Coffee talk

[sabresfaninthesouth]

I think after having - for the second time in five elections - a situation where the winner of the popular vote lost the EC (assuming current tallies hold), it's time to again consider something akin to the Wyoming Rule for expanding the size of the House and - in turn - the size of the EC.

I doubt it flips the outcome of this election, but I think it's a conversation worth having that the House and EC need to better represent the actual populations of the states.

 

[thedddd]

He hit a lot of good points, especially for folks who don't understand gerrymandering (which the Reps will probably get more control come 2018 due to it) and the MAJOR flaw in the electoral college (where one electorate in CA has less value than one electorage in WY, etc...), basically the larger the population the less value each vote is.

Darkstone42 hit both of those points above also.

 

[dare2be]

Head-to-head polls did suggest he'd perform better specifically against Trump

I must be mis-remembering then. I could have sworn that during the early primaries that Bernie fared worse against Trump than Clinton.

All I can say is that I know of one voter (me) who voted for her opponent because I believe she quite likely committed many and serious criminal acts during and after her tenure as Sec of State. That's it. That is the reason.

So you ignored the current criminal charges being levied against Trump?

They're both criminals. One is a status-quo criminal and the other is an upheaval-for-the-sake-of-upheaval criminal.

 

[forty_three]

Bullshit lol. How flawed she is was reflected in how badly she was beaten. There really is no better argument than the outcome of the election itself.

If anybody was railroaded here it was democratic voters that had to deal with the fact that eight years ago it was decided that come hell or high water Hilary Clinton was going to be the democratic nominee because Obama stole that from her.

Such a roller coaster of emotion in one response

I think the constructed perception of her flaws held more of an impact, and not directly relatable to her actual flaws. She wasn't just running against Trump, she was running against a highly caricaturized version of herself.

But the second point, dead on. She was anointed and that didn't have any effect on the general hardcore Democrat. But the problem is there's like 20% hardcore on each side and everyone else in the middle. They were the ones alienated by the anointing. It bothered me, I will admit. At the end of the day, my decision was not about the candidate as much as it was about the platform. The Supreme court was my driving motivation.

I think the results show us there was a pretty significant group of people who voted against the person.

We don't know that. Different candidates turn out different voters. Without the baggage of emails and the Clinton presidency and, sadly, the female factor who the hell knows how last night plays out.

As shown lower in the thread, the younger people overwhelmingly voted the Dems way. But the way Bernie got beaten up in the leaked emails disenfranchised that age group. If Bernie was on the ballot (even as VP), I'd wager enough of the ones who got pissed off would have come out to flip the election.

Vote Milos, you know he's primed to provide great service.

I'm in. Vote 4318

lot more support for Bernie amongst the African American community too

I can't wait to see those turnout numbers.

I voted against her. Not for Trump. I have no problem with her chromosone status (so it is definitely not a woman thing), but I highly value following the laws. It was the only point that mattered to me.

Legit question, how did you feel about the allegations of Sexual assault, racketeering trial upcoming, his fraud lawsuits against his university, the prosecutions in the 80's for fair housing act violations, having his foundation ordered to stop accepting donations for misappropriating funds and using donated funds to settle his legal bills, and stories about his own wife being an illegal immigrant when she first arrived?

How do you reconcile all that against Clinton never having been found to have actually broken any laws?

 

[Bloody Brian Burke]

She seems to have won the popular vote, so I wouldn't say she got beaten very badly. The problem was electoral college votes aren't precisely distributed based on population, and Trump won a lot of states with high electoral college votes relative to their populations. California and New York are really valuable states in the electoral college, but it takes a lot more individual votes in either to win one electoral vote than it does in, say, Montana.

I detest the popular vote argument. Setting aside the narrow-as-hell percentage more that voted for her over Trump, the election wasn't decided via popular vote. If you scrap the electoral college completely and have the president be elected via popular vote you will have Republicans in solid blue states like NY, MA, CA etc. and Democrats in solid red states like OK, TX, AZ etc. who may stay home on voting day under the electoral college because they feel as if their vote is useless feel more encouraged to head to the polls knowing that every vote nationwide will go toward a single goal rather than 50 separate goals. You could see a turnout increase in the millions and it would be impossible to determine which party would benefit over the other.

People crying about the electoral vote today are just as misguided as those crying about third-party candidates.

 

[Bloody Brian Burke]

Such a roller coaster of emotion in one response

I think the constructed perception of her flaws held more of an impact, and not directly relatable to her actual flaws. She wasn't just running against Trump, she was running against a highly caricaturized version of herself.

But the second point, dead on. She was anointed and that didn't have any effect on the general hardcore Democrat. But the problem is there's like 20% hardcore on each side and everyone else in the middle. They were the ones alienated by the anointing. It bothered me, I will admit. At the end of the day, my decision was not about the candidate as much as it was about the platform. The Supreme court was my driving motivation.

That's fair. It correlates with the second point though - the GOP had how many years of a head start to paint her the way she ultimately came off as during the general? Anti-Hillary vitriol spent years in the public spotlight despite her being a civilian the last 4 years.

