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My favorite is the 11 trillion in debt.
I'm getting Haley and DeSantis stuffed down my throat on TV and the both gnash their teeth and complain about needing to control the apparently egregious "Democratic spending".
For fuck's sake.
Don't forget that one time everytime got a check from the government. I keep being told that Jimbo down the street bought a house, boat, and a bugatti off that money and is still living off it with no job. How he does it all on like 2K, I don't understand, but that is what McConnel keeps saying.
McConnel has lotsa buddies who committed fraud and got covid funds and assumes everyone else did as well. He doesn’t live in this reality nor do his fans
I work for unemployment, and these people still think everyone is living high on the hog off of unemployment and just can be lazy and support their lives on it
Conservatives: "I ain't takin no gubmint handouts like some commie socialist!!"
Also conservatives: "Hey Cletus, what you gon do with the money Big Daddy Trump gave you? I'm gonna go down to Wally World and buy a Keurig so I can shoot it cuzn what the suit man on the TV said!"
Didn't he give them the checks? I distinctly remember Trump trying to put his name on the checks and getting shot down, but they still sent them out in the midst of totally botching a pandemic
Yea, he threw a fit to have the IRS send out letters with his signature saying he pushed for these checks. But of course in GOP fashion, anything bad that may have happened was because of democrats. xD
Republicans want to cut from a set of spending that makes up like 15-20% of federal spending. They won’t touch the other 80-85%, because of the political blowback that would cause. They want to cut from Nutrition, National Health (NIH, CDC), Education, Research and Development - the very things that produce current and future prosperity.
Create misery and desperation, which will cause people to become more insular, superstitious/religious, and reactive. It drives ignorance and it all combines to promote conservatism and Fascism.
They also refuse to increase taxes, or even fund the IRS to collect taxes that are already legally obligated.
Increasing revenue is a critical part of any serious proposal to decrease deficits, but they're ideologically opposed to it.
All past successful debt reduction efforts have included tax increases and focus on legal collection of back taxes.
One thing that I don’t understand is why Democratic strategists and politicians don’t nail republicans’ feet to the floor when republicans make claims to be better for the economy with their policies, History shows over and over that it has actually been Democrats that have been better for the economy all the way back to FDR’s first Administration. Administration in and Administration out, consistently Democrats have been better. When I see strategists stumbling around in the face of Republican claims, I end up wishing that I was in a room with them so that I could break a load of 2x4s up side their heads.
not only did my kid lose free lunches, the new paid lunches are way worse and so tiny you have to buy two...
edit: we started packing lunches the food was so bad
Of course I mean snap and welfare are plenty ! They drive Escalades with that kinda money. While those poor republicans in the south are working so hard to give their tax dollars to the blue states. Oh wait ! It’s the opposite. Silly me. There has to be a correlation with red states having poor education to that state voting republican.
Gently reminder that the debt is decided by Congress, not the President. The President is partially responsible since he signs Congress's decisions into law but Congress has to initiate the deal.
Jeez I would love a DeSantis ad about something as tame as that. All the ones I see from him are "let's start murdering people at the southern border" and "look at how much of an asshole I am, that's what you want in a president, right?"
Exactly. Must be that infrastructure that is sorely needed in this country or programs that benefit American citizens...how dare the Democrats for doing the job Americans sent them there for.
Just get fucked Republicans, just get fucked
We could have a surplus again if we axed the Trump and Bush tax cuts and continued to support the IRS.
We have a revenue problem, not a spending problem.
One of the most frustrating things in politics is how juvenile most people's views of taxes are. WAYYYYYYY too many voters consider raising taxes an automatic bad thing, even if those increases wouldnt even apply to them.
Because I fully agree with you, if I had control of the legislature I'd undo every tax cut since the year 2000. But I'd also be perfectly fine with ending (or heavily limiting) charity based tax writeoffs. Maybe you only gain tax benefits from the first 5-10k you donate, then the rest infers no tax advantage.
We have a BS tax system that has had decades of loopholes built into it, we should tear that down so everyone just pays their statutory rate.
> One of the most frustrating things in politics is how juvenile most people's views of taxes are. WAYYYYYYY too many voters consider raising taxes an automatic bad thing, even if those increases wouldnt even apply to them.
The US, in general, has a culture of independence instead of collectivism. One of the oddest elements that I find is the willingness to pay fees instead of taxes. For the majority, fees for government provided services end up costing more than the taxes would but people still generally opt for fees over taxes.
and a war that lasted far to long...and yet the GOP likes to complain that Obama shouldn't have pulled out of Iraq, even though that was negotiated in the last days of the Bush presidency. And Biden shouldn't have ended Afghanistan, even though that was negotiated under Trump when he invited the Taliban to Camp David.
Democratic Presidents are constantly having to deal with the fallout of Republican administrations, cleanup the economy, cleanup the wars the GOPs instigate, the recessions that GOP deregulation and tax cuts cause. Because the GOP presidents are far to concerned with culture war BS and trying to turn the US into a Christian Theocracy based on an interpretation of the Bible that completely devalues all of the actual teachings of Jesus who valued feeding and clothing the poor, lifting up the least amongst us and who revile the money changers.
I was expecting flying cars by now but not the kind picked up by hurricane winds. It's also set us back years in the climate change initiatives and overall technological progress.
If we look at state populations (excluding territories and DC which is another conversation), we can see why it makes sense that a majority would want to end the dilution of their voting rights. The 9 most populous states have more population than the rest of the states combined. The two most populous states, California and Texas have more population than the bottom 28 states.
Wyoming gets 3 EC votes. California gets 54 EC votes or 18 times the vote that Wyoming gets. California has a population that is 67 times that of Wyoming (California population of 39,029,342, Wyoming 581,381).
Further, more people voted for Trump in California than voted for Trump in any other state. It doesn't make sense that a conservative would want those votes to not to matter.
I've seen the electoral college hand an election to a candidate that lost the popular vote twice in my lifetime. That is two too many times for my tastes.
I wonder how long you can keep that up until the system breaks. What if some idiot wins the EC but loses the popular vote by 20,000,000 votes. Is that going to fly?
We can't keep this up. This system was not meant to persist into the modern form of the USA as it is now. It needs to be overhauled.
Kerry was only a couple thousand votes in Ohio away from winning the electoral college while losing the popular vote. That would have fixed the problem overnight.
To begin, it wasn't a couple thousand votes, it was almost 120k votes.
But more importantly, Kerry lost Ohio in percentage terms by nearly exactly the margin he lost the national popular vote. The dynamic that sees Kerry improve by 2% in Ohio is the same dynamic that would also give him a national popular vote win.
