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CharlesPhipps Since: Jan, 2001
#246876: Jun 23rd 2018 at 9:21:02 PM

Charles, reading between the lines, the only reason you're in favor of the EC is the ego trip that only undeserved, outsize political influence brings. How many reactionaries do people like you have to send to the White House before the idea takes root in your head that it isn't working?

I think the tone of this conversation has been, "I hope the rural poor are silenced because they can't be trusted to vote the way I want them to."

That's why I'm a little pissed off.

The tone has been that scummy poor folk cannot even be PERSUADED to vote so they must simply have the rights given them to protect them from being exploited be removed. It's awful and evil.

And it won't work.

edited 23rd Jun '18 9:22:19 PM by CharlesPhipps

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
Fighteer MOD Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#246877: Jun 23rd 2018 at 9:23:00 PM

That'll be enough strawmanning from you, Phipps.

[down] He's been uninvited from this conversation.

edited 23rd Jun '18 9:30:04 PM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
CrimsonZephyr Would that it were so simple. from Massachusetts Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: It's complicated
Would that it were so simple.
#246878: Jun 23rd 2018 at 9:24:35 PM

How many Republican scumbags have the "rural poor" inflicted upon the country, inflicted upon themselves? You don't get to demand persuasion when all you want to hear is reactionary filth. None of us want to abandon the poor, but when the rural voters are bringing Republicans to power, there's nothing we can do.

edited 23rd Jun '18 9:25:46 PM by CrimsonZephyr

"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."
Silasw A procrastination in of itself from A handcart to hell (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: And they all lived happily ever after <3
A procrastination in of itself
#246879: Jun 23rd 2018 at 9:25:59 PM

Rural votes are important because of the Electoral College.

No they’re not, voters in rural states (including ones that live in urban areas) are MORE important than voters in more urban states (including rural voters in said states) because of the EC.

Without it, politicians will ignore them and let them die.

Except that’s a lie, rural people aren’t left to die in other countries, infact in many other countries they do better than in the US.

Like they did.

Did? Did when? There is no before the electoral college, it’s been there for the entire US history.

You can’t use rural people in the US suffering as proof that the electoral college works to help rural people, because it’s the current system and the current system is by your own evidence fucking rural people over.

Look this isn’t about rural versus urban, rural states still have urban areas, what it’s about is your vote, the fact that you vote is worth more than that of other people, I get why you don’t want to give that advtange that, but it’s an unfair advantage, you don’t deserve to have more voting power than other people just because of where you live.

Oh and to make a point, the electoral college has never been about helping rural people, it was introduced to help slavery and protect slavery. With a strait popular vote the north could vote in anti-slavery presidents with raw strength of numbers, but by giving slave owners the ability to vote on the behalf of their slaves the founders allowed slavery to last longer, because slave owners could protect slavery using the voting power of their slaves.

Edit: Oh and that photo of Bill Clinton campaigning, wanna guess where that was taken? In a goddam city. Not some rural area, he was holding a rally in a city in a competitive state. If every state was competitive (due to the removal fo the electoral college) you’d see more campaigning like that, because then votes in states that swing the other way would matter.

edited 23rd Jun '18 9:35:18 PM by Silasw

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
LSBK Since: Sep, 2014
#246880: Jun 23rd 2018 at 9:32:02 PM

White woman calls police on black girl for selling bottled water without a permit.

Just your daily dosage of stupid. Although, this one is different because the cops didn't show up and no one got shot. The girl's mother is pressing charges for harassment.

TobiasDrake (•̀⤙•́) (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Arm chopping is not a love language!
(•̀⤙•́)
#246881: Jun 23rd 2018 at 9:35:23 PM

Look up the definition of a non-sequitur argument some time. You are throwing everything you can at this fixation of yours, but it doesn't make any sense. Part of the drive behind voter suppression, especially in swing states, is that small changes in turnout within a state can shift the state's entire Electoral College vote. Going to national popular vote would mean you'd have to suppress millions more voters to change outcomes.

This.

Here's the thing about the Electoral College: it means that any given state is Winner Take All. If one candidate gets 51% of the vote in that state, then they get 100% of the state's electoral votes. To pull off any kind of voter fraud in such a state, you only need to make up the difference.

