**** Elections thread *****

[surviva316]

You can blame the DNC for that. Bernie Sanders was exactly that independent candidate, and he would have smoked Trump.

I think the Bernie thing is kind of playing Monday morning QB. As you know, I'm a big Bernie supporter and with the advantage of hindsight, I agree he would have fared better in the general election, but he ran head-to-head against Clinton and he lost by a comfy margin. You can argue that she didn't win fair and square, but she won on the backs of the most disenfranchised voters. She literally won Alabama black voters by 90 fucking points. Obviously her appeal in scarlet states and disappointments in the Rust Belt ended up being a harbinger of things to come, but Bernie didn't appeal to enough people in his own party to win the nomination and would have been an extremist on the national stage, so I think it's a bit results-oriented to think he was the solution.

Probably the worst thing the Democratic party did was "step aside" so that Hillary could take her turn (especially since she already had her turn and lost to someone with no name recognition). Who knows who would have stepped forward, much less won, but it's hard to imagine a worst-case-scenario than where they ended up by November 1st.

I guess regardless of where you put the blame, the lesson is the same. Don't torpedo your own electorate. Trust them to vote for the person they like and live with the decision, because the party doesn't always know best and they might be blinded by the wrong priorities.

[JimmyS1985]

I guess regardless of where you put the blame, the lesson is the same. Don't torpedo your own electorate. Trust them to vote for the person they like and live with the decision, because the party doesn't always know best and they might be blinded by the wrong priorities.

First I'd like to congratulate the Trump supporters on winning the election. But as I've stated before, winning an election is one thing. Governing is a whole different ballpark, and winning doesn't necessarily mean you'll be good for the country and have a great legacy, because we've had Presidents before who got elected, but still have horrible legacies. James Buchanan, Franklin Pierce, and Warren G. Harding come to mind.

And with Democrats controlling virtually nothing past the municipal level, there is literally no one to blame or scapegoat on the Democratic side if things in the nation go south, not to mention the failure to win the popular vote doesn't make the country as united behind the fairness of this election as past elections where the winner also won in the now seemingly unimportant popular vote.

My recommendation to fix that problem, would to be to have enough states with enough electoral college votes to add up to 270, to automatically award all their electoral college votes to whoever won the popular vote, and regardless who won their state, it would gut the importance of swing states, and candidates could travel all across the country to campaign instead of just a few key states. I'm not sure if Republicans would sign on to that idea however, considering they've now won 2 elections in the past 16 years without winning the popular vote, but it certainly would make our Presidential elections profoundly more Democratic in nature (Democratic as in how a Democracy-styled government is ideally supposed to work, not the Democratic Party).

Trump is going to get a full 4 years of total control over multiple levels of the Judicial branch, namely because Republicans made sure Obama wasn't capable of filling several judicial positions, and he'll be in position to nominate a 2nd SCOTUS nominee, probably one of the liberals since Breyer is like 78 and RBG is 83, if one of them dies/retires, which will maintain a very Conservative Supreme Court for probably more than 20 years. Roe v. Wade is on life support and about to have the plug pulled as it sits now, as well as Casey v. Planned Parenthood, and Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt.

He'll have total control over the Legislature, and of course the Executive branch for again, at least 4 years. The House, due to very clever gerrymandering, and the Senate are extremely out of reach for Democrats going into 2018.

I find Trump voters who were opposed to Citizens United but gladly want to put Trump in charge, sadly ironic and misinformed considering it was the 4 Liberal Justices who voted against Citizen's United, and the 5 Conservatives who voted in favor of it, and with Trump's election it will essentially be the law of the land now for multiple decades (I'm not saying that Hillary's Super PAC also did not hypocritically take advantage of Citizen's United, but that is officially the way to run a major election and allow limitless campaign donations from here on out going forward so long as it remains the law of the land).

Bernie lost, well he did lose lots of Black voters which potentially sealed his fate, but the nomination process was in fact heavily slanted towards Hillary and left Bernie-supporters feeling burned and cheated going into the General, instead of it being a free and fair primary in a supposed "Democratic Party". It's in our god damn name "Democrat" which is supposed to imply "Democracy", and in it's own way probably increased the number of #Bernieorbust'ers, Jill Stein and Gary Johnson, and even Trump votes in the general.

The primary rules were so incredibly fucked up in certain states, here's what needs to die.

#1 Closed Primaries.

When Bernie lost New York by huge margins, I mean it was basically a freebie handed to Hillary. It wasn't because he wasn't popular that he lost so huge, it was because only registered Democrats could vote in the primary. And you had to be registered as a Democrat, under an archaic primary rule, a full 6 months before the election which of course lots of Independents were not fully aware of when it came time to vote for Bernie, and thus banned them from voting for him and left them feeling very burned. Independents, which were the ultimate swing voters in the general, were banned from voting for him. Closed Primaries pissed a lot of people off, not just in New York, but Bernie Sanders voters nation wide, because the Democratic Party's nomination process in New York, practically gifted her the nomination in that state alone.