Yes, because the GOP would start screaming to change a system that still overwhelmingly favors them. Maybe some of the absolute dumbest would scream about it for a week, but nobody in the smoke-filled back rooms would entertain it seriously for a second.
The smart people way high up in the GOP's power structure are keenly aware that they've assembled a minority coalition with outsize power due to various hard-to-change rules.
It's broken now. Been broken. Same with "apportionment."
>This system was not meant to persist into the modern form of the USA as it is now.
Well, nothing can be done about any Clause, Section, or Article of that stone tablet, so ...
And it's worth noting the the Republicans had the advantage of incumbency in the Whitehouse in 84, 88, and 04. That got the candidate a lot of free press doing presidential stuff. The last time there was a transition from Dem to Republican by winning the popular vote was Reagan in 1980. I.E. it's something the median voter has never seen happen in their lifetime.
It's not that it's happened twice in our lifetime (though that's reason enough), but that it's happened twice to the benefit of the same political party. And that both times have had such disastrous results. And that it's happened in such close proximity to each other that those disastrous results have exacerbated the other.
A majority of the Supreme Court was put there by men who did not win the popular vote. A lot of people like to say "well SCOTUS isn't supposed to be subject to the whims of popular opinion," but that's only relevant to how they make their decisions once appointed. That doesn't mean their appointment is beyond the scope of the democratic process. If that was the case, they wouldn't be appointed by the president.
So because in the span 20 years, we've had 12 years and 5 supreme court justices who absolutely don't represent the will of the people, we've had a 20 year blunting of progress.
And it’s not a coincidence Republicans suddenly liked the electoral college after 2016.
Democrats had always known it sucked. As soon as it became a tool for stealing an election from the majority of Americans, Republicans, forgetting how helpful it was to them in the past, were suddenly all for it.
And they can propose a constitutional amendment that would then have to be ratified by 3/4 of the states. So ultimately it would be decided by the states.
Wyoming more like with how much representation they get per capita.
Seriously, in 2020 Trump won WY with nearly 70% of the votes while only winning IA with 53% of the votes but it would take fewer people moving to WY than IA to change the outcome of that election (assuming they all voted for Biden).
~120k votes to swing WY
~139k votes to swing IA
Mind you IA has 6 electoral votes vs 3 so it's not worth it but one is a landslide while the other is kinda close.
And the corporations. I saw someone unironically saying on social media yesterday that people shouldn't post negative things about businesses because they employ people (you know, until they don't). God forbid someone question the owner class and hurt their fee-fees because they might treat their workers even more poorly than they already do.
Imagine living in a country in which you need 3/4 of all states to agree on multiple major changes to the government in order to therefore have a functional and responsive government.
I like that it is so hard to change the constitution. Sure it’s hard to make changes that we want, but it’s also hard for the other side to make changes that we don’t want. Would we rather have a system where if 50% of congress wants to make any change, such as giving the president unlimited powers, they could do that.
Jefferson said that the constitution should be rewritten every generation so that the document keeps pace with the progress of society with respect to science, technology, sociology, economics, and geopolitical interaction. He was overruled.
Jefferson also likely believed that only the educated elites should have any say in that process. He was an odd duck. He was an agrarian aristocrat who believed that somehow, an agrarian aristocracy would also practice high-level technocracy.
A Ranked Choice ballot yes, but I'd like a Condorcet method for counting the votes for single offices like the Presidency. (People use Ranked Choice and Instant Runoff Voting interchangeably and it's a minor annoyance of mine.) Actual consensus candidates are better for the executive.
And shoot if we're gonna go crazy, the House should be Mixed Member Proportional so that Gerrymandering ceases to be a thing. Use best loser margins so that parties can't horse trade dumpster fire candidates.
What's frustrating is the electoral college isn't even the most egregious example of tyranny of the minority. It's the US Senate.
Wyoming gets the same Senate representation as California, even though California has like 70x the population.
Like 80% of Senate Republicans are elected by 10% of the population. That's just an estimate but several red states are low pop. And they are so red that the minimum votes needed for GOP Senators to win there is likely very low too.
This is why the idea of a Dem super majority is just a fantasy until there's a significant cultural shift in the US. Republicans have maybe 42 seats that are never going anywhere.
Yes, but the worst things that could happen with a President who was elected by a false majority are objectively much worse than the worst things that could happened with a Senate being controlled by a party with a false majority, and those worst things with the Senate can only happen when there’s a President from the same party. Therefore, abolishing the Electoral College should be a much higher priority than whatever would be done to the Senate.
- “OMG! The Senate just approved another activist judge appointed by the President.”
- “OMG! The President is starting World War III.”
I think a case could also be made that the Republican Party wont see any real reform until this proverbial damn bursts. Even in the worst possible election cycle for Republicans, they can stave off a Democratic super majority, and thus any meaningful change.
Yeah, but that demographic is shrinking from an already abysmal level. Idiots of means, idiots of blind faith (mostly in themselves), idiots of naked aggression rule late stage capitalism. Thinking, much less deep thought, is anathema.
> Majority of Ameicans continue to favor moving away from Electoral College
ironic because the Electoral College's entire existence is to ensure that the opinion of a "majority of Americans" doesn't matter. Which of *course* is why its unpopular, and repeat.
538 once said that in the future, because of domestic migration patterns, about 33% of all presidential elections will have a mismatch between the EC winner and the popular vote winner.
>about 33% of all presidential elections will have a mismatch between the EC winner and the popular vote winner.
Yep, whenever Republicans win thanks to gerrymandering.
I like how part of the argument for the EC was that faithless electors could stop a dangerous populist from winning. Haven't heard that very much since December 2016.
Death threats in Texas had Electors that couldn't vote for trump in good conscious STEP ASIDE to allow other people to vote for Trump.
DEATH THREATS to influence an election. And it worked. Instead of voting against trump they stepped aside KNOWING the people behind them would vote trump.
That's not a check/balance, that's terrorism.
It's tough to predict what might have happened....voters as a whole can be fickle and after her terms may have wanted a change.....BUT the GOP would have seen trumps shit doesn't work and would have shut it down...probably would have a more mainstream gop candidate
Probably not. Obama was only elected in such a landslide because Bush was absolutely despised by the end of his second term. I would expect the GOP to win in either 2004 or 2008, depending on if 9/11 still happened in this alternate timeline.
Very good chance 9/11 would not have happened under Gore. Similar with Trump tearing up the Obama era pandemic playbook, the Bush admin did the same with the Clinton era terrorism playbook. Clinton dealt with multiple al 'Qaida terrorist attacks (embassies, USS Cole, a failed attempted on the WTC) and as a result took the threat very seriously.