If I want to defraud the election in Florida and my candidate is losting 48% to 52%, I only need to alter 2.1% of the votes. Just enough to get my guy to 50.1% over 49.9%. And then every single electoral vote in Florida is counted as his.

In a popular vote system, every vote counts. There is no system where the state goes, "You voted for Clinton but those two guys voted for Trump. So, f*ck you. Your vote counts for Trump now." A 49.9% to 50.1% difference means that 49.9% of the votes go to one person and 50.1% to the other. Without that Winner Take All dynamic in place, voter fraud suddenly becomes significantly harder due to the sheer quantity of fraud that has to take place.

Contrary to Trump's to-date unproven rantings about 3 million illegal voters, it's next to impossible to pull off voter fraud of such magnitude without people taking notice.

My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.
Draghinazzo (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: I get a feeling so complicated...
#246882: Jun 23rd 2018 at 9:40:07 PM

[up]This ties into another problem actually: while the more rural states are traditionally seen as mostly republican, there are democrat and independent voters living there too. Their votes basically don't count because of the EC. In a similar vein, republicans from heavily blue states have thousands of votes that basically don't count either, and in principal it's not particularly fair either.

Removing the EC (and fighting voter suppression) would make voting a lot more competitive everywhere.

nightwyrm_zero Since: Apr, 2010
#246883: Jun 23rd 2018 at 9:41:04 PM

I don't think this has been posted here yet, but if I may direct your attention to your northern border: a jogger accidentally crossed the US-Canada border and was detained for 2 weeks.

Seriously, does anyone think Canadians want to sneak into the US? We're not that desperate for shoes.

edited 23rd Jun '18 9:49:10 PM by nightwyrm_zero

Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#246884: Jun 23rd 2018 at 9:41:25 PM

[up][up]Yep, everyone would have their vote counted, instead of only the ones who voted with the majority in their state. Funny thing, I remember voting for Clinton, but it evidently doesn't count.

edited 23rd Jun '18 9:41:41 PM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Silasw A procrastination in of itself from A handcart to hell (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: And they all lived happily ever after <3
A procrastination in of itself
#246885: Jun 23rd 2018 at 9:48:21 PM

Yeah if you want Dems to compete for the votes of people in rural states than maybe make said votes be worth something to them even if they don’t flip the entire state.

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
Wariolander Since: Nov, 2017
#246886: Jun 23rd 2018 at 10:21:16 PM

[up][up][up] She was black. Still, they should have at least put up some signs or some sort of marking that the border was there. For all their talk of borders, that's a glaring omission.

Gilphon (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
#246887: Jun 23rd 2018 at 10:25:57 PM

That's actually a good illustration of why all the 'border security' stuff is nonsense- the border's fucking huge. Any project along those lines would be an enormous undertaking, and wouldn't have any real tangible benefit.

edited 23rd Jun '18 10:26:02 PM by Gilphon

singularityshot Since: Dec, 2012
#246888: Jun 23rd 2018 at 11:16:37 PM

The argument over the EC is interesting - I can see the logic that without it it makes sense to only cater to areas with the most concentrated population i.e urban areas but the other argument is that with the EC as it is currently constituted it still leaves rural poor in Kentucky forgotten as the state is not a contested state.

I've previously stated my preference in that the popular vote should take preference over the EC if and only if the winning candidate gets 51% of the vote. If say the election ended with 48-45 with 7% going to third parties / abstentions then the EC is the tie breaker. It would force campaigns to make a tactical choice - swing for the fences and try to win the popular or play it safe with an EC based strategy.

But speculative solution time. Can we come up with a system that forces candidates to appeal to a wide range of candidates? To use a cliche, with modern demographic and statistical analysis we campaign in digital but vote in analogue. Could we therefore use statistics and demographics to modernise the EC?

Here's my blue sky idea. A non-partisan body is commissioned to create ten different statistical and demographic models for dividing the entire population into 11 categories. This forms our new EC: ergo to win the presidency you need to win 6 out of the 11 categories. Geography would be a component of how people are assigned but income, race, gender etc would also be factors. Each category would contain at least 7% of the population and no more than 13%. The methodology for each statistical model is published and subjected to peer review. At election time one statistical model is chosen by lottery and all votes are tabulated on that basis.

