2020 Political Chatter

[theflashunc]

Hot take: the electoral college is good, actually. Another way to slice it: should a presidential candidate have to make an appeal to anyone who lives outside of California and the eastern seaboard from VA to MA? There are other people in this country than that.

Yet it also disenfranchises and marginalizes the population and economic centers of the country. The EC is clearly not built for something like Harris County, Texas, which would be the 25th largest state if it were one, or the 13 million people who live in metro LA. There's also that pesky legacy as a brake against abolition.

This is the only election in the entire country that's not done by popular vote, for the top elected job in the country. That's deeply weird and flawed.

[Lionel]

The Electoral College was not an idea that originated with the American Founders. Rather, it traces its roots to the Holy Roman Empire, where the head of various duchies, counties, and kingdoms that constitute the Empire serving as an elector for the Holy Roman Emperor.

Basically, think the ending of the screen adaption of Game of Thrones. The six people who chose the King of the Six Kingdoms are basically electors akin to the electors constituting the Electoral College of the Holy Roman Empire.

Well this sounds highly fucked up.

[echappist]

Interesting.

I changed my mind. I am done analyzing things from here on out.

Ditto, good choice.

I really wish I could go out and ride (it's in the low 60s here in Madison), but it's an enforced off-day, and I'm doing intervals tomorrow and Friday (so again, Zwift day). Saturday does look good though.

I don't think this will be decided any time soon. Better go to the liquor store and load up, stock may be dwindling at this rate.

[Scott G.]

Well this sounds highly fucked up.

Well how about this instead......

Peasant 1: Who's that there?
Peasant 2: I don't know... Must be a king...
Peasant 1: Why?
Peasant 2: He hasn't got shit all over him.
-----------------------
Arthur: I am your king!
Woman: Well I didn't vote for you!
Arthur: You don't vote for kings.
Woman: Well how'd you become king then?
[Angelic music plays...]
Arthur: The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering silmite
held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water, signifying by divine
providence that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur. THAT is why I am your
king!
Dennis interrupting: Listen, strange women lyin' in ponds distributin'
swords is no basis for a system of government! Supreme executive power
derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic
ceremony!
-----------------------
Dennis: Oh, but you can't expect to wield supreme executive power just
because some watery tart threw a sword at you!
-----------------------
Dennis: Oh but if I went 'round sayin' I was Emperor, just because some
moistened bint lobbed a scimitar at me, they'd put me away!
-----------------------
Dennis: Help! Help! I'm being oppressed! Violence inherent in the system!
Violence inherent in the system!

[caleb]

The S&P is currently up over 3%.

I'm thinking the investor class is not appreciating just how absolutely awful a Biden presidency with a Republican Senate will be in our current context.

Tea Party Part Deux: no aid to states, no enhanced unemployment benefits, no eviction moratorium, maxed out monetary policy, and a real economy that slowly dies as mass homelessness and unemployment take over.

[johnmdesigner]

Reasonably decent explanation of the Electoral College.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/histo...one-180961171/

[HorsCat]

The underbelly is no longer the underbelly.

It has become our face.

I’m just beyond mystified that someone who is one of the most vile human beings to have ever walked the planet, was elected to be President in the first place and remains in the running to continue to hold the office.

Maybe it always was our face, we just didn't see it. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/30/o...gtype=Homepage

Read the catalog of horribles for Donald Trump and his White House and what you find is an administration that has embraced the worst aspects of our political culture and merged them into a potent brew of destruction, lawlessness and authoritarianism. But to recognize this is to see as well how it doesn’t make sense to say that Trump is an aberration from the mainstream of American life. Instead, he is the exclamation point on our consistent failure to live up to our own self-image.

Perhaps more than most, Americans hold many illusions about the kind of nation in which we live. We tell ourselves that we are the freest country in the world, that we have the best system of government, that we welcome all comers, that we are efficient and dynamic where the rest of the world is stagnant and dysfunctional. Some of those things have been true at some points in time, but none of them is true at this point in time.

The S&P is currently up over 3%.

I'm thinking the investor class is not appreciating just how absolutely awful a Biden presidency with a Republican Senate will be in our current context.

Tea Party Part Deux: no aid to states, no enhanced unemployment benefits, no eviction moratorium, maxed out monetary policy, and a real economy that slowly dies as mass homelessness and unemployment take over.

The investor class has figured out how to make $$ no matter what. They'll be just fine.

[mzilliox]

I’m just beyond mystified that someone who is one of the most vile human beings to have ever walked the planet, was elected to be President in the first place and remains in the running to continue to hold the office.

what else is there? we should be ashamed as a country that its even close. we revere the vile, we value the dishonesty as long as win. weird.