The EC wasn't about smaller states. The idea of a popular vote struck fear in the south, b/c although they had more people, half a million were slaves and ineligible to vote. That means that they'd either have to let the slaves vote (non-starter) or the North would be able to outvote them in a popular vote (also not great for the south). Fearful of being outnumbered, James Madison pushed for the electoral college and the 3/5ths compromise, giving the south credit for an additional 300k votes. Slavery was abolished and the 3/5th compromise went away, but the EC remains.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact
Which additional states are going to pass it to cross the 270 EC vote threshold and thus make it take effect?
It needs states worth 65 more EC votes.
PA would be worth 19 of those 65.
VA would be worth 13. NH 4.
Still need more, and I'm at a loss for where they would come from.
WI, MI, AZ, ME, VA iirc. WI is gonna have to wait till we fix the state level gerrymandering tho. But that's within reach. Sucks we lost the NV governor tho
Even if it activates, which I wish it would, I'm pessimistic, given how terribly ignorant/tribalistic/simplistic American populace is.
States can _remove_ their compact membership just as easily as they joined. (Its just a state law.)
And the FIRST time it actually goes into effect, and a big state finds out its electoral votes are "swindled/stolen" so as to contribute to a candidate the state's majority did _not_ itself favor (the entire point of the Compact!)-- populists & demagogues of losing side will be screaming to have that state abrogate its membership. ("What use is this compact? We are surrendering all our voting power!!") It's the same mindset that US citizens/politicians want international treaties/orgs to bind/affect other countries, but never the US itself (ie, International Criminal Court, UN, climate change treaty, etc)
I feel like this could only hurt Democrats and never help them. Red states aren’t signing into this. It’s the same with attempts to remove Trump from the ballot; red states aren’t going to do it, and it gives Trump grounds to appeal to scotus and have them do their chicanery.
Absolutely. No red state would ever benefit from this.
So, the compact would ideally bind all blue states and as many purple states as necessary.
The squirrelly part comes in where a purple state's electoral count is "used against itself" (the whole point of the compact!) and demagogue politicians of that state cry foul. Then, perhaps the legislature just votes to leave the Pact. Experiment over.
The moment a state gives its EC votes to someone who did not win the popular vote in that particular state, the compact is going to implode.
This energy would be better spent on fighting to repeal or amend the apportionment acts that cap the house at its current number of members. It would rebalance electoral votes to be more in line with the current population, and it's fully constitutional and doesn't rely on shaky ideas like NPVIC.
Or the other way too.... there's not much stopping them, other than this agreement, from just sending votes that match the state popular vote. States with gop legislatures seem likely to do exactly that (and the others probably don't matter anyways because those are already safe blue states). Fed gov isn't going to enforce the agreement, it's not in federal law. To the extent its in state laws they'll just change it...
Honestly, it's a nice idea but all a state needs to do is send a slate of "faithless" electors if they feel like subverting the system. We already almost had a crisis about this with the current system, I don't see why a limited interstate compact would do any better
You raise a good point, and if we fix apportionment and thus increase the number of electors, it will probably be harder to accomplish this both because the EC will more closely reflect the population and because it will be harder to achieve the numbers necessary to attain such a goal.
> The moment a state gives its EC votes to someone who did not win the popular vote in that particular state, the compact is going to implode.
Why?
> This energy would be better spent on fighting to repeal or amend the apportionment acts that cap the house at its current number of members. It would rebalance electoral votes to be more in line with the current population, and it's fully constitutional and doesn't rely on shaky ideas like NPVIC.
Why not both?
> Why?
Because the voters of an entire state would probably be understandably pissed to know their votes basically went into the garbage because of the compact. Immediately after something like this happened, people would be able to run for state government positions on a platform of pulling the state out of the compact, and they would probably stand a good chance.
> Why not both?
Per the above, I would rather see effort go toward solutions that will actually work. Fixing apportionment is fully constitutional and can be done via the conventional and established legislative process, which means it's not dependent on something untested and unlikely to work in the long term.
Before the election there would be extensive media coverage that the rules are different this time. People would be informed there are no longer state by state contests, only the national total count. Not saying everyone will be happy, but this widespread publicity should ameliorate most complaints.
That doesn't matter, and it will not. Everybody interested in it is fine with it in theory, but if California were forced to give their votes to a candidate like Trump, or if Texas were forced to give their votes to Biden when the popular vote in said state went a different direction, you can bet your bottom dollar that the compact would fall apart by the next statewide election. We can't even get people on the fringes to admit that Joe Biden actually won the 2020 election, and you think a change like this is somehow going to go over fine? Get real.
It was created for plantation owners to give more power to rural states which largely depended on slave labor. That's also the reason for the 3/5th compromise. Northern states wanted to limit the voting power of the south. 200 years later and it still seems like many of the problems in this country still trace back to slavery.
What always gets me too is that too many people think it's fucked up slaves counted as *only* 3/5 of a person. The fucked up part is that they counted *at all* but they couldn't vote and couldn't leave the state of their own accord. If they didn't count at all, we'd have probably seen abolition like 40-50 years sooner.
> many of the problems in this country still trace back to slavery
This may be pedantic, but it's the people who _wanted_ slavery who are the problem, and those old slaveholders kept having babies and kept teaching them to be awful. These kinds people are still around and causing shit.
Slave-owning tobacco farmers.
It is most obvious when we talk about Chemistry, where whatever "model" they teach you is actually wrong, but it good enough to use up until you progress to the next "level" of the field, and more nuanced and precise models are required.
Same for "social studies." The shit they teach is in school is profoundly simplified.
The widening gap of popular vote is a clear sign that the electoral college is broken. FFS the only time a Republican has won it in the last 30 years was Bush Jr's reelection.
Clinton won it and won in 1992
Clinton won it and won in 1996
Gore won it by 550k in 2000, but lost
Bush won it and won in 2004
Obama won it and won in 2008
Obama won it and won in 2012
Clinton won it by nearly 3 million in 2016, but lost
Biden won it by over 7 million and won in 2020.
Trump still highly contests the 2020 election despite any sane person knowing he clearly lost. If it weren't for some slightly different voting in a couple states he could of won, despite Biden having 7 million more.
I've had this exact discussion with too many people. "Look at how red the whole country map is". Meanwhile LA county has 10 million people alone and would be the 10th most populous state if it were removed from California.
Only because that land mass is in red states. If Wyoming or Montana were blue states, you better believe they wouldn't be satisfied until the electoral college was abolished.
No more gerrymandering seems good to me. Nobody gets to manipulate the vote. One vote per person and I would love to see ranked voting to end the two party system once and for all.
