Trump Kicking and Screaming Transition Thread

Poor little snowflakes. Couldn't possibly hurt their feelings, could we?

It's hard for me to wrap my head around the idea that voters in Laramie are disenfranchising voters in Chicago. But as far as regionalism goes, I would imagine if the EC were abolished, states (or maybe even parts of states) might organize into political blocs based on their economic interests. I'm not sure if that would be a good or bad thing.

Ok, that's better, I can work with that.

The matter of uneven population distribution is, I accept, a much more pressing concern for the US than most European nations. We have far less disparity in density so whilst we aren’t homogenous much more can be achieved by tweaking the boundaries.

How, then, to address the concerns of tens of thousands, if not millions of people in cities who are effectively pressed into the position of having no control over the Presidential elections once because their vote is to all intents and purposes discounted?

How do we measure the subjective experience of a distributed minority against the objective reality of a concentrated majority?

Note I have loaded the wording there, on purpose, but I do acknowledge the importance of people feeling disenfranchised in rural areas. I'm just not sure how loading the dice in their favour can be justified?

Surely finding that your vote has proportionately less influence than someone else's is awfully close to the definition of being disenfranchised?

Our mainstream left is the Labour Party (y'know, Blair's lot). If you actually lean ideologically left then there are a plethora of flavours represented by minority parties who nonetheless wield real influence.

I've never known an iteration of the really rather centrist and moderate Labour Party run a platform as far to the right as Sanders or AOC, but keep hearing from the likes of @Paladin how we aren't a socialist nation.

Strange...

1. It doesn't force candidates to campaign in places other than a handful of cities, if you are talking about in-person campaigning. Under the EC, most states presumably could be won by campaigning just in their major cities. People still campaign across the state in rural areas because it still makes sense.

2. In modern times, telecommunication makes campaigning in rural and urban areas not significantly different, so to the extent that "ensuring campaigns hit rural areas" is something that we want to foster, we're pretty well covered.

3. Again, California (or California/NY/TX/IL) can't singlehandedly elect a president.

4. Assuming for argument's sake everything you have written is 100 percent true, why are these advantages better than the alternative of direct elections? The EC forces candidates to focus their campaigns on swing states rather than on the other 38. The EC gives small states an oversized importance. The EC essentially leaves the decision of who is going to be president to a handful of states rather than making it feel like the entire country is making it. And oh yeah, it means that the vote of an individual from a traditionally red or blue state is less thn the vote of an individual from a swing state.

No.

It forces candidates to care about a handful of swing states and ignore all others.

Presidential campaign visits by state (2016 but I can’t find a 2020):

Ok, that's....damning.

The opposite is true. The focus will no longer be the few swing states if every vote counts.

Good point. We wouldn’t want those people to have an equal say...

In 2015, California had the largest ethnic/racial minoritypopulation in the United States. Non-Hispanic whitesdecreased from about 76.3 - 78% of the state's population in 1970 to 36.6%% in 2018. While the population of minorities accounts for 100.7 million of 300 million U.S. residents, 20% of the national total live in California (2008).

OMG, he's MELTING!!!!

Chavez died like 8 years ago

I mean this is getting beyond ridiculous

Conservatism is a heck of a drug.

I mean are any of Trump's supporters here not embarrassed by the ugly sideshow that's going on here with Guiliani and the rest of Trump's poorly prepared legal team shouting misinformation, lies and actively trying to subvert the democratic process??

Is this not painful to watch?? Or do you not recognize this as amateur hour at its finest??

Do you not think what is happening right now is very bad for democracy in general??

I don't think they care as long as they get to "own libs"

^This.

Also, give them till about mid-February and they'll slink back in here claiming they never really supported Trump - oh, my, no!

Rudy Giuliani Has Journeyed Deep Into Dimension X
Madness always attends a time of plague, but the press conference featuring Trump's "elite strike force" was truly something new.

That, and how long do you think it'll take for the deplorables to go from "Corona is a hoax!" to "Biden didn't fix this fast enough and X more ppl died! Impeach him! " ?

Actually, they won't do that because getting rid of him means having a black woman they'd have to take marching orders from. Much like Pence was brought on as life insurance to make sure no liberal shot Trump

And if the people of Georgia are pissed off enough about that idiotic recount, their Senate runoff race could have verrry interesting consequences.

Beat me to it. Only way I can think of that happening is if he put the dye in his hair without washing it. But then I've never understood why people of that age use the stuff to begin with. It looks so fake on people over 60.

Yeah, c'mon @steve2^4. Round up @ed629 and get moving. Tell your people how the Cheeto-in-Chief has exploited them, and get them out for the runoff election - STAT!

Gee, it sounds almost like you're saying our government's structure is outdated and doesn't reflect 21st-century reality.

National candidates spend a lot of time campaigning in Burlington, Boise and Fargo now, do they?

It's Schrodinger's government, simultaneously built on systemic racism and without any baked in.

This is one of those subjects -- much like "Medicare for All means everything will be like the VA" and "AOC is a deluded child" -- where it feels like we're living in Groundhog Day.

Every single time this topic comes up, somebody points out the math, which is that California has 12% of the country's population, New York has 6%, and therefore, even together, they can't unilaterally decide jack squat for the entire country.

And then the next time we discuss it, we go right back to "but without the EC, California and New York would get to decide for everyone!" all over again.

It's pretty clear that at this point that Lanz doesn't discuss this issue in good faith.