#2 Super Delegates.

I'd like to give a little historical perspective on Super Delegates first. Between 1968, and 1988, Democrats was one of the most losingest party's ever when it came to winning the Presidency. 6 Elections and all we elected was a mediocre one-term President. I think it was 68, when Robert Kennedy was leading and then was assassinated, the Democratic Party went behind closed doors in one of those now obsolete "smoke-filled rooms" and put a Vietnam supporting Hubert Humphrey on the ticket who hadn't won a single state in the primary to be the nominee. The 1968 Democratic Convention could have been the most chaotic, riotous, divisive, Major Political Party Convention ever.

Of course he got absolutely trounced in 68, since no one really supported him, and no one really voted to nominate him for the general either. So the Democratic Party decided to end the smoke-filled room nomination process, and just hand it entirely over to the will of the people in the primary. And boy did we. We kept electing losers and the one time we won an election, it was a one term President.

By 1980 or so, the Democratic Party decided that letting the Lefties have total control over the nomination process and keep nominating bad candidates for the general was destructive to the parties chances of ever taking back the White House. So they implemented Super-delegates after 1980, which would still be much more democratic than the smoke-filled room way of nominating Presidents, but still maintain some level of party control over who gets the nomination. Originally Superdelegates were supposed to account for 14% of the delegate count, but that number got increased to 20% by 2008.

So when Bernie won Wyoming's primary, but still managed to lose heavily when the superdelegate count was added in, obviously a lot of Bernie supporters felt incredibly burned by this even if the primary was a relatively small portion of the delegate count total.

That was basically a huge nail in the coffin of Hillary losing the General, us Bernie people were pretty livid when we saw that because it really did feel like we were cheated out of our favorite politician of all time, securing the nomination. I was all but a #Bernieorbust'er, but I ultimately decided to vote for Hillary because I thought Trump would weaken the country, even if I had spent my whole life promising myself I'd never vote for Hillary.

[JimmyS1985]

It is very possible we have just opened up a Pandora's Box with limitless repercussions and unknown consequences by electing Trump into the WH, and Republican dominated Judicial and Legislative branches, as I studied a lot of his proposed policies, economic, tax, budgetary, how he'll handle trade and so on and so forth.


Trump represents a total rejection of the lesson's learned from the historical record on a few issues, based on my studies. At this point I'm just a canary in the coal mine and I have absolutely no means to stop whatever happens.

I hate to sound alarmist. But as an adult living with Autism, Autistic people can get a very keen and detailed level of expertise on topics that interest them. And I have a deep passion for American History, Political Science, Criminal Justice as you all know, and Economics as well as Economic history dating back to and what factors lead up to the Great Depression, and a limited amount of knowledge on the 5 Depressions before The Great Depression and what caused them.

I don't think there's a cool or competent head at any level of of the Federal, and most State governments right now that is set to take power.

It's sadly ironic that Trump and the Republicans now have as much, if not more, political power as Republicans did in 1928. Because 1932, was one of the biggest and major political blowout elections in American history for the Democratic party because it basically ushered in 50 years of Progressive Social and Economic Policy after the huge impact on the collective memories of the American electorate between 1928 and 1932. And overall Republican's stances on government and economics, really haven't evolved if at all since 1928. And if you're a student of history, you should full well know how much this country changed between 1928 and 1932.

I know the Trump supporters are very happy right now, and they should be because their guy won.


With Trump in power and pretty much no checks, executively, legislatively or judicially on what he can do, I personally agree the Republicans should immediately kill the Filibuster because it's a very undemocratic legislative ability in an already undemocratic institution. Then the Republicans can pass fuckton's of bills with absolutely no input from Democrats, basically Republicans will have full control as to the direction of the country, with zero interference at that point.


Besides his massive spending on infrastructure which I do in fact strongly support, I go over a lot of his policies and basically we may have to relearn all the lesson's of the Great Depression, all over again. ANd that would happen once American's are facing huge and massive unemployment, soup/bread lines, and massive shanty towns outside of every major US city once residents are evicted from their homes.



We won't know for sure as it sits now so there's no sense in arguing, but 4 years from now, maybe 8, we will have a much clearer idea on how acutely Trump and the Republicans have altered the course of American history in this election going forward.

[wufwugy]

It's sadly ironic that Trump and the Republicans now have as much, if not more, political power as Republicans did in 1928. Because 1932, was one of the biggest and major political blowout elections in American history for the Democratic party because it basically ushered in 50 years of Progressive Social and Economic Policy after the huge impact on the collective memories of the American electorate between 1928 and 1932. And overall Republican's stances on government and economics, really haven't evolved if at all since 1928. And if you're a student of history, you should full well know how much this country changed between 1928 and 1932.