This way populations are not determined by state divisions nor by urban concentration. Chances are that rural poor may make up a significant proportion of one of the categories and thus catering to them could form a path to victory as winning the rural poor vote gets that candidate 1/6 of the way to victory.

What do you all think? Political practicality aside, could this work? I have only just woken up so I am sure there are many flaws I haven't thought of but in my only just awake state it seems like a good idea...

AceofSpades Since: Apr, 2009 Relationship Status: Showing feelings of an almost human nature
#246889: Jun 23rd 2018 at 11:46:22 PM

That sounds fucking stupid, honestly. The idea is to make voting simpler, not just trade one set of complications for another. Like, why even do that? What you suggested is significantly more complicated than what we currently have. Why.

Anyway, the EC doesn't even help rural voters. Charles, you keep saying the EC is direly important to rural populations but haven't actually described how, beyond "it's important and makes politicians pay attention" without proving it. Just saying something important is not convincing, and I'm hammering on this because you're the one that is making this argument and thus the one who's got to illustrate the point. (you're not doing it very well.) This country has never not had the EC, and as others have pointed out, the fact that it exists, particularly with the Winner Take All system that apportions the votes, makes anyone who's liberal in a conservative state and anyone who's conservative in a liberal state automatically not have their vote count. How is that fucking fair?

edited 23rd Jun '18 11:47:51 PM by AceofSpades

eyebones Since: Apr, 2004
#246890: Jun 24th 2018 at 12:26:42 AM

It would take a Constitutional Amendment to do away with the EC. Didn't realize that. Be easier to build a bridge to the Moon. <sigh/>

For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. — H.L. Mencken
singularityshot Since: Dec, 2012
#246891: Jun 24th 2018 at 1:26:21 AM

[up][up] It's because I am trying to solve the following problem.

How to make politicians appeal to different groups with different needs, whilst ensuring that hard to reach groups are not ignored.

Fundamentally, one person one vote is a good thing. It notionally makes everyone equal. But when you are a politician who has limited time to convince as many people as possible, vote density is far more important. Why spend a lot of time touring rural areas to get maybe a few million votes when you can spend the same time hitting urban areas for tens of millions of votes?

This is the fear that moving to a pure popular vote will have. Urban areas and by extension urban states become the focus. Who wins in the City of New York matters more than who wins in New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Montana, Delaware, South Dakota, Alaska, North Dakota, Vermont, Washington DC and Wyoming combined.

The only way to avoid this outcome is to add complications such as the EC. In this scenario, winning New York City will more than likely win the 29 EC votes attributed to the state of New York. But winning the far more diverse collection of states I mentioned above would net 32 EC votes.

In this way therefore rural states and by extension rural populations are theoretically protected from urban domination. The political reality makes this untrue. Because the EC is tied to the states, and many states are politically dominated by one party, politicians know that it is best to concentrate on flip states, and forget the rest. Kentucky is not a flip state, so it gets forgotten.

So my solution was as follows. Retain some sort of complication, but do not tie it to the states or any other purely geographic basis. How exactly that gets achieved is up for debate - my suggestion is just to get the ball rolling. I appreciate it is complicated, but it has the advantage of being open and transparent without hopefully being too exploitable.

Imca (Veteran)
#246892: Jun 24th 2018 at 2:37:59 AM

Honestly, at this point I have to ask.... so?

Why should a rural vote have any form of precedence over an urban one? so what if they target where people are clustered.

Maybe large groups of people SHOULD have more power then small groups of people, on acount of you know being large groups of people, that have many times more people in them then the small groups put together.

New York should have large amounts of power in an election, because large amounts of people live there.... it is that simple.

One person one vote is simply as fair as it gets, and any other system is just special privilege.

edited 24th Jun '18 2:38:39 AM by Imca

Euodiachloris Since: Oct, 2010
#246893: Jun 24th 2018 at 2:59:46 AM

About the fear that big cities would get more representation than small rural communities... Um, no.

As it currently stands, rural voters aren't really a bloc. They're a lot of isolated blocs separated by both distance and lines on a map. With the popular vote, it won't matter if you're in a rural resident in Alaska, New York or Texas: if you vote on rural issues that affect you all, you're voting together for a president.

