Hillary Clinton

[erfalf]

Why are states more important than people? That's ridiculous. But then, companies are people now, right?

When it comes to the formation of this great nation, states are more important than the individual. There are things bigger than yourself. Well maybe not YOUR self, but our selves.

[swake]

When it comes to the formation of this great nation, states are more important than the individual. There are things bigger than yourself. Well maybe not YOUR self, but our selves.

The founding fathers created a system to check mob rule so the uneducated couldn't just usurp power and create an incompetent government.

That has been turned on its head by urbanization and now the uneducated are using the state system to take power. We have now elected a "Breitbart/Infowars president that is all crazy conspiracies, anti-science, anti-good governance and anti-truth. This isn't what Madison and company wanted.

Donald Trump, our birther/rapist in chief.

Good job.

[erfalf]

The founding fathers created a system to check mob rule so the uneducated couldn't just usurp power and create an incompetent government.

That has been turned on its head by urbanization and now the uneducated are using the state system to take power. We have now elected a "Breitbart/Infowars president that is all crazy conspiracies, anti-science, anti-good governance and anti-truth. This isn't what Madison and company wanted.

Donald Trump, our birther/rapist in chief.

Good job.

Way to stay classy.

Ok you want Trump to be civil, yet you sit here and spew rhetoric about less urban people being stupid. And generally speaking the rural/urban gap has far more to do with economic prosperity than smarts, just saying. Like I said, if you are against the EC, then you should also be advocating for the abolishment of the Senate. Own up and just say that you are pissed she lost, and you want to bend the system to whatever you think would have benefited her. But as I have already stated, had the rules been difference (popular vote) there is no guarantee she would have won either.

I get it, if you're not for Hillary your an imbecile. I forgot the cardinal rule of having a discussion with you. You are right and good.

Stein thought Hillary was going to start World War III. You don't know jack squat about what Trump will or won't do. How could anyone. He's held more policy positions than José Oquendo.

[Bamboo World]

...Hell, as of right now the EC is 50 popular votes that are weighted together...

No, that is not what the Electoral College is.

All we're asking is that instead of throwing everyone into different buckets at the end, Judy combine them.

I have no idea what "Judy combining" means.

I agree with erfalf.  "Fair" or not, the electoral process was known by all the candidates beforehand.  Many people do not like the process.  Many people do not like the outcome of this particular election.

But, Hillary Clinton conceded yesterday.  Running for the presidency was her choice.  Since 1985, she has had nine opportunities to become president (by being elected to that particular office).  The electoral process has been established for a long time.  She went for the presidency in 2008 and lost.  She went for it in 2016 and lost.  If she is still around and feels up to the task, she can try again in 2020, which will be her tenth opportunity.

At the very least, the EC should move away from a winner-take-all model at the state level..  Have the voters select a rep for their congressional district. Then, whoever wins the popular vote for the state could get the votes representing their senators.

As far as I know, states have that option.  Electors are proportioned in Maine and in Nebraska.  But that doesn't mean all of the other states should be forced to change their current election procedures to something else simply because Maine and Nebraska have done so.

[Ed W]

The founding fathers created a system to check mob rule so the uneducated couldn't just usurp power and create an incompetent government.

That has been turned on its head by urbanization and now the uneducated are using the state system to take power.

Part of this is due to the nature of the primary system as it caters to the extreme elements in a party. They may be single issue voters but they reliably turn out in numbers. The Republican party has no buffer similar to the Democrats super delegates, though Bernie supporters are blaming those delegates for his defeat.

Is a better system of candidate selection available? I don't want to return to the proverbial smoke filled room.

[heironymouspasparagus]

I'm certainly not suggesting that Gingrich was the first ever to do this, but simply stating he was really the first SOTH who was so outwardly and openly virulent toward the POTUS of another party affiliation.  He was also bolstered by the new popularity of talk radio and conservative-leaning programming on cable.

Craven.  Gingrich was, and is, craven.

[heironymouspasparagus]

It is according the rules, but the rules aren't working anymore. I haven't seen total votes yet but this election will most likely again see Democrats not only get more votes for President but also for the Senate and the House. Democrats got the most house and senate votes in 2008 as well and were in the minority in both houses.

Despite losing the overall popular vote in both houses and the Presidency, Republicans control all three.

We have lost our democracy/republic.

