US Elections: The Last Trump

[Wrl6199]

1 minute ago, Iskaral Pust said:

People in my gym today had the TV on CNN election coverage.   It was such pointless, empty slinging of soundbites.  I don't know why people are still following this so closely because I don't think the electoral college will be remotely close on Tuesday.  This was over as a contest months ago.  TV news needs to keep it alive for their ratings but why do people indulge them?

On more prosaic matters, my mail-in ballot still hasn't arrived.  If it doesn't turn up tomorrow I'll have to go stand in line for early voting over the weekend.   I'll just bring a good book; at least the weather's decent. 

Where i live people complain all the time about CNN. They even say that fox news inst as biased as CNN. Plus every time that they see a poll they dint like they say its biased. I hate these people and i'm not even that liberal. I just am so tired of listening to these stupid people. But yeah all CNN is now is them covering the election. Pretty much all the news networks are covering it nonstop especially the 24 hour news networks. I just cant wait till this is over.

[Iskaral Pust]

9 hours ago, theguyfromtheVale said:

 

The problem with all this is gerrymandering. [snip]

I used to complain about gerrymandering too but when you look at the population maps that just doesn't hold up.  Dem voters are more likely to live in extremely high  concentrations.  Although I'm sure Rep state houses have redistricted in their own favor, it would be almost impossible to design districts that don't tilt Rep in aggregate.  You would need long pizza slice districts so that rural, exurban and suburban voters have urban voters in the same district.  I can't think of a good democratic reason why regions that vary so widely in their economic & lifestyle concerns would be well served by the same local representative.  

Until Dem voters start to disperse a little further from their urban strongholds -- the opposite of recent trends -- the Reps have a big advantage in the House.  Dems will need a huge popular majority in Congressional voting to win the House.  It can be done but there's a real headwind. 

By the way, the answer to any gerrymandering is for Dem voters to show up in midterm and local elections.  We seem to be glamour voters who only care about the Presidential race. 

[The Marquis de Leech]

1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

Awesome. Washington Elector will not vote for Clinton or Trump. Meaning that Clinton will have to get 271 votes. I guess the good news, if that, is that this would take the tie off the table entirely.

I'm guessing it's too late for this prat to be replaced. If the map looks like this:

 http://www.270towin.com/maps/vxARw

They will have single-handedly handed the election to Trump.

[Castel]

3 minutes ago, Iskaral Pust said:

 I can't think of a good democratic reason why regions that vary so widely in their economic & lifestyle concerns would be well served by the same local representative.  

On the other hand: this leads to a situation where the party representing those regions can get less total votes (Dems voted more in 2012 iirc) and end up with a majority in the House. Which has its own issues. 

 

[Wrl6199]

2 minutes ago, Castel said:

On the other hand: this leads to a situation where the party representing those regions can get less total votes (Dems voted more in 2012 iirc) and end up with a majority in the House. Which has its own issues. 

 

Yeah gerrymandering always seems to be popping up everywhere.

[OldGimletEye]

8 hours ago, mcbigski said:

Would they?  To what extent is the structural advantage in the house for Republicans the result of minority-majority districting?  If you concentrate minority votes in one district then obviously that makes several other districts have a greater percentage of majority voters.  Simple math.  

Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you're saying here. But simple math? I don't think so.

Anyway, a visual representation of how gerrymandering works:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/03/01/this-is-the-best-explanation-of-gerrymandering-you-will-ever-see/

8 hours ago, mcbigski said:

This thread is amusing in a dark sort of wow they actually believe what Pravda spoon feeds them sort of way.

And your awesomey awemsome bestest ever sources of information are what exactly?

By the way, I thought Trump guys like Pravda now.

[The Marquis de Leech]

On the gerrymandering front, North Carolina and Pennsylvania are major offenders:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/05/15/americas-most-gerrymandered-congressional-districts/

No doubt there's an underlying "anti-urban" natural gerrymander that has become more noticeable with modern polarisation, but pretending that partisan gerrymandering isn't an issue is straight out ridiculous. 

[Iskaral Pust]

24 minutes ago, Castel said:

On the other hand: this leads to a situation where the party representing those regions can get less total votes (Dems voted more in 2012 iirc) and end up with a majority in the House. Which has its own issues. 

It definitely has issues but districts are intended to be a local region requiring mutual representation, not provide a balanced national aggregate.  Their purpose is bottom up rather than top down.  We just dislike it because it results in a top down aggregate that we don't like.  Any democracy or federal system will have this same problem if one faction lives in pockets of higher concentration.  The only way to resolve is to reduce the concentrations or else increase them until it leaves the opposite faction just as concentrated. 