[deano]

But if you flip the logic, the counterargument stands, yeah? In that those areas are where most of the people in the country live? Either way, you have a system where the votes of tens of millions of people don't really matter. So why not just switch to a popular vote? I mean, at least we won't have to listen to candidates go on and on and on about the importance of ethanol subsidies every four years.

Yes, I have thought of that, and hidden in your post is exactly why I would try to persuade us that the EC is good: if it's a matter of one bloc of voters prevailing over another, that presents us with the question of which bloc ought to prevail and why, and if the answer is only "the larger one," for the larger one's sake, that's another version of might makes right. The EC attempts to prevent a majority from asserting its will to power over a (potentially unpopular) minority. The EC, in theory, makes candidates make a broader appeal to different kinds of voters in different kinds of places (would that more candidates both on the left and on the right were more appealing! I'd certainly like that). I don't think the question of which bloc and whose values can be overcome without an assertion of the might of one over the other, a future I would commend to none of us. The EC attempts to balance those forces. Not saying it's perfect, but I am again trying to persuade us against dispensing with it.

Related, @theflashunc: I somehow don't worry about cities; cities will always be huge wells of centralized capital, and cities' values will always prevail insofar as that's the case. The EC is a guard against parallel centralization in political life. Again, lest 2016 be forgotten so fast, whose values prevail when, for instance, capital evacuates rural areas or small towns (or heads offshore?). There were five union auto plants in my hometown in Ohio when I was a kid (as recently as the 90s! - I'm young). There are zero today. That is the result of deliberate decisions leaders made. The people are still there. The EC (and the Senate) is probably among the few buffers folks in places like that have against getting completely run roughshod by the centralization of capital and power. Bernie, Elizabeth Warren, Andrew Yang, and like it or not, DJT, didn't begrudge the people in flyover country that and made their appeals thusly.

Also, I don't think it needs to be said that the U.S.'s history with slavery is grievous, but it bears repeating: the history is grievous. Still, the link between the EC and slavery isn't so clear cut to everyone, and if you accept this historian's claim, is actually fairly murky. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/04/o...very-myth.html

[Greg Costello]

There are zero today. That is the result of deliberate decisions leaders made. The people are still there. The EC (and the Senate) is probably among the few buffers folks in places like that have against getting completely run roughshod by the centralization of capital and power. Bernie, Elizabeth Warren, Andrew Yang, and like it or not, DJT, didn't begrudge the people in flyover country that and made their appeals thusly.

. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/04/o...very-myth.html

Wait, your putting the offshoring on Democrats and progessives? Let's put the blame where it surely belongs: unbridled capitalism that values short term returns over all else; deregulation that trades the future well-being of our children by pissing all over the environment; that ignores the safety and welfare of workers. Last I checked the conservative Republican party is the party of unfettered capitalism. I think the majority coastal/Democratic/progressive whatver label you want agenda that the majority in the flyover states dislikes is social more than economic. That and a fear/distrust born of lies - distrust in science for example and the myth that Biden and the Ds are pursuing a socialist agenda for example (although try and take away all of the ag subsidies and see who sqeals - against socialism indeed).

[theflashunc]

Yes, I have thought of that, and hidden in your post is exactly why I would try to persuade us that the EC is good: if it's a matter of one bloc of voters prevailing over another, that presents us with the question of which bloc ought to prevail and why, and if the answer is only "the larger one," for the larger one's sake, that's another version of might makes right. The EC attempts to prevent a majority from asserting its will to power over a (potentially unpopular) minority. The EC, in theory, makes candidates make a broader appeal to different kinds of voters in different kinds of places (would that more candidates both on the left and on the right were more appealing! I'd certainly like that). I don't think the question of which bloc and whose values can be overcome without an assertion of the might of one over the other, a future I would commend to none of us. The EC attempts to balance those forces. Not saying it's perfect, but I am again trying to persuade us against dispensing with it.

Related, @theflashunc: I somehow don't worry about cities; cities will always be huge wells of centralized capital, and cities' values will always prevail insofar as that's the case. The EC is a guard against parallel centralization in political life. Again, lest 2016 be forgotten so fast, whose values prevail when, for instance, capital evacuates rural areas or small towns (or heads offshore?). There were five union auto plants in my hometown in Ohio when I was a kid (as recently as the 90s! - I'm young). There are zero today. That is the result of deliberate decisions leaders made. The people are still there. The EC (and the Senate) is probably among the few buffers folks in places like that have against getting completely run roughshod by the centralization of capital and power. Bernie, Elizabeth Warren, Andrew Yang, and like it or not, DJT, didn't begrudge the people in flyover country that and made their appeals thusly.

Also, I don't think it needs to be said that the U.S.'s history with slavery is grievous, but it bears repeating: the history is grievous. Still, the link between the EC and slavery isn't so clear cut to everyone, and if you accept this historian's claim, is actually fairly murky. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/04/o...very-myth.html

If the electoral college is such a great system, then why is it not used for all statewide office elections (Senators, governors, etc)?