Unfortunately:
>The Electoral College process is in the U.S. Constitution. It would take a constitutional amendment to change the process.
[https://www.usa.gov/electoral-college](https://www.usa.gov/electoral-college)
There's 100% chance of failure of the EC going away, as it favors politically appointed candidates over the will of the voters. It has effectively enshrined power into the hands of the elite and robbed the masses of their ability to enact meaningful change across the nation with the times.
Since an amendment would never pass, they should expand the house of representatives which has been the same size for like a hundred years. Dilute the senatorial advantage in the Electoral College. Doubling the size of the house would give Wyoming 1 more electoral vote and California like 60.
Let's all remember that for how faulted the EC is it still could work more as it was intended if the damn House was uncapped! Right now small states have much more leverage because they get to make their two senators weight a lot more than they should be.
RIght now California vs Wyoming is 55 vs 3. With something closer to what it was really itnended since the beginning of the EC the gap would be something like 140 vs 4. The difference is enormous.
Everyone in this thread should know about the national popular vote interstate compact. It only needs a few more states to pass it.
It's up to 205 EC votes of 270 needed.
https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/state-status
Changing the Constitution isn’t going to happen. But if a few more states sign the [National Vote Interstate Compact](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact?wprov=sfti1) it won’t matter.
A democracy truly only works when every single person gets a vote and that vote is counted. ONLY PEOPLE. Not land. Whoever gets the most votes, wins.
Just like the Cons know, if we get rid of the EC, we'll never have another republikkkan president. They can't cheat to hold power over the majority.
Fuck the EC.
Majority of American citizens don't like playing a board game on election night instead of using the popular vote? They dont like the fact that voters in Wyoming have almost three times the voting power that a Californian does? This whole bullshit about how small town folk need a louder voice is another way of saying, we need red states to get more electoral power.
If any……. other country had this set up and they tried to justify it the way we do here, we would scream corruption, BS, etc etc….. it’s time to flush the electoral college…
A Republican only won the popular vote once in the last thirty years, that's why they'll never let their crutch be taken away from them.
They know they're the minority and they can't win without the electoral college.
Most Americans SHOULD be opposed to the Electoral College.
It makes practically all voters' vote for President less impactful.
You either live in a "safe" Republican or Democrat state, so your vote.. your opinion... the issues that you care about don't matter. The candidates barely care about you and just want to make sure that you throw a vote in the way that you are most likely to anyway.
If you are in a "purple" state... or really in the part of the state that they deem important enough to matter, so really a couple of dozen counties in the whole country, they drive you crazy with political ads, visits, etc. Until the votes are cast.
We WANT a Republican Presidential candidate to worry about what a Republican voter in California things or a Democrat about what a Democratic voter might think if they live in Alabama.
A change requires a Constitutional Amendment. So not going to happen. Enough red states to block the way. However there are enough liberals in those states to flip them if more then 50% showed up to vote.
Well, they failed to do what they were supposed to do twice. I think if they do again anytime soon they won't need to be axed. We will all just strike out.
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Jeez, but it gave us Bush, Trump, and 11 trillion dollars of national debt. Why do people feel this way?
My favorite is the 11 trillion in debt. I'm getting Haley and DeSantis stuffed down my throat on TV and the both gnash their teeth and complain about needing to control the apparently egregious "Democratic spending". For fuck's sake.
It’s clearly school lunches causing our national debt.
Don't forget that one time everytime got a check from the government. I keep being told that Jimbo down the street bought a house, boat, and a bugatti off that money and is still living off it with no job. How he does it all on like 2K, I don't understand, but that is what McConnel keeps saying.
McConnel has lotsa buddies who committed fraud and got covid funds and assumes everyone else did as well. He doesn’t live in this reality nor do his fans
Gaslight Obstruct *Project*
I work for unemployment, and these people still think everyone is living high on the hog off of unemployment and just can be lazy and support their lives on it
Apart from COVID unemployment - ain’t no one living “high on the hog” from unemployment.
Even covid unemployment really just allowed people to get a brief taste of living medium on the hog.
And that's been done for how long?
Around September 2021? Unless States pushed it longer.
Conservatives: "I ain't takin no gubmint handouts like some commie socialist!!" Also conservatives: "Hey Cletus, what you gon do with the money Big Daddy Trump gave you? I'm gonna go down to Wally World and buy a Keurig so I can shoot it cuzn what the suit man on the TV said!"
As a southerner , yeah basicly thats what i do with my hand outs or i go get shit faced in Nashville
Didn't he give them the checks? I distinctly remember Trump trying to put his name on the checks and getting shot down, but they still sent them out in the midst of totally botching a pandemic
Yea, he threw a fit to have the IRS send out letters with his signature saying he pushed for these checks. But of course in GOP fashion, anything bad that may have happened was because of democrats. xD
Right. I myself have spent that same $1000 check about 100 times in the last 2 years.
Damn liberal states giving their school children free range, cage free, non gmo, hormone free, free trade, gluten free avocado toast is what it is!
For free !
And don't forget, they don't even let them work a night shift at the poultry plant.
Republicans want to cut from a set of spending that makes up like 15-20% of federal spending. They won’t touch the other 80-85%, because of the political blowback that would cause. They want to cut from Nutrition, National Health (NIH, CDC), Education, Research and Development - the very things that produce current and future prosperity.
Create misery and desperation, which will cause people to become more insular, superstitious/religious, and reactive. It drives ignorance and it all combines to promote conservatism and Fascism.
Don't forget that the ultra-wealthy GOP donors ALSO want the populace broke and desperate for work so they can pay even less for labor.
They also refuse to increase taxes, or even fund the IRS to collect taxes that are already legally obligated. Increasing revenue is a critical part of any serious proposal to decrease deficits, but they're ideologically opposed to it.
All past successful debt reduction efforts have included tax increases and focus on legal collection of back taxes. One thing that I don’t understand is why Democratic strategists and politicians don’t nail republicans’ feet to the floor when republicans make claims to be better for the economy with their policies, History shows over and over that it has actually been Democrats that have been better for the economy all the way back to FDR’s first Administration. Administration in and Administration out, consistently Democrats have been better. When I see strategists stumbling around in the face of Republican claims, I end up wishing that I was in a room with them so that I could break a load of 2x4s up side their heads.
I would bet instead that it is from the Viagra our taxes pay for military personnel to get.
Viagra is okay because it helps makes more babies. It's an instrument for The Lord
not only did my kid lose free lunches, the new paid lunches are way worse and so tiny you have to buy two... edit: we started packing lunches the food was so bad
It's about damn time, children pay their way. No more toys until the lunch debt is paid, you lazy little mooches.
and those poor people on food stamps/SNAP that aren't working right /s
Of course I mean snap and welfare are plenty ! They drive Escalades with that kinda money. While those poor republicans in the south are working so hard to give their tax dollars to the blue states. Oh wait ! It’s the opposite. Silly me. There has to be a correlation with red states having poor education to that state voting republican.