Add all the rural communities up across the nation and you get a lot of individual voices. Which can and do drown cities out, EC or not. Making cities less competitive isn't addressing misrepresentation of rural communities: it's suppressing city votes to make the rural community easier to divide and conquer, simply because it is spread out with no preeminent hubs for readily seen collective bargaining.

It makes fraud and corruption easier, in short, because it's rather hard to place independent observers in every last village in the US. Cities have a lot of eyes watching what goes down.

Hylarn (Don’t ask)
#246894: Jun 24th 2018 at 3:25:15 AM

The ultimate effects of the electoral college is to cause presidential campaigning to heavily focus on a handful of states, and for liberals in red states and conservatives in blue states' votes to not really matter. It really doesn't do anything for rural voters. Even if the swing states are mostly rural, this doesn't mean that the president is forced to work in their favour

DrunkenNordmann from Exile Since: May, 2015
#246895: Jun 24th 2018 at 5:18:15 AM

Why should a rural vote have any form of precedence over an urban one? so what if they target where people are clustered.

Not to mention that, as CGP Grey points out in his video, the ten largest American cities represent only 7.9 % (maybe a bit more today, the video's a few years old) of the population - I don't see how axing the Electoral College would give these cities suddenly some big advantage.

edited 24th Jun '18 5:18:55 AM by DrunkenNordmann

We learn from history that we do not learn from history
Ramidel Since: Jan, 2001
#246896: Jun 24th 2018 at 5:22:22 AM

It would take a Constitutional Amendment to do away with the EC. Didn't realize that. Be easier to build a bridge to the Moon. <sigh/>

Fortunately, that's where you're wrong. Have a look at the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. It's not easy, but there's slow motion on it in various state legislatures and we're getting more states signing up. While it's not a very popular bill among the Republican political class, a supermajority of the population wants it - including people in small red states.

Silasw A procrastination in of itself from A handcart to hell (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: And they all lived happily ever after <3
A procrastination in of itself
#246897: Jun 24th 2018 at 6:10:39 AM

If you want to make the executive answer to a broad spread of the people the simplest thing is to abolish or weaken the presidency, as long as you have a presidential system the executive is one person without ties to specific communities and thus not truly answerable to all the different mixed groups.

What you guys want is a parliamentary system with physical constituencies, so that the executive is properly checked by representatives who do represent the interests of varied groups.

You can’t have one person try and represent the interests of so many varied groups as their top interest, you need multiple people to do it.

There are other ways, require cabinet members to be from different states if you want to make the executive represent everyone (similar to how the EU executive works).

In the end however the electoral college is about tyranny of the minority over the majority, tyranny of the majority isn’t much better, but it is better.

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
singularityshot Since: Dec, 2012
#246898: Jun 24th 2018 at 6:57:44 AM

I'm playing devil's advocate to some extent: as I said my preference is the requirement for a candidate to get 51% of the popular vote then use the EC as a tie breaker if necessary.

I suppose you could argue that politics is just the vehicle we use to allocate and distribute resources. In the main, urban areas are wealthier than rural areas, so if you believe in redistribution from wealthier to poorer our politics should bias toward rural areas. (It should also bias to other areas of deprivation that may exist within urban areas)

CCP may say that the top ten cities represent 8%, but USA census bureau has that the urban population in general is 80%

I agree with Silasw that perhaps a more diverse executive would be ideal. It would be better in general for more of the cabinet positions to be on the ballot - good for the electorate to have some say on key positions such as attorney general or secretary of state.

LeGarcon Blowout soon fellow Stalker from Skadovsk Since: Aug, 2013 Relationship Status: Gay for Big Boss
Blowout soon fellow Stalker
#246899: Jun 24th 2018 at 7:15:00 AM

If the number of citizens living in urban areas really is 80% then that is such an absolutely overwhelming supermajority that anything but a popular vote is unacceptable.

Oh really when?
singularityshot Since: Dec, 2012
#246900: Jun 24th 2018 at 7:51:14 AM

Turns out that the US census bureau has a very loose definition of urban - settlements of around 2,500 are seen as urban.

Nevertheless, it only takes the largest 50 or so urban areas before you include 50% of the US population.


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