 

[Bloody Brian Burke]

Look, even if Trump is a complete disaster at least you guys have a competent person to clean his shit up afterward:


/How do they know everything before we do?!

 

[Darkstone42]

I must be mis-remembering then. I could have sworn that during the early primaries that Bernie fared worse against Trump than Clinton.


So you ignored the current criminal charges being levied against Trump?

They're both criminals. One is a status-quo criminal and the other is an upheaval-for-the-sake-of-upheaval criminal.

538 commented on Sanders's better performance in the polls versus Trump when things first turned south for Clinton. I trust their memory of polls.

 

[Darkstone42]

I detest the popular vote argument. Setting aside the narrow-as-hell percentage more that voted for her over Trump, the election wasn't decided via popular vote. If you scrap the electoral college completely and have the president be elected via popular vote you will have Republicans in solid blue states like NY, MA, CA etc. and Democrats in solid red states like OK, TX, AZ etc. who may stay home on voting day under the electoral college because they feel as if their vote is useless feel more encouraged to head to the polls knowing that every vote nationwide will go toward a single goal rather than 50 separate goals. You could see a turnout increase in the millions and it would be impossible to determine which party would benefit over the other.

People crying about the electoral vote today are just as misguided as those crying about third-party candidates.

I wasn't crying about it, just using it as an objective counterpoint to your claim she was "beaten badly." At that time, she had received more votes, that's not being beaten badly. And no matter what, the system is obviously deeply flawed if it weights some individuals' votes orders of magnitude more than others.

 

[Bloody Brian Burke]

I wasn't crying about it, just using it as an objective counterpoint to your claim she was "beaten badly." At that time, she had received more votes, that's not being beaten badly. And no matter what, the system is obviously deeply flawed if it weights some individuals' votes orders of magnitude more than others.

Sorry, I shouldn't have used crying. That was inflammatory.

 

[wings-pens2166]

Also, there's a lot of blame being thrown at Gary Johnson, and it's very possible, I guess, that he could have cost Clinton the presidency, but just looking at libertarian ideology, it doesn't seem any more likely to steal liberal votes than conservative ones. I'm really not sure it ends up making a difference.

The real blame has to fall squarely on the shoulders of 1) all the people who didn't vote at all, and 2) all the people who voted for that rotting orange.

wrong...the only real blame falls squarely on you and your party for electing probably the only person in America that could make Donald fucking Trump of all people actually look like a viable option.

by the way, as to your earlier comment about education and not having another Trump, you should go look at some of the numbers coming back in on how various educated blocks voted. They pretty much kill that argument.

and yeah, I voted for G. Johnson. not because I thought he was all that great a candidate, but rather because he possessed the only two qualifications that matter....1) he wasn't Trump, 2) he wasn't Clinton.

 

[BGDave]

I think after having - for the second time in five elections - a situation where the winner of the popular vote lost the EC (assuming current tallies hold), it's time to again consider something akin to the Wyoming Rule for expanding the size of the House and - in turn - the size of the EC.

I doubt it flips the outcome of this election, but I think it's a conversation worth having that the House and EC need to better represent the actual populations of the states.

Not familiar with the Wyoming Rule.

Off to Google !

 

[BGDave]

Legit question, how did you feel about the allegations of Sexual assault, racketeering trial upcoming, his fraud lawsuits against his university, the prosecutions in the 80's for fair housing act violations, having his foundation ordered to stop accepting donations for misappropriating funds and using donated funds to settle his legal bills, and stories about his own wife being an illegal immigrant when she first arrived?

How do you reconcile all that against Clinton never having been found to have actually broken any laws?

Well, some of those listed are not (yet) convictions either. So no more damning then HRC's alleged corrupt activity.

For the items he has been convicted of, it was a lesser of two evils for me. People can reasonably form a different conclusion, but for me, (the alleged) pay-to-play activities while SoS "trumped" the things Donald has done.

I guess it comes down to where you draw the line. No one reaches a position of influence without having skeletons. No one. Not HRC, not Trump, not Obama, not any of the Bushes, not WJC, not Bezos, not Gates, not Buffett, no one. In an election, we have to assess as best we can with all the information we have and make our best value judgment. For me, (alleged) racketeering, profiting off public office and yes, the lack of judgment over the home server, were more egregious then Trump's skeletons.

We did not have a great choice this election, no doubt about that.

 

[BGDave]

I wasn't crying about it, just using it as an objective counterpoint to your claim she was "beaten badly." At that time, she had received more votes, that's not being beaten badly. And no matter what, the system is obviously deeply flawed if it weights some individuals' votes orders of magnitude more than others.

The EC system, in part, was a reflection of the fact that the country was originally intended to be a looser coalition of 13 semi-autonomous States. Even the Founding Fathers were good enough at math to understand that the EC system /=/ one person, one vote.

Not defending or criticizing it, the EC is what it is and had a rationale for it. Is that rationale outdated today? Well, part of the answer to that question lies in the very fabric of the US. What is the role of States today? Has it changed? Should it change?

Those are some really big, fundamental questions. The EC is a small part of that.