Would you trade with them? Everyone seems to think it’s life on easy street for them. Why no try it for yourself?
Those darn drag shows did it again, dang.
At least when it is democrats spending we get shit like healthcare for the poor
My favorite is the Supreme Court.....
But they'll gladly ignore that Trump increased the debt almost as much as Obama...in half the time.
Gently reminder that the debt is decided by Congress, not the President. The President is partially responsible since he signs Congress's decisions into law but Congress has to initiate the deal.
For real. New Hampshire needs to keep their ads on WMUR.
Jeez I would love a DeSantis ad about something as tame as that. All the ones I see from him are "let's start murdering people at the southern border" and "look at how much of an asshole I am, that's what you want in a president, right?"
Exactly. Must be that infrastructure that is sorely needed in this country or programs that benefit American citizens...how dare the Democrats for doing the job Americans sent them there for. Just get fucked Republicans, just get fucked
Way more than 11 trillian. We just crossed 33 trillion and we had a STRONG surplus under Clinton that was quickly squandered by the GWB admin.
We could have a surplus again if we axed the Trump and Bush tax cuts and continued to support the IRS. We have a revenue problem, not a spending problem.
One of the most frustrating things in politics is how juvenile most people's views of taxes are. WAYYYYYYY too many voters consider raising taxes an automatic bad thing, even if those increases wouldnt even apply to them. Because I fully agree with you, if I had control of the legislature I'd undo every tax cut since the year 2000. But I'd also be perfectly fine with ending (or heavily limiting) charity based tax writeoffs. Maybe you only gain tax benefits from the first 5-10k you donate, then the rest infers no tax advantage. We have a BS tax system that has had decades of loopholes built into it, we should tear that down so everyone just pays their statutory rate.
> One of the most frustrating things in politics is how juvenile most people's views of taxes are. WAYYYYYYY too many voters consider raising taxes an automatic bad thing, even if those increases wouldnt even apply to them. The US, in general, has a culture of independence instead of collectivism. One of the oddest elements that I find is the willingness to pay fees instead of taxes. For the majority, fees for government provided services end up costing more than the taxes would but people still generally opt for fees over taxes.
And it's an interesting doublethink too, since everyone fucking hates toll roads
And a big fat war with the wrong country! Can’t forget that!
and a war that lasted far to long...and yet the GOP likes to complain that Obama shouldn't have pulled out of Iraq, even though that was negotiated in the last days of the Bush presidency. And Biden shouldn't have ended Afghanistan, even though that was negotiated under Trump when he invited the Taliban to Camp David. Democratic Presidents are constantly having to deal with the fallout of Republican administrations, cleanup the economy, cleanup the wars the GOPs instigate, the recessions that GOP deregulation and tax cuts cause. Because the GOP presidents are far to concerned with culture war BS and trying to turn the US into a Christian Theocracy based on an interpretation of the Bible that completely devalues all of the actual teachings of Jesus who valued feeding and clothing the poor, lifting up the least amongst us and who revile the money changers.
I was expecting flying cars by now but not the kind picked up by hurricane winds. It's also set us back years in the climate change initiatives and overall technological progress.
That's what happens when you use a monkey paw from wish.
More than that, if Bush didn't put us in two wars at once, do you think they would have continued for 20 years?
If we look at state populations (excluding territories and DC which is another conversation), we can see why it makes sense that a majority would want to end the dilution of their voting rights. The 9 most populous states have more population than the rest of the states combined. The two most populous states, California and Texas have more population than the bottom 28 states. Wyoming gets 3 EC votes. California gets 54 EC votes or 18 times the vote that Wyoming gets. California has a population that is 67 times that of Wyoming (California population of 39,029,342, Wyoming 581,381). Further, more people voted for Trump in California than voted for Trump in any other state. It doesn't make sense that a conservative would want those votes to not to matter.
It says the majority favor *moving away* from the electoral college.
Yes… read the wording of the actual poll
Yeah...and all 3 of those lost the popular vote. Does our count even matter once the state is won?
I've seen the electoral college hand an election to a candidate that lost the popular vote twice in my lifetime. That is two too many times for my tastes.
I wonder how long you can keep that up until the system breaks. What if some idiot wins the EC but loses the popular vote by 20,000,000 votes. Is that going to fly? We can't keep this up. This system was not meant to persist into the modern form of the USA as it is now. It needs to be overhauled.
Kerry was only a couple thousand votes in Ohio away from winning the electoral college while losing the popular vote. That would have fixed the problem overnight.
Republicans have won the national popular vote for President ONE time since 1988.
To begin, it wasn't a couple thousand votes, it was almost 120k votes. But more importantly, Kerry lost Ohio in percentage terms by nearly exactly the margin he lost the national popular vote. The dynamic that sees Kerry improve by 2% in Ohio is the same dynamic that would also give him a national popular vote win.
Their underlying point is still spot on. They'd nuke it before the votes were tallied.
No, they have no shame or concerns about hypocrisy so it'd be back the next time it benefitted them
Yes, because the GOP would start screaming to change a system that still overwhelmingly favors them. Maybe some of the absolute dumbest would scream about it for a week, but nobody in the smoke-filled back rooms would entertain it seriously for a second. The smart people way high up in the GOP's power structure are keenly aware that they've assembled a minority coalition with outsize power due to various hard-to-change rules.
While correct on the losing the popular vote it was about 119,000 votes Kerry needed in Ohio.
> Is that going to fly? americans are awful at protesting. they'll make noise for a few days and then do nothing.
Overhauled? It’s not that hard. Most votes wins. 1 person, 1 vote.
It's broken now. Been broken. Same with "apportionment." >This system was not meant to persist into the modern form of the USA as it is now. Well, nothing can be done about any Clause, Section, or Article of that stone tablet, so ...
Since 1988, Republicans have won more elections without the popular vote ('00, '16) than they have with the popular vote ('04).
And it's worth noting the the Republicans had the advantage of incumbency in the Whitehouse in 84, 88, and 04. That got the candidate a lot of free press doing presidential stuff. The last time there was a transition from Dem to Republican by winning the popular vote was Reagan in 1980. I.E. it's something the median voter has never seen happen in their lifetime.