There's plenty of ways for those who are pro-labor and anti-capital to make those appeals that don't explicitly minimize the population centers and amplify the rural vote. I would also argue that those workers in those rural areas, especially over the last 30 years as rural working class votes have increasingly turned to the GOP, people have voted explicitly against their own economic self-interest at the expense of prioritizing culture war issues, and that's come back to bite many, many folks in the ass.

And we're seeing firsthand that the notion that cities as capital centers mean their values will prevail is not, exactly, true. We're on the cusp of a wildly popular national healthcare law being thrown out with the bath water. We're on the cusp of abortion rights -- also wildly popular -- being thrown out. Not sure how we square the circle of how the increasingly shrinking rural, white minority of the country gets to tell everyone else what to do.

[echappist]

Yes, I have thought of that, and hidden in your post is exactly why I would try to persuade us that the EC is good: if it's a matter of one bloc of voters prevailing over another, that presents us with the question of which bloc ought to prevail and why, and if the answer is only "the larger one," for the larger one's sake, that's another version of might makes right. The EC attempts to prevent a majority from asserting its will to power over a (potentially unpopular) minority. The EC, in theory, makes candidates make a broader appeal to different kinds of voters in different kinds of places (would that more candidates both on the left and on the right were more appealing! I'd certainly like that). I don't think the question of which bloc and whose values can be overcome without an assertion of the might of one over the other, a future I would commend to none of us. The EC attempts to balance those forces. Not saying it's perfect, but I am again trying to persuade us against dispensing with it.

The EC is merely another form of might makes right, albeit arrived at another level of abstraction. And talks of whatever the EC could do in theory is completely contradicted by the facts on the ground, with an incumbent candidate making no attempt to reach out beyond his base.

Related, @theflashunc: I somehow don't worry about cities; cities will always be huge wells of centralized capital, and cities' values will always prevail insofar as that's the case. The EC is a guard against parallel centralization in political life. Again, lest 2016 be forgotten so fast, whose values prevail when, for instance, capital evacuates rural areas or small towns (or heads offshore?). There were five union auto plants in my hometown in Ohio when I was a kid (as recently as the 90s! - I'm young). There are zero today. That is the result of deliberate decisions leaders made. The people are still there. The EC (and the Senate) is probably among the few buffers folks in places like that have against getting completely run roughshod by the centralization of capital and power. Bernie, Elizabeth Warren, Andrew Yang, and like it or not, DJT, didn't begrudge the people in flyover country that and made their appeals thusly.

Also, I don't think it needs to be said that the U.S.'s history with slavery is grievous, but it bears repeating: the history is grievous. Still, the link between the EC and slavery isn't so clear cut to everyone, and if you accept this historian's claim, is actually fairly murky. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/04/o...very-myth.html

Funny you would mention the Senate. Once upon a time, there was no direct election of senators (kinda like how there's no direct election of presidents). That was changed via an amendment to the Constitution. Furthermore, the Senate is filled with people from the capital class, that it's hard to see it serving as a buffer against the interest of concentrated capital. I certainly don't see Mitt "Corporations are people, my friend" Romney being in favor of additional checks on capital. Do you? And there are quite a few others who think similarly. At least that portion of GOP ideology has largely remained consistent over the last few decades. You mention Sanders and Warren, but last I checked, they are in the minority party and can't do much

It's also slightly disingenuous (again, via usage of metonym) to conflate "cities" with capital. Buffalo, Erie, Baltimore, Cleveland, Detroit, Youngstown, Flint, Hartford, etc. are all cities. None of these places is associated with outsized concentration of capital; in fact, i'd argue quite a few are on the receiving end of flight of capital. A few of them would have population greater than that of the least populous state, if they were to become state-level entities. You know, we could give these left-behind cities greater voice in the senate by making them federal districts and giving each one 2 senators and 1 representative. That would have a substantial effect; it would also never happen, b/c, well, you know, the rural states would be up in arms.

[echappist]

I’m just beyond mystified that someone who is one of the most vile human beings to have ever walked the planet, was elected to be President in the first place and remains in the running to continue to hold the office.

Ms. Hesse of the WaPo wrote something that resonates with your line of thinking. Article here, excerpt below

So you were hoping for a “repudiation.” A resounding rejection of Trump and Trumpism.

Election officials and news outlets had spent the better part of the month warning us that this would be an election week, not an election day, and still in some liberal circles there was a jacked-up fantasy that nobody would have to wait for Pennsylvania’s tortured ballot count because by 10 p.m. Joe Biden would turn Florida and North Carolina blue — and maybe Texas, why not?