[Kalbear]

So Friday surprises are two today, both of which aren't that special.

First is that despite Melania claiming otherwise she was in fact working illegally without a visa.

The second is that the national enquirer paid $150k to a playboy model for her story of having an affair with trump a year after his marriage with Melania-  and then chose to squash the story. 

[Altherion]

3 hours ago, sologdin said:

exactly right.  these are not the so-called patriots that jefferson envisioned standing up to tyranny, nor are they a suitable second line of defense against a foreign invader that somehow defeats the US military and survives the nuclear arsenal. what purpose, then, other than recreational intimidation of reasonable citizens? 

Oh come on. I expected this from the poster you quoted, but surely you must know better. Yes, people like these can never hope to go toe to toe with the US military -- but they need not do so to cause serious disruption. Any manner of violence (no matter how incompetent) directed at the elites in either Washington DC or New York City will cause at least a short term financial panic. If it is sustained for a longer period of time or even moderately successful, the panic could be much longer term. Please recall that one of the top ten metropolitan areas in the country was effectively shut down for a day by a solitary Chechen. Also, there are tens of thousands of these people scattered across all 50 states and if the government reacts foolishly to one of their actions, this number can become hundreds of thousands. They are not amusing.

2 hours ago, Kalbear said:

Awesome. Washington Elector will not vote for Clinton or Trump. Meaning that Clinton will have to get 271 votes. I guess the good news, if that, is that this would take the tie off the table entirely.

It doesn't change the result in case of a tie: since the elector is not switching from one candidate to the other, the result will be that one candidate has 268 votes and the other has 269. Since both are short of the majority, the election will be determined by the House of Representatives in exactly the same way as if the count was 269-269. I'm not sure the 269-268 lead could even be milked for propaganda given that it is due to a technicality rather than the will of the voters.

I suppose that this could matter if whoever wins Washington gets exactly 270 electoral votes, but there is no plausible way for that to happen (and even if it somehow did, I suspect the faithless elector can be... persuaded to recant).

[Castel]

18 minutes ago, Iskaral Pust said:

 We just dislike it because it results in a top down aggregate that we don't like.  

Indeed. Is that a fatal problem? 

You don't think that there's some end result on a national level that would be undemocratic if it did occur under this system (putting aside likelihood)? 

 

Seems to me that the top will matter, and you have to make a value judgment on how much.

[TheKitttenGuard]

I find a misconception that all these militia have a belief they will be facing U.S military.

The militia more believe they will be fighting various Government agency like the A.T.F or B.L.M or even a U.N Army.  They will just need to stand against that until the U.S military come in like John Wayne and the Calvary.

[all swedes are racist]

14 minutes ago, Altherion said:

Oh come on. I expected this from the poster you quoted, but surely you must know better. Yes, people like these can never hope to go toe to toe with the US military -- but they need not do so to cause serious disruption. Any manner of violence (no matter how incompetent) directed at the elites in either Washington DC or New York City will cause at least a short term financial panic. If it is sustained for a longer period of time or even moderately successful, the panic could be much longer term. Please recall that one of the top ten metropolitan areas in the country was effectively shut down for a day by a solitary Chechen. Also, there are tens of thousands of these people scattered across all 50 states and if the government reacts foolishly to one of their actions, this number can become hundreds of thousands. They are not amusing.

It doesn't change the result in case of a tie: since the elector is not switching from one candidate to the other, the result will be that one candidate has 268 votes and the other has 269. Since both are short of the majority, the election will be determined by the House of Representatives in exactly the same way as if the count was 269-269. I'm not sure the 269-268 lead could even be milked for propaganda given that it is due to a technicality rather than the will of the voters.

I suppose that this could matter if whoever wins Washington gets exactly 270 electoral votes, but there is no plausible way for that to happen (and even if it somehow did, I suspect the faithless elector can be... persuaded to recant).

Ah. Well, that's Trump for ya, keeping us safe from terrorists....

[Kalbear]

43 minutes ago, Iskaral Pust said:

It definitely has issues but districts are intended to be a local region requiring mutual representation, not provide a balanced national aggregate.  Their purpose is bottom up rather than top down.  We just dislike it because it results in a top down aggregate that we don't like.  Any democracy or federal system will have this same problem if one faction lives in pockets of higher concentration.  The only way to resolve is to reduce the concentrations or else increase them until it leaves the opposite faction just as concentrated. 