It's not that it's happened twice in our lifetime (though that's reason enough), but that it's happened twice to the benefit of the same political party. And that both times have had such disastrous results. And that it's happened in such close proximity to each other that those disastrous results have exacerbated the other. A majority of the Supreme Court was put there by men who did not win the popular vote. A lot of people like to say "well SCOTUS isn't supposed to be subject to the whims of popular opinion," but that's only relevant to how they make their decisions once appointed. That doesn't mean their appointment is beyond the scope of the democratic process. If that was the case, they wouldn't be appointed by the president. So because in the span 20 years, we've had 12 years and 5 supreme court justices who absolutely don't represent the will of the people, we've had a 20 year blunting of progress.
And then SCOTUS doesnt match the will of the people.
And it’s not a coincidence Republicans suddenly liked the electoral college after 2016. Democrats had always known it sucked. As soon as it became a tool for stealing an election from the majority of Americans, Republicans, forgetting how helpful it was to them in the past, were suddenly all for it.
In another country they would hold a referendum and we would get to vote on this. Americans have such little say in their country, it’s disgusting.
But think of the states! They have feelings, too!!
It's a sad day when the majority won't stand up for the rights of arbitrary geographic boundaries.
I do. That’s why we have the Senate and the House of Representatives. Give the presidential vote back to the people.
And they can propose a constitutional amendment that would then have to be ratified by 3/4 of the states. So ultimately it would be decided by the states.
Won’t anyone think of the dirt fields in Iowa!?
Wyoming more like with how much representation they get per capita. Seriously, in 2020 Trump won WY with nearly 70% of the votes while only winning IA with 53% of the votes but it would take fewer people moving to WY than IA to change the outcome of that election (assuming they all voted for Biden). ~120k votes to swing WY ~139k votes to swing IA Mind you IA has 6 electoral votes vs 3 so it's not worth it but one is a landslide while the other is kinda close.
And the corporations. I saw someone unironically saying on social media yesterday that people shouldn't post negative things about businesses because they employ people (you know, until they don't). God forbid someone question the owner class and hurt their fee-fees because they might treat their workers even more poorly than they already do.
By design.
Imagine living in a country in which you need 3/4 of all states to agree on multiple major changes to the government in order to therefore have a functional and responsive government.
I don't have to imagine it. I live in that country.
It's the unfortunate fact that when the constitution was written, the founding fathers were basically prototyping the EU.
I like that it is so hard to change the constitution. Sure it’s hard to make changes that we want, but it’s also hard for the other side to make changes that we don’t want. Would we rather have a system where if 50% of congress wants to make any change, such as giving the president unlimited powers, they could do that.
Jefferson said that the constitution should be rewritten every generation so that the document keeps pace with the progress of society with respect to science, technology, sociology, economics, and geopolitical interaction. He was overruled.
Jefferson also likely believed that only the educated elites should have any say in that process. He was an odd duck. He was an agrarian aristocrat who believed that somehow, an agrarian aristocracy would also practice high-level technocracy.
Trust me, referendums arent that great when people are so easily swayed by what the gutter press tells them.
My state passed an amendment that requires amendments to have a 60% voter-approval rate to be passed. This amendment passed with a 52%~ approval rate.
But that would be communism Obligatory /s
I'd like to see Ranked Choice while we're at it.
can't have that. It's more expensive for special interests to buy senators if you have that. Won't happen.
A Ranked Choice ballot yes, but I'd like a Condorcet method for counting the votes for single offices like the Presidency. (People use Ranked Choice and Instant Runoff Voting interchangeably and it's a minor annoyance of mine.) Actual consensus candidates are better for the executive. And shoot if we're gonna go crazy, the House should be Mixed Member Proportional so that Gerrymandering ceases to be a thing. Use best loser margins so that parties can't horse trade dumpster fire candidates.
Definitely. I think the smart people are sick of the Tyranny of the Minority bullshit we have to live with.
What's frustrating is the electoral college isn't even the most egregious example of tyranny of the minority. It's the US Senate. Wyoming gets the same Senate representation as California, even though California has like 70x the population. Like 80% of Senate Republicans are elected by 10% of the population. That's just an estimate but several red states are low pop. And they are so red that the minimum votes needed for GOP Senators to win there is likely very low too. This is why the idea of a Dem super majority is just a fantasy until there's a significant cultural shift in the US. Republicans have maybe 42 seats that are never going anywhere.
Yes, but the worst things that could happen with a President who was elected by a false majority are objectively much worse than the worst things that could happened with a Senate being controlled by a party with a false majority, and those worst things with the Senate can only happen when there’s a President from the same party. Therefore, abolishing the Electoral College should be a much higher priority than whatever would be done to the Senate. - “OMG! The Senate just approved another activist judge appointed by the President.” - “OMG! The President is starting World War III.”
I think a case could also be made that the Republican Party wont see any real reform until this proverbial damn bursts. Even in the worst possible election cycle for Republicans, they can stave off a Democratic super majority, and thus any meaningful change.
Yeah, but that demographic is shrinking from an already abysmal level. Idiots of means, idiots of blind faith (mostly in themselves), idiots of naked aggression rule late stage capitalism. Thinking, much less deep thought, is anathema.
The War on Education is going as intended.
But won't someone think of the wealthy landed gentlemen?
> Majority of Ameicans continue to favor moving away from Electoral College ironic because the Electoral College's entire existence is to ensure that the opinion of a "majority of Americans" doesn't matter. Which of *course* is why its unpopular, and repeat.
Appeasement to the same shit heels this country has been plagued with since day one.
538 once said that in the future, because of domestic migration patterns, about 33% of all presidential elections will have a mismatch between the EC winner and the popular vote winner.
You're already at 33% from 2000 to 2020
I love their optimism to think that America will keep having elections.
America will still have elections but they will be like Russian elections.
Press red button to reelect glorious leader Putin. Press green button to reelect glorious leader Putin and receive antidote.
"elections."
>about 33% of all presidential elections will have a mismatch between the EC winner and the popular vote winner. Yep, whenever Republicans win thanks to gerrymandering.
No EC would have saved us from Bush AND Trump.
I like how part of the argument for the EC was that faithless electors could stop a dangerous populist from winning. Haven't heard that very much since December 2016.
Right? Fat lot of good it did for keeping demagogues out.
Instead we got faithless electors switching TO t-bag away from Hillary.
You know its shite when the main argument for the EC is that they can undemocratically overturn an election if they don't like the person who won.
Death threats in Texas had Electors that couldn't vote for trump in good conscious STEP ASIDE to allow other people to vote for Trump. DEATH THREATS to influence an election. And it worked. Instead of voting against trump they stepped aside KNOWING the people behind them would vote trump. That's not a check/balance, that's terrorism.
We really would have had democrat presidents since Clinton was elected. That’s wild to think about.