Sorry. As John King or Steve Kornacki spent the night informing viewers from their respective magic walls, President Trump over-performed in myriad polling measures. There would be no landslides, only squeakers and clenched jaws — and, possibly, court fights.

Win or lose, Trumpism will not have been swept into the dustbin of history; it will remain all over the furniture. It’s part of the furniture. Unsweepable.

Anecdote isn’t evidence, but I’ll note that for the past two years, the demographics in my inbox who most fervently believed in a 2020 blue landslide were White liberal men and occasionally White liberal women. Surely, they insisted, what had happened in 2016 was a blip. Hillary Clinton had been uniquely flawed, the country uniquely complacent, Donald Trump uniquely novel. The results didn’t really reflect America. Black women would save the party; Black women would save us all.

The Black women who wrote to me, meanwhile, were exhausted and often worried. To them, 2016 didn’t feel like a blip. It felt like the America they’d already been living in for decades was finally made visible to the rest of the country. Yes, it had always been racist. Yes, it had always been sexist. Yes, yes, yes.

If you, like Biden, have had the recurring privilege of sadly shaking your head and saying, “This isn’t who we are,” what you really meant was, “This isn’t who I’ve ever had to see us be.” What you really meant was, “This isn’t my America. . . . Crap, is it yours?”

Btw, as someone who immigrated (legally) to this land as a child and whose father still views this land as "City upon a Hill", I read the above op-ed piece the way someone would read a biopsy report bearing bad news.  It's given me a lot to ponder.

Fifteen years ago, right before I received citizenship, I would have been a lot more upbeat about things, a twenty something believing in the possibility of political change.  I owe a lot to this nation, and I will always be thankful that it opened its doors to me.  But, I also have a potential lifeline out via marriage (like a few others here), and the land north of the 48th parallel appears ever more suited to my temperament.  Sure more taxes need to be paid, but I'll gladly fork that over in exchange for better safety net for all.  So much of the problem today comes down to just that: capital class took away the livelihood of the blue collar middle class, leaving the latter without much recourse and only lip service on things such as "retraining". Canada, of course, has its own issues, but one gets the feeling that the idea of the common good is taken far more seriously there, and that's not a bad thing.

A year ago, I remember listening to NPR interviewing an autoworker going on strike at Fiat/Chrysler. One of the main sticking points for the union is that after the restructuring post 2008, it takes new hires years (usually 3-5) to have their positions made permanent, and this particular autoworker, who has a permanent position, is going on strike for the benefit of his colleagues having less seniority, despite the fact that he himself doesn't stand to gain from concessions on this front. That really struck me as to what the French term fraternité is all about: fighting for one's brethrens despite not having too much to gain from it. In contrast, most of America (many on this board probably exceptions) care way too much about the cui bono, without much thought on who pays. Who pays is someone else's problem, but in the meantime, I'll get my own snout in the trough...

[Colinmclelland]

Lots of things... but mostly:

1) I just can't understand why any woman would support Trump. I don't get men either, but I REALLY don't get women.

2) The way voting is done is bizarre to me. We put someone on the moon 50 years ago. Tesla has been (falsely IMHO) selling self-driving for a while and people trust millions to Bitcoin, but we can't organize a secure vote online. Seriously?

The Australian government tried for the last census and the website crashed. WTF? I just don't believe a secure online system could really be that hard today.

[AngryScientist]

WTF? I just don't believe a secure online system could really be that hard today.

i agree with you. nothing is more important to people than their money. if people feel safe and confident banking online - voting should be pretty easy IMO.

[sk_tle]

The problem is not so much the voting part. It is getting the absolute certainty that the data hasn't been tampered when you want a revote/verification.

On a more relaxed note, have we ever seen US Postal work so hard since Tour de France 2005 ?

[Saab2000]

The problem is not so much the voting part. It is getting the absolute certainty that the data hasn't been tampered when you want a revote/verification.

On a more relaxed note, have we ever seen US Postal work so hard since Tour de France 2005 ?

Ekimov and Hincapie are delivering ballots with speed and efficiency. In exchange for what?

[gregl]

i agree with you. nothing is more important to people than their money. if people feel safe and confident banking online - voting should be pretty easy IMO.

The encryption standard used by banks and the financial industry (FIPS) for data transfers is considered so secure because the US Government developed it with secure military programs in mind. Without going into details which would get me fired (or fined, imprisoned...), the only roadblock to electronic voting is political will. The technology is very straightforward.

Greg

[rowdyhillrambler]

Anybody from these states that just legalized that cabbage, or live in a state that has already legalized it, holding??? I got a ‘friend’ that’s asking..

[BBB]

The problem is not so much the voting part. It is getting the absolute certainty that the data hasn't been tampered when you want a revote/verification.

On a more relaxed note, have we ever seen US Postal work so hard since Tour de France 2004 ?

Fixed it for you!