to shitty stuff on tv :-p
Well, now all the Facebook bitching can start has already started. :smirk
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Offline Unbeliever

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Re: Vote 2012 ... (whiteknuckling the last few days)
« Reply #591 on: November 07, 2012, 08:30:29 AM »
...
The electoral college thus makes rule of the mob even stronger than it was before, by strengthening the vote of the states where the people are least disparate.
This is not really true.  Or, let me be more precise:  to the extent it is true it is not the fault of the Electoral College.  It is only coincidental that, say, Wyoming, the Dakotas, etc. is quite undiverse.  It could, and probably has at various points in time, been just the opposite.

Also, don't conflate demographic and political diversity.  I'm not disagreeing that it's the case that most of the small states that benefit from the Electoral College system are probably not politically diverse -- I haven't looked at numbers recently but it seems likely to be the case.  But, there are states like New Hampshire (very small) that are demographically very homogeneous but politically very diverse -- there is a wide disparity of political leanings throughout the state.  You can contrast that with states like New York (very large), that while having a fair bit of demographic diversity is actually pretty politically homogeneous -- even the Republicans and Democrats in the state have relatively (though boy is that a big qualifier nowadays) little daylight between them.

This Electoral College discussion has gone on in college dormrooms for generations.  It does disproportionately favor small, lower population states.  There's no question about that.  And, that's by design.  The Framers knew that was exactly what they were doing and went along with it -- the prevailing narrative is that it was to buy off the smaller states to participate in the constitutional scheme at all lest they be thoroughly dominated by the larger states.  I'm not saying it's necessarily a good thing, but it's a well-known fact that once upon a time we were willing to accept as the cost of doing business.

Frankly, if you're concerned about this sort of thing you should stop talking about the Electoral College right now and be really concerned about the Senate.  Tiny states will, and always have, guided national policy through that body.  And, note that very little in the US government system is strictly-speaking, majoritarian. 

States are not entities either
...
States are meaningless historical boundaries.
Unfortunately, every single thing in the United States political system disagrees with these statements (though not the statement about intra-state diversity that I excerpted).  States are the most meaningful political entities in the nation.  The entire system is predicated on their existence and their power.  They may be arbitrary, but hell so are nations, but they are certainly not meaningless.  Unlike the Federal Government, that only has enumerated powers, states have wide-ranging "police power" for the welfare of their residents.  Also, unless you are a mobster, it is about 1000 times more likely that if you go to jail it's a state law that is going to send you there. 

Contrast this with parties, that have no legal existence, no legal powers, whatsoever.  The Democratic Party is a club, it's the 4H, according to American law Massachusetts is a sovereign empowered to make vital, life or death, decisions for millions of people. 

You may not like it, nobody is asking you to, but it's the way things are in the United States. 

Offline veekie

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Re: Vote 2012 ... (whiteknuckling the last few days)
« Reply #592 on: November 07, 2012, 10:40:17 AM »
i'm just happy its all over... no more ads for now. back to shitty stuff on tv :-p
Well, now all the Facebook bitching can start has already started. :smirk
It'd mostly be more of the same really, considering the country left the ballots more or less the same way it went in.
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Offline dman11235

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Re: Vote 2012 ... (whiteknuckling the last few days)
« Reply #593 on: November 07, 2012, 12:52:27 PM »
(click to show/hide)

Look, can we stop pretending the Republicans are the fiscally responsible party?  Please?  They have a history (recent, anyways) or going for low taxes and high spending (although the low taxes thing is a myth, as Reagan, Bush Sr. and Bush Jr. all raised taxes multiple times), which is a recipe for disaster with regards to having a low debt (or even a surplus).  You can have them for other things, but they stopped being the economical party since the early 80ss.  Heck, maybe sooner.
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Offline altpersona

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Re: Vote 2012 ... (whiteknuckling the last few days)
« Reply #594 on: November 07, 2012, 01:25:35 PM »
dont forget the new / disavowed non partisan study that says top end tax cuts / trickle down doesn't work.

edit: also, the business / accounting classes iv taken (i got an accounting cert, woohoo) stress that debt is an asset.

spending a 100$ you dont have is the same as 100$ in income.

to be fair accounting is like statistics... the best parts are made up.
« Last Edit: November 07, 2012, 01:31:15 PM by altpersona »
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Offline InnaBinder

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Re: Vote 2012 ... (whiteknuckling the last few days)
« Reply #595 on: November 07, 2012, 01:38:10 PM »
Government's presumptive primary role/goal is also different from a business model, since businesses seek to turn a profit as their main objective, whereas governments seek to protect/oversee/manage the population in some way or another.
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Offline Bozwevial

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Re: Vote 2012 ... (whiteknuckling the last few days)
« Reply #596 on: November 07, 2012, 01:41:06 PM »
i'm just happy its all over... no more ads for now. back to shitty stuff on tv :-p
Well, now all the Facebook bitching can start has already started. :smirk
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Re: Vote 2012 ... (whiteknuckling the last few days)
« Reply #597 on: November 07, 2012, 01:42:31 PM »
i'm just happy its all over... no more ads for now. back to shitty stuff on tv :-p
Well, now all the Facebook bitching can start has already started. :smirk
Already have people hoping that this generation gets its own John Wilkes Booth. I wish I were making that up or paraphrasing.
Well, he allegedly was quite a good actor.
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Offline bhu

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Re: Vote 2012 ... (whiteknuckling the last few days)
« Reply #598 on: November 07, 2012, 01:57:24 PM »
I wish I could find it but there was a study showing that no party has ever shrunk spending.  When republicans were in power they gutted social programs to feed the military, and when democrats are in power they reverse that trend.

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Re: Vote 2012 ... (whiteknuckling the last few days)
« Reply #599 on: November 07, 2012, 02:32:12 PM »
i'm just happy its all over... no more ads for now. back to shitty stuff on tv :-p
Well, now all the Facebook bitching can start has already started. :smirk
Already have people hoping that this generation gets its own John Wilkes Booth. I wish I were making that up or paraphrasing.
I guess people only like democracy half the time.

Why don't you like America half the time!? :p
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