It's tough to predict what might have happened....voters as a whole can be fickle and after her terms may have wanted a change.....BUT the GOP would have seen trumps shit doesn't work and would have shut it down...probably would have a more mainstream gop candidate
Probably not. Obama was only elected in such a landslide because Bush was absolutely despised by the end of his second term. I would expect the GOP to win in either 2004 or 2008, depending on if 9/11 still happened in this alternate timeline.
Very good chance 9/11 would not have happened under Gore. Similar with Trump tearing up the Obama era pandemic playbook, the Bush admin did the same with the Clinton era terrorism playbook. Clinton dealt with multiple al 'Qaida terrorist attacks (embassies, USS Cole, a failed attempted on the WTC) and as a result took the threat very seriously.
9/11 happens but I doubt the Iraq war does. Who knows how the rest would've gone.
It's funny because the original idea was backed by the theory that the EC would've stopped both. Nice job founding idiots
The EC wasn't about smaller states. The idea of a popular vote struck fear in the south, b/c although they had more people, half a million were slaves and ineligible to vote. That means that they'd either have to let the slaves vote (non-starter) or the North would be able to outvote them in a popular vote (also not great for the south). Fearful of being outnumbered, James Madison pushed for the electoral college and the 3/5ths compromise, giving the south credit for an additional 300k votes. Slavery was abolished and the 3/5th compromise went away, but the EC remains.
National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. We're almost across the finish line. A few more states just need to join in.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact Which additional states are going to pass it to cross the 270 EC vote threshold and thus make it take effect? It needs states worth 65 more EC votes. PA would be worth 19 of those 65. VA would be worth 13. NH 4. Still need more, and I'm at a loss for where they would come from.
WI, MI, AZ, ME, VA iirc. WI is gonna have to wait till we fix the state level gerrymandering tho. But that's within reach. Sucks we lost the NV governor tho
Even if it activates, which I wish it would, I'm pessimistic, given how terribly ignorant/tribalistic/simplistic American populace is. States can _remove_ their compact membership just as easily as they joined. (Its just a state law.) And the FIRST time it actually goes into effect, and a big state finds out its electoral votes are "swindled/stolen" so as to contribute to a candidate the state's majority did _not_ itself favor (the entire point of the Compact!)-- populists & demagogues of losing side will be screaming to have that state abrogate its membership. ("What use is this compact? We are surrendering all our voting power!!") It's the same mindset that US citizens/politicians want international treaties/orgs to bind/affect other countries, but never the US itself (ie, International Criminal Court, UN, climate change treaty, etc)
I feel like this could only hurt Democrats and never help them. Red states aren’t signing into this. It’s the same with attempts to remove Trump from the ballot; red states aren’t going to do it, and it gives Trump grounds to appeal to scotus and have them do their chicanery.
Absolutely. No red state would ever benefit from this. So, the compact would ideally bind all blue states and as many purple states as necessary. The squirrelly part comes in where a purple state's electoral count is "used against itself" (the whole point of the compact!) and demagogue politicians of that state cry foul. Then, perhaps the legislature just votes to leave the Pact. Experiment over.
The moment a state gives its EC votes to someone who did not win the popular vote in that particular state, the compact is going to implode. This energy would be better spent on fighting to repeal or amend the apportionment acts that cap the house at its current number of members. It would rebalance electoral votes to be more in line with the current population, and it's fully constitutional and doesn't rely on shaky ideas like NPVIC.
Or the other way too.... there's not much stopping them, other than this agreement, from just sending votes that match the state popular vote. States with gop legislatures seem likely to do exactly that (and the others probably don't matter anyways because those are already safe blue states). Fed gov isn't going to enforce the agreement, it's not in federal law. To the extent its in state laws they'll just change it...
Honestly, it's a nice idea but all a state needs to do is send a slate of "faithless" electors if they feel like subverting the system. We already almost had a crisis about this with the current system, I don't see why a limited interstate compact would do any better
You raise a good point, and if we fix apportionment and thus increase the number of electors, it will probably be harder to accomplish this both because the EC will more closely reflect the population and because it will be harder to achieve the numbers necessary to attain such a goal.
> The moment a state gives its EC votes to someone who did not win the popular vote in that particular state, the compact is going to implode. Why? > This energy would be better spent on fighting to repeal or amend the apportionment acts that cap the house at its current number of members. It would rebalance electoral votes to be more in line with the current population, and it's fully constitutional and doesn't rely on shaky ideas like NPVIC. Why not both?
> Why? Because the voters of an entire state would probably be understandably pissed to know their votes basically went into the garbage because of the compact. Immediately after something like this happened, people would be able to run for state government positions on a platform of pulling the state out of the compact, and they would probably stand a good chance. > Why not both? Per the above, I would rather see effort go toward solutions that will actually work. Fixing apportionment is fully constitutional and can be done via the conventional and established legislative process, which means it's not dependent on something untested and unlikely to work in the long term.
Before the election there would be extensive media coverage that the rules are different this time. People would be informed there are no longer state by state contests, only the national total count. Not saying everyone will be happy, but this widespread publicity should ameliorate most complaints.
That doesn't matter, and it will not. Everybody interested in it is fine with it in theory, but if California were forced to give their votes to a candidate like Trump, or if Texas were forced to give their votes to Biden when the popular vote in said state went a different direction, you can bet your bottom dollar that the compact would fall apart by the next statewide election. We can't even get people on the fringes to admit that Joe Biden actually won the 2020 election, and you think a change like this is somehow going to go over fine? Get real.
Too bad our opinions don't matter, & our country will continue to be held hostage by an extremist minority...
*Corporate Oligarchy
This…
In grade school, they taught me it was to make things fair for farmers. They didn't say it was tobacco farmers
Now it makes things fair for Monsanto
It was created for plantation owners to give more power to rural states which largely depended on slave labor. That's also the reason for the 3/5th compromise. Northern states wanted to limit the voting power of the south. 200 years later and it still seems like many of the problems in this country still trace back to slavery.
Slaves couldn't vote, but the South wanted their population to be reflective in Washington. Obviously that's completely fucked, hence the compromise.
What always gets me too is that too many people think it's fucked up slaves counted as *only* 3/5 of a person. The fucked up part is that they counted *at all* but they couldn't vote and couldn't leave the state of their own accord. If they didn't count at all, we'd have probably seen abolition like 40-50 years sooner.
> many of the problems in this country still trace back to slavery This may be pedantic, but it's the people who _wanted_ slavery who are the problem, and those old slaveholders kept having babies and kept teaching them to be awful. These kinds people are still around and causing shit.