First, we have never been a democracy.  We have always been a democratic republic.  Different things.  And we haven't lost what we never had - and we still do have what we have always been!

And it is that way because the guys that started this understood that a democracy is a catastrophic way to run a government and always fails!  Always!  At least every example attempt for the last few thousand years...  They wanted something with some staying power.  Jury is still out on that one, since we are so young, but the really long lived examples from the past aren't anything that I want for myself or any of my descendants.

[heironymouspasparagus]

We just elected a truly evil man. A sexist bigot that has spent his life ripping people off, calling people ugly names and sexually attacking women. And then he brags about it. He's incompetent, stupid and an ugly human being. And we did it all against the will of the people.

That's far from great. 

Only about 47% of the people voting advocate his position as Pedophile in Chief.

But look at what a huge portion of that group claims to be.... Says some very bad things about morals and how many people are able to justify/rationalize that type of behavior!  While at exactly the same time attempting to demonize a man who, while I disagree with on several levels, has shown himself to be a decent, moral, truthful, and even amusing, family man who does appear to practice his Christian beliefs.   But he is half-black, so that is enough...

[heironymouspasparagus]

No grumbling or moaning from Bamboo World about the electoral process... 

The USA is a federation of individual states.  The electoral system is a way for the states to chuse a presiding officer for the executive branch of the federal government.  It's not a perfect method of chusing, but it's better than chusing by a nationwide popular vote, in Bamboo World's opinion.

A few minutes ago, I looked at an online election map, updated by The Washington Post.  According the Post's website, Clinton's popular vote count stood at 59.85 million.  Trump had 220,000 fewer popular votes, but he was likely to receive a majority of electoral votes from the various states.  It seems as though the numbers for Arizona, Michigan, and New Hampshire were too close to call yet.

A nationwide popular vote system would be fraught with too many problems and pitfalls in very close elections such as this one, or the 2000 Gore-Bush race, for example.  If it wasn't up to the individual states to certify vote totals, then who or what would?  The process of re-counting 120 million individual ballots to "settle" a 220,000 vote margin would be time-consuming and open to corruption within and amongst the various states. 

I'm looking at the numbers and seeing 59.85 million versus 59.63 million as a "tie" in the popular vote.  The electoral process, in this case, breaks the tie and allows the states to chuse a president.

Presumably, both Clinton and Trump knew about the process of chusing a president.  Clinton conceded today (although I didn't hear her speech).  She knew that she could win a plurality of popular votes, but that if she did not win a majority of electoral votes, winning the presidency wouldn't be guaranteed.   
                   

I have no grumbling or moaning for Bamboo World about their comments on the electoral process... 

Just want to comment on the 1st person referral to oneself.... That is a slippery slope that leads to insanity!!   Like Smeagal in the Lord of the Rings!!

[Conan71]

The founding fathers created a system to check mob rule so the uneducated couldn't just usurp power and create an incompetent government.

That has been turned on its head by urbanization and now the uneducated are using the state system to take power. We have now elected a "Breitbart/Infowars president that is all crazy conspiracies, anti-science, anti-good governance and anti-truth. This isn't what Madison and company wanted.

Donald Trump, our birther/rapist in chief.

Good job.

So, if Hillary had won, you'd say what a bunch of enlightened people elected a corrupt Kleptocrat, right? 

You really do have an issue with sour grapes.

[swake]

Way to stay classy.

Ok you want Trump to be civil, yet you sit here and spew rhetoric about less urban people being stupid. And generally speaking the rural/urban gap has far more to do with economic prosperity than smarts, just saying. Like I said, if you are against the EC, then you should also be advocating for the abolishment of the Senate. Own up and just say that you are pissed she lost, and you want to bend the system to whatever you think would have benefited her. But as I have already stated, had the rules been difference (popular vote) there is no guarantee she would have won either.

I get it, if you're not for Hillary your an imbecile. I forgot the cardinal rule of having a discussion with you. You are right and good.

Stein thought Hillary was going to start World War III. You don't know jack squat about what Trump will or won't do. How could anyone. He's held more policy positions than José Oquendo.

The idea that people in rural areas are less educated is simple statistics. And I am saying our political system doesn't work, and hasn't in some time. When was the last time the entirely Republican controlled House and Senate passed a budget? Republicans can't even agree on a budget within themselves. It would be comical if it wasn't so sad.

As for Trump being a birther and a rapist. Well, he is. Deal with it.