This really isn't what we're talking about. We're talking about concentrated districts in heavy urban and suburban areas which are redistricted to fuck. I mean, seriously, look at these district maps and tell me they have anything to do with population correctness.

The goal of the 2010 redrawing was to draw districts such that they would survive a potential 20 point swing in election voting - in other words, a 60-40 split - and keep the House in Republican hands. That is not remotely 'a local region requiring mutual representation'. This results in some really weird things, like a district in Philadelphia which has literally no registered Republicans, because the maps have been redrawn so severely. 

The way to resolve this is to use another means of voting such that both local and party balance are maintained, such as MMP voting.

[Anaerys]

I wouldn't call is a resurrection.....maybe a brief burst of energy before the complete collapse of his campaign.

[Kalbear]

Here's the article about Trump's affair and the Enquirer suppressing it.

Quote

 

Hope Hicks, a Trump campaign spokeswoman, said of the agreement with Ms. McDougal: “We have no knowledge of any of this.” She said that Ms. McDougal’s claim of an affair with Mr. Trump was “totally untrue.”

Ms. McDougal expected her story about Mr. Trump to be published, people familiar with the matter said. American Media didn’t intend to run it, said another person familiar with the matter. Ms. McDougal didn’t return calls for comment.

 

And here's Melania not getting the right visa.

Quote

 

Melania Trump arrived in the U.S. from Slovenia on Aug. 27, 1996, on a B1/B2 visitor visa and earned $20,056 for 10 modeling jobs before she obtained her H-1B work visa on Oct. 18, 1996, according to AP.

"The documents examined by the AP indicate that the modeling assignments would have been outside the bounds of her visa," AP reports.

 

And while we're at it, here's Giuliani admitting he gets tips directly from the FBI.

Quote

Rudy Giuliani said Friday that he knew the FBI planned to review more emails tied to Hillary Clinton before a public announcement about the investigation last week, confirming that the agency leaked information to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. […]

“I did nothing to get it out, I had no role in it,” he said. “Did I hear about it? You’re darn right I heard about it, and I can’t even repeat the language that I heard from the former FBI agents.”

 

[Altherion]

I think at this point people are just throwing various things at the wall to see if anything sticks. Here's one about Clinton:

 

Quote

 

The Clinton Foundation has confirmed it accepted a $1 million gift from Qatar while Hillary Clinton was U.S. secretary of state without informing the State Department, even though she had promised to let the agency review new or significantly increased support from foreign governments.

Qatari officials pledged the money in 2011 to mark the 65th birthday of Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton's husband, and sought to meet the former U.S. president in person the following year to present him the check

 

It must be nice to receive seven figure birthday presents from foreign governments...

[Iskaral Pust]

16 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

This really isn't what we're talking about. We're talking about concentrated districts in heavy urban and suburban areas which are redistricted to fuck. I mean, seriously, look at these district maps and tell me they have anything to do with population correctness.

Of course they're cynically manipulated.  I spent years grousing about it.  And I want people to actually vote in local elections to fix it.  But my resignation is because even a fair district map will still favor the Reps.  We need to gain ground outside the current urban bastions.  The current pattern is for Dems to carry the White House every time but the Reps to keep the House.  It'll take a really big swing to break the pattern.  

[Kalbear]

2 minutes ago, Iskaral Pust said:

Of course they're cynically manipulated.  I spent years grousing about it.  And I want people to actually vote in local elections to fix it.  But my resignation is because even a fair district map will still favor the Reps.  We need to gain ground outside the current urban bastions.  The current pattern is for Dems to carry the White House every time but the Reps to keep the House.  It'll take a really big swing to break the pattern.  

I don't see why a fair district map will favor republicans. At all, actually. They've even done experiments with this to automatically district everywhere to reach maximal fairness by population size, and it was I think slightly in favor of Dems by demographics but nothing particularly amazing. 

I get that you're saying that in theory you'd have to combine some group of city and rural groups to have balanced districts, but you don't need that; having districts which are more in line with actual population divides and areas works far better and still provides balance in the state and in the country over all. 

Or, alternately, throw out the concept completely and go with MMP, ensuring however you want to draw up your districts that you get both local representatives AND party representation, while also strengthening party power - something that the US desperately needs.

[all swedes are racist]

???

Sorry, I don't get this. Why would you consider that a "birthday present" (to, I'm inferring, Bill Clinton)?