Friedman and Schwartz demonstrated, and Bernanke agreed, that the Fed more or less caused the Great Depression. The Roaring 20s was not the problem. It was a very good thing. The problem was the central bank had a flawed understanding of economics and believed that it was their job to identify and deflate bubbles. Econ money textbooks teach that this is not possible. Regardless, the Fed didn't like how great things were in the economy, so they crunched it, causing expectations of disaster, resulting in actual disaster.

Another element regards the Fed financial regulation duties. It was asleep on the job and didn't do anything when signs of bank failures began. Other banks did nothing as well because of the moral hazard created by the Fed having a regulatory monopoly on the financial system.

[surviva316]

And with Democrats controlling virtually nothing past the municipal level, there is literally no one to blame or scapegoat on the Democratic side if things in the nation go south, not to mention the failure to win the popular vote doesn't make the country as united behind the fairness of this election as past elections where the winner also won in the now seemingly unimportant popular vote.

TBF, this is what we said in 2008, and we all know how that went. I put it at ~0% chance that Democrats "take the high road" on filibustering power.

There are of course a lot of important differences:

1) Republicans own the House, too.

2) As of now, he lost the popular vote, so he doesn't have as much of a mandate (if that means anything).

3) There isn't an economic fire to put out the second Trump takes the oath of office to keep him busy for a while and force him to spend a lot of his bargaining chips early.

4) He probably doesn't have bargaining chips to begin with. Obama ran on the promise of a bipartisan presidency, so it was important to him at least keep up appearances that he was working with the minority party.

5) I don't for one second put it past Trump to use his executive powers to the fullest extent and not give a single shit about precedent or optics or pissing off the minority party or any of that. Again, it was really important to Obama to be seen as the guy who worked with Republicans to get things done, and people like Mitch McConnell saw that as an opportunity to bully him with passivity and force Obama to renege on one campaign promise or another.

This will be less of a pick your poison situation, and more of a game of chicken. I hope to god this isn't the case, but I could see him looking at the Constitution like a business contract, where he looks for all the things his party can get away with and exploits them to the fullest degree. Rather than, you know, caring about precedent and reasonable force and all that. If anything, he ran on the promise to shake things up and do things different from how things have been run for the last two and a half centuries.

Well, I went into this post thinking I'd disagree with your point, and came out of it feeling even more uncertain of what to expect.

My recommendation to fix that problem, would to be to have enough states with enough electoral college votes to add up to 270, to automatically award all their electoral college votes to whoever won the popular vote, and regardless who won their state, it would gut the importance of swing states, and candidates could travel all across the country to campaign instead of just a few key states.

There's already an agreement floating around the electorates to vote with the popular vote that, once signed by 270 of them, would effectively make it the law of the land. New York just joined, bringing it up to 165. This doesn't require any amendment process because the electorate isn't bound by the Constitution to vote any one way, so once they have enough on board to swing any election, they can just vote along that line.

I highly doubt 105 more are going to sign on before December 19th just so they can swing this election or anything (not only would that politicize the process, leaving open the criticism that they knowingly swung an election based on its results, but it's also not fair to change the rules of the game once it's already been played). But just as a response to you saying Republicans won't sign onto it and all that, that's not what would need to happen.

[wufwugy]

My recommendation to fix that problem, would to be to have enough states with enough electoral college votes to add up to 270, to automatically award all their electoral college votes to whoever won the popular vote, and regardless who won their state, it would gut the importance of swing states, and candidates could travel all across the country to campaign instead of just a few key states. I'm not sure if Republicans would sign on to that idea however, considering they've now won 2 elections in the past 16 years without winning the popular vote, but it certainly would make our Presidential elections profoundly more Democratic in nature (Democratic as in how a Democracy-styled government is ideally supposed to work, not the Democratic Party).

The states have the power to allocate EV's however they want, so they could do this. I forget the name of it, but I'm pretty sure a total of 140-170 EV states have already passed amendments (or maybe just bills) to their constitutions saying that once enough states to reach 270 do this, they will give their EV's to the popular vote winner.

The other point I will make is that I don't think this would solve anything. If this was a popular vote election, Trump (and Bush) would have campaigned differently. Trump was able to edge out Clinton in PA, MI, FL and the others in part because of the massive amounts of rallies he held in them and because he adjusted his message to the people of those states. But if it was popular vote, for sure he would have spent a ton of time in California and New York and have adjusted his message for those demos.

I do not think a candidate winning the EV but not the PV shows that he was less popular than his opponent. One thing it does show is that on the areas the candidates focused on, the one who won the EV was more popular, which suggests that had the campaigns been nationwide, the effect could have held.