 

[BGDave]

So you ignored the current criminal charges being levied against Trump?

They're both criminals. One is a status-quo criminal and the other is an upheaval-for-the-sake-of-upheaval criminal.

Fair question, although you presume when you use the word "ignore".

Not to repeat the above post, this election (like any elections) requires weighing two very flawed candidates. I did not ignore Trump's weaknesses, but had to form my own value judgment on which was the more egregious. Others reasonably reached a different conclusion, and I am fine with that.

 

[dare2be]

Not to repeat the above post, this election (like any elections) requires weighing two very flawed candidates. I did not ignore Trump's weaknesses, but had to form my own value judgment on which was the more egregious. Others reasonably reached a different conclusion, and I am fine with that.

Fair as well. I put the biggest weight on which outcome would be more damaging in the long run. I had a strong feeling that Congress was going to flip Republican, so to keep the balance of power, so to speak, I voted for the Democratic president.

No, who am I kidding. I voted against Trump because he is bat-shit crazy.

Gerrymandering scares me the most. I don't think we will see a Democratic majority in either House or Senate in our lifetimes.

 

[forty_three]

Well, some of those listed are not (yet) convictions either. So no more damning then HRC's alleged corrupt activity.

For the items he has been convicted of, it was a lesser of two evils for me. People can reasonably form a different conclusion, but for me, (the alleged) pay-to-play activities while SoS "trumped" the things Donald has done.

I guess it comes down to where you draw the line. No one reaches a position of influence without having skeletons. No one. Not HRC, not Trump, not Obama, not any of the Bushes, not WJC, not Bezos, not Gates, not Buffett, no one. In an election, we have to assess as best we can with all the information we have and make our best value judgment. For me, (alleged) racketeering, profiting off public office and yes, the lack of judgment over the home server, were more egregious then Trump's skeletons.

We did not have a great choice this election, no doubt about that.

Thanks for the reasoned response, and I expected you to have a one because you're a level-headed guy despite being a Leafs fan. It's why I felt comfortable asking he question.

I see where you're coming from, but from where I sit it seems like the fact that both are "alleged" to have done some nasty things but only one seemed to get more direct impact despite her alleged indiscretions being not quite as serious in the grand scheme (unless you believe the conspiracy theory of her having people killed). It goes back to the double standard applied to varying things in this country.

Another example is this "you misjudged all rural people by assuming we're all the same". Valid point. That has to suck. But this campaign was all about misjudging large groups of people. And some groups complaining about that treatment get called whiners. Others complaining about the exact same thing get called racists. They argue and fight against each other.

Neither one sees that they're the same. That's the problem I was hoping we, as a people, can get past. Not just in this country, on this planet.



Seems we still have a ways to go.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

 

[forty_three]

Gerrymandering scares me the most. I don't think we will see a Democratic majority in either House or Senate in our lifetimes.

The system makes it so the only people who could change it stay in power. Therefore, it will never change. It irritates me way more than it probably should. Primarily because I am gerrymandered to death. My neighborhood is districted with a large swath of farmland all the way to Zanesville (an hour away). 1 mile north, 1 mile south and 4 miles west of my house are all different districts. I have no say in what those officials do for my town. But I can stand up to what happens an hour away.

The foxes are watching the henhouse there.

 

[BGDave]

Fair as well. I put the biggest weight on which outcome would be more damaging in the long run. I had a strong feeling that Congress was going to flip Republican, so to keep the balance of power, so to speak, I voted for the Democratic president.

No, who am I kidding. I voted against Trump because he is bat-shit crazy.

Gerrymandering scares me the most. I don't think we will see a Democratic majority in either House or Senate in our lifetimes.

I wouldn't be so categorical on the House or Senate. Conventional view was that the Dems would take back the Senate this time around, and they came pretty close. I dont know what to say about the House. I read (on here) an interesting take on how Howard Dean built the grassroots movement that led to control of the House, a strategy which was promptly abandoned by Obama/Clinton/DWS etc.

In my House District, there was no D running. Shocked the heck out of me. Because I believe strongly in term limits, I have and was going to again, vote D for the House. So then I looked, and in 3 of the 6 House seats up for election in Kentucky, there was no D nominee. How does that happen?

 

[BGDave]

Thanks for the reasoned response, and I expected you to have a one because you're a level-headed guy despite being a Leafs fan. It's why I felt comfortable asking he question.

I see where you're coming from, but from where I sit it seems like the fact that both are "alleged" to have done some nasty things but only one seemed to get more direct impact despite her alleged indiscretions being not quite as serious in the grand scheme (unless you believe the conspiracy theory of her having people killed). It goes back to the double standard applied to varying things in this country.

Another example is this "you misjudged all rural people by assuming we're all the same". Valid point. That has to suck. But this campaign was all about misjudging large groups of people. And some groups complaining about that treatment get called whiners. Others complaining about the exact same thing get called racists. They argue and fight against each other.

Neither one sees that they're the same. That's the problem I was hoping we, as a people, can get past. Not just in this country, on this planet.



Seems we still have a ways to go.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Well said.