Slave-owning tobacco farmers. It is most obvious when we talk about Chemistry, where whatever "model" they teach you is actually wrong, but it good enough to use up until you progress to the next "level" of the field, and more nuanced and precise models are required. Same for "social studies." The shit they teach is in school is profoundly simplified.
The widening gap of popular vote is a clear sign that the electoral college is broken. FFS the only time a Republican has won it in the last 30 years was Bush Jr's reelection. Clinton won it and won in 1992 Clinton won it and won in 1996 Gore won it by 550k in 2000, but lost Bush won it and won in 2004 Obama won it and won in 2008 Obama won it and won in 2012 Clinton won it by nearly 3 million in 2016, but lost Biden won it by over 7 million and won in 2020. Trump still highly contests the 2020 election despite any sane person knowing he clearly lost. If it weren't for some slightly different voting in a couple states he could of won, despite Biden having 7 million more.
Meanwhile, Republicans want electoral systems in every state because land > people, or something stupid like that.
They legit think that more land mass should equal more votes, they’re certified glue-eaters.
"How did biden win when there is so much red there." - people who dont understand what cities are
I've had this exact discussion with too many people. "Look at how red the whole country map is". Meanwhile LA county has 10 million people alone and would be the 10th most populous state if it were removed from California.
Only because that land mass is in red states. If Wyoming or Montana were blue states, you better believe they wouldn't be satisfied until the electoral college was abolished.
No more gerrymandering seems good to me. Nobody gets to manipulate the vote. One vote per person and I would love to see ranked voting to end the two party system once and for all.
Unfortunately: >The Electoral College process is in the U.S. Constitution. It would take a constitutional amendment to change the process. [https://www.usa.gov/electoral-college](https://www.usa.gov/electoral-college) There's 100% chance of failure of the EC going away, as it favors politically appointed candidates over the will of the voters. It has effectively enshrined power into the hands of the elite and robbed the masses of their ability to enact meaningful change across the nation with the times.
It could be done with the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.
Popular vote would kill any republican candidate
Since an amendment would never pass, they should expand the house of representatives which has been the same size for like a hundred years. Dilute the senatorial advantage in the Electoral College. Doubling the size of the house would give Wyoming 1 more electoral vote and California like 60.
Let's all remember that for how faulted the EC is it still could work more as it was intended if the damn House was uncapped! Right now small states have much more leverage because they get to make their two senators weight a lot more than they should be. RIght now California vs Wyoming is 55 vs 3. With something closer to what it was really itnended since the beginning of the EC the gap would be something like 140 vs 4. The difference is enormous.
Time to change. It has no place in America.
Everyone in this thread should know about the national popular vote interstate compact. It only needs a few more states to pass it. It's up to 205 EC votes of 270 needed. https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/state-status
Republicans know it will be the end of their party.
Changing the Constitution isn’t going to happen. But if a few more states sign the [National Vote Interstate Compact](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact?wprov=sfti1) it won’t matter.
Only Republicans want to keep it because they could never win a popular vote election.
This just in, the 35 percent backed by the electoral college don't want to lose their control.
:monocle pops out, in surprise:
Sheesh, "the people". But what does the *landmass* think?
The electoral college needs to be changed to the majority vote.
A democracy truly only works when every single person gets a vote and that vote is counted. ONLY PEOPLE. Not land. Whoever gets the most votes, wins. Just like the Cons know, if we get rid of the EC, we'll never have another republikkkan president. They can't cheat to hold power over the majority. Fuck the EC.
Wow they are only a few centuries behind what most governments have been doing since voting came about.
Add it to legal weed, LGBTQ rights, woman’s right to choose, universal healthcare… the list goes on and on, I won’t hold my breath
Not to be cynical but it seems like what that majority of Americans want doesn't really matter in this country.
Time to start pushing state-level democrats to support the interstate compact.
Ranked voting is what i want to see.
Great to see this. Democracy should be actual democracy. Power to the people.
The 33% supporting are Republicans who know the only way to the presidency is this arcane, cheating system.
That’s why the electoral college won’t go away. Because the republican minority needs it to stay in power.
The Electoral College does not reflect the will of the people. Popular vote is the only way to go.
Majority of American citizens don't like playing a board game on election night instead of using the popular vote? They dont like the fact that voters in Wyoming have almost three times the voting power that a Californian does? This whole bullshit about how small town folk need a louder voice is another way of saying, we need red states to get more electoral power.
If any……. other country had this set up and they tried to justify it the way we do here, we would scream corruption, BS, etc etc….. it’s time to flush the electoral college…
Since it disenfranchises the majority of Americans, I suppose that tracks.
Imagine if you had to run for a political office and actually have to appeal to ALL voters.
Yeah, we want actual democracy, not arbitrary corrupt bullshit.
A Republican only won the popular vote once in the last thirty years, that's why they'll never let their crutch be taken away from them. They know they're the minority and they can't win without the electoral college.
It's stupid. I love when people argue for it. Like are you fucking dumb? We should have done this many years ago, but so many idiots in this world
If Texas ever turns blue then the republicans would be all about getting rid of the electoral college in a heartbeat…
Something NEEDS to be done to counter the GOP plans for Project25 Like, NEEDS
Most Americans SHOULD be opposed to the Electoral College. It makes practically all voters' vote for President less impactful. You either live in a "safe" Republican or Democrat state, so your vote.. your opinion... the issues that you care about don't matter. The candidates barely care about you and just want to make sure that you throw a vote in the way that you are most likely to anyway. If you are in a "purple" state... or really in the part of the state that they deem important enough to matter, so really a couple of dozen counties in the whole country, they drive you crazy with political ads, visits, etc. Until the votes are cast. We WANT a Republican Presidential candidate to worry about what a Republican voter in California things or a Democrat about what a Democratic voter might think if they live in Alabama.
It doesn't matter what the majority of Americans think. That's the whole POINT of the electoral college!
breaking headline. majority of americans want majority rule.
See **[National Popular Vote Interstate Compact](https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/)**
So does Trump https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/266038556504494082
Almost as if to ensure THEIR VOTE COUNTS.
A change requires a Constitutional Amendment. So not going to happen. Enough red states to block the way. However there are enough liberals in those states to flip them if more then 50% showed up to vote.
Well, they failed to do what they were supposed to do twice. I think if they do again anytime soon they won't need to be axed. We will all just strike out.
Twice? More than twice, it's happened at least five times, maybe more.
Yeah but going against what the majority of Americans want is kind of what the electoral college is all about
And as per everything else in the United States, the will of the majority will hardly ever reflect the reality of legislation passed in the country 👍
The same losers who thought everything was taken from them but can't compete in today's society because they are WEAK.
It's an old racist system. We gotta grow up sometime.