[AquaMan]

Your mind is a scary neighborhood.  I'm glad I don't live there! 

IIRC, I'd actually predicted on our election prediction thread Trump would win the popular vote and Clinton the Electoral College. 

Both candidates knew how the electoral system works, they played under the same rules.  It is our system, it will never please everyone.  Somehow, I suspect we would not even be having this conversation had this gone the other way.  Democrats are a bit raw over losing in similar fashion in 2000, I get that.  Everyone figured the Clintons would play it right in the swing states and cruise to an easy victory.  I believe there might have been some over-confidence on the part of the Clinton campaign.

Aside from that, Clinton was a really bad candidate.  The Democrats had a chance to nominate someone who seemed to be much more earnest and who might have had an easier time defeating Trump because Bernie didn't have a trail of scandals (real or imagined) following him around.  From what we have learned via leaked emails, the DNC put the fix in for HRC.  If you are upset, you should first be upset about how your party let you down by apparently rigging their primary system so that HRC was a foregone conclusion.  By your's and swake's logic, we could say that HRC became the Democrat nominee against the will of the people.

Its a fine mind thank you. When people think differently than the masses, it often creates suspicion and criticism. I'm used to it.

So, you're making analysis of a party you didn't support, (you were Johnson iirc)  candidates you couldn't vote for (Hillary and the Don)  and concluding that a Socialist could have easily beaten a Capitalist? Strange brew you've made! An objective view of the two candidates easily show Trump as having many more negatives and baggage as a candidate, yet, we obsessed on the Hillary profiled by her opponents which in the end turned out to be bogus claims. You aren't hearing Trump talk about jail any more are you? And instead its the FBI, Assange, and their hacking partners that are on the hot seat.

I rarely am in Swake's camp but the electoral system isn't one person, one vote. It weights for balancing off the states' interests, not the people's. So, we don't really believe in majority rules, we believe in electioneering rules that keep big populations from overcoming small states. That works fine in the congressional layout where one house makes every state equal, and the other house is based on population....but not for the presidential office. It us unusual and stems from when the country was vastly different. Again, strange brew we're consuming.

If we aren't learning and using the constitution as a flexible, changeable guide to democracy and instead call it sour grapes when it doesn't auto-correct, then why even bother with talking about it? We've had several elections that highlighted the flaw yet, nothing will ever change it if you think of the constitution as some kind of Bible.

[erfalf]

When was the last time the entirely Republican controlled House and Senate passed a budget?

May 5, 2015 to be exact. The first year they held both houses of Congress.

During the split years nothing was passed. And the Dems actually punted in 2010 as well, when they had near super majorities in both houses and the had Presidency. History is a B for you isn't it.

[erfalf]

If we aren't learning and using the constitution as a flexible, changeable guide to democracy and instead call it sour grapes when it doesn't auto-correct, then why even bother with talking about it? We've had several elections that highlighted the flaw yet, nothing will ever change it if you think of the constitution as some kind of Bible.

I just don't call it a flaw. Calling it so is a shallow analysis in my  opinion. Quirk yes. But a valuable one.

[heironymouspasparagus]

The idea that people in rural areas are less educated is simple statistics. And I am saying our political system doesn't work, and hasn't in some time. When was the last time the entirely Republican controlled House and Senate passed a budget? Republicans can't even agree on a budget within themselves. It would be comical if it wasn't so sad.

As for Trump being a birther and a rapist. Well, he is. Deal with it.

I think you are taking a "too close" view of our system.  It actually does work pretty well, just not always in a way most people would like.  That fact is probably the biggest single benefit and example of how well it is working - if any one or any group is truly happy in a political world like ours, that always means that somebody or big group of somebodies is getting royally screwed!!  Equal discontent on both sides is the ideal operating point!  Key to that is 'equal'....

And yeah, who woulda thought that the ignorance of being a birther would be so far down the list of problems a President would have?


Why the big commotion on "passing a budget"?  Who could possibly care beyond a  bean-counter?  That is just kind of a marker used by people who may be leaning just a little bit too far to the OCD side.  As long as the bills continue to be passed that keep the boat floating and moving, it doesn't really mean much - nothing at all - as to whether it fits some pre-defined plan of dotted i's and crossed t's.

And that deadlock of not being able to come together easily for 'budgeting' is good for us in general.  It means they aren't doing something at that point in time to hurt us.   Long live the deadlock!!