Decision 2016

[Dad_Scaper]

President Obama did, in fact, pledge to close Guantanamo. Then, as President, it turned out that it wasn't easy to do that, and it didn't happen.

That's a far cry from pledging to do something ridiculous and/or undemocratic - build a nation-length wall; jail a political opponent - and then walking that back. It's just as well they aren't doing the stupid and/or wrong thing that they said they would do, but it's not the same as proposing something that seems legitimately reasonable, and achievable, and then being unable to deliver it. It's one thing to say to your kids that you'll drive them to school but the flat tire means you can't; it's another to tell them that you'll beat up their teacher and then decide you won't. Declining to beat up the teacher may be for the best, but it doesn't absolve you from saying something stupid to your kids.

It sure didn't sound like he was kidding when he told Clinton on the debate stage that she'd be "in jail" if he was President. Not to me.

It's water under the bridge now, but let's not rewrite history to make Trump into Obama.

[dok]

They way I'm looking at it is that there's sort of three flavors of positions taken by Trump voters with respect to Trump's promises. (Note that many voters fall in different silos with respect to different issues.)

1. Those who believed what he said and will be really upset if he fails to follow through.
2. Those who didn't like what he said but decided to vote for him anyway because of [issue they consider more important]
3. Those who didn't like what he said but said "oh, he won't really [do that/behave like that] in office"

There's people in silo one every election; that's just how it works. It's upsetting to me that so many people were fans of some of his more noxious policies, but ultimately not that surprising.

I have a hard time being too upset about silo two, although if the overriding issue was "I hate Hillary" then you kinda got had by the smear machine. Still, I like to play the "what if it was Kanye West running against Mitt Romney" game with liberal friends. If Kanye said he was nominating liberal supreme court justices, a lot of people vote for him. I'm not saying I like this, but I understand it.

The third group annoys me a lot more, because I think it was basically self-delusion. People didn't want to admit they were OK supporting someone who said those things and acted that way.

[Tornado]

Originally Posted by Ixe

I do actually believe it's possible to change people's minds on issues (and temper your own views in the process), but it works on time scales much longer than a conversation.

Is that changing people's mind or is it simply a factor of time?

I believe most people's opinions change over time but certainly not all.

As Billy Joel said:
"Some people see through the eyes of the old before they ever get a look at the young."

[Aldin]

But dok, isn't the third group likely correct? It seems probable to me that Trump will not, in fact, do many of the things he said he would do in anything other than potentially the spirit of the thing. So if a voter voted for him thinking, for example, there was no way he was building a wall but that it was likely he would be taking some sort of tougher stance on immigration and that does indeed happen (it certainly seems more likely that an actual border-spanning wall), then how are they self-delusional?

~Aldin, curiosly

[dok]

You're right, Aldin. I'm sort of conflating two things there. It's true that it's pretty unlikely he's going to deliver on a number of his substantive promises (Wall from San Diego to Brownsville, ban on Muslim immigration, bringing back manufacturing jobs via tough negotiation tactics, etc).

When I was thinking about that third silo there, I was thinking more about his promises to do irresponsible things that he actually can do, as well as many of the things about his behavior. Lots of people would say they were sure he would stop caring about his businesses, or be more careful about racially divisive language, or not attack people on twitter, or many other things, once he won. These were silly things to believe. IMO this was mostly an exercise of the voters just pushing aside the things that their rational mind told them were big problems in favor of voting the way their gut wanted to.

[dok]

Long article on the effects of the EC. Backs up a lot of the points I've made here about how it doesn't protect smaller states or regional interests or rural interests and so on.

One of the concluding quotes:

The point is that the main bias of the Electoral College isn’t against big states or regionalism; it’s just toward the big battleground states. If they break overwhelmingly one way, that’s who wins. This is not exactly a high-minded Hamiltonian argument. There aren’t many justifications for letting a few close states decide a close national election. But that’s basically what the system does, and there’s nothing about those states that ensures they provide a representative outcome.

[Raider30]

Originally Posted by dok

Long article on the effects of the EC. Backs up a lot of the points I've made here about how it doesn't protect smaller states or regional interests or rural interests and so on.

One of the concluding quotes:

So I read an interesting little piece that described how Clinton won the popular vote by approximately 2.8 million votes. Which depended on the votes from a single state - California, in which Trump lost by approximately 3.5 million votes. Under a popular vote system California single handily turns a Trump plurality into a Clinton plurality. I find that incredibly ironic given the conclusion of the article cited above.

It seems to me that the electoral college functioned exactly as it was designed in that it prevented a single region, or state in this case, from overriding the results of a diverse nation. As the article said "American voters elected a national president, not California's choice."

Just sayin'....

- Raider30

[Dad_Scaper]

Originally Posted by Raider30

Under a popular vote system California single handily turns a Trump plurality into a Clinton plurality.

I don't really care about this debate, because the EC isn't going anywhere and the effect of the EC doesn't really favor anybody one way or the other. It's just a strange sauce for the goose, and we have it, and it isn't going away.

That said, I've seen this a couple of times, including now a couple of times in this thread, and it's just kind of wrong. It's not California that gave Clinton the majority of the popular vote. It's all the people who voted for her, everywhere. Each vote counts as one vote.

It's only through the lens of the weird Electoral College that you count state-by-state. Why should my vote in Maryland count differently from somebody's vote in Sacramento, California? One is one. It's not how we do it, but it certainly makes *sense*.

[Raider30]

Originally Posted by Dad_Scaper

I don't really care about this debate, because the EC isn't going anywhere and the effect of the EC doesn't really favor anybody one way or the other. It's just a strange sauce for the goose, and we have it, and it isn't going away.

That said, I've seen this a couple of times, including now a couple of times in this thread, and it's just kind of wrong. It's not California that gave Clinton the majority of the popular vote. It's all the people who voted for her, everywhere. Each vote counts as one vote.

It's only through the lens of the weird Electoral College that you count state-by-state. Why should my vote in Maryland count differently from somebody's vote in Sacramento, California? One is one. It's not how we do it, but it certainly makes *sense*.

Like you I don't really care much about this debate, I just happened to read the post shortly after reading the article and thought it ironic.

But addressing what you wrote, I could just as easily say back 'It's not a swing state that gave Trump the majority of the electoral college, it's all the states everywhere.'

Just sayin'

-Raider30

Ps: aside from all that I'm curious as to exactly how much you think your vote or perhaps someone from a 'lesser' state will count when the politicians skip dealing with you to focus on promises and delivering the goods to the more populous states? You know that's exactly what will happen, because that's the way politicians and politics works. I'd prefer to continue to at least keep the appearances up that they have to care about everyone.

[Tornado]

Lucky for the us we have a government that cares about us so much they created a system to make our votes count correctly.

[dok]

Originally Posted by Raider30

So I read an interesting little piece that described how Clinton won the popular vote by approximately 2.8 million votes. Which depended on the votes from a single state - California, in which Trump lost by approximately 3.5 million votes. Under a popular vote system California single handily turns a Trump plurality into a Clinton plurality. I find that incredibly ironic given the conclusion of the article cited above.

It seems to me that the electoral college functioned exactly as it was designed in that it prevented a single region, or state in this case, from overriding the results of a diverse nation. As the article said "American voters elected a national president, not California's choice."

Just sayin'....

- Raider30

Did you read the article? This exact point was addressed. Trump won a set of deep red states by a nearly identical margin. Those states also didn't get to decide. (And no, the EC's slant towards less populous states wasn't decisive, either. That point is addressed as well.)

Cherry picking one data point doesn't really tell you very much. If someone starts with a desired conclusion (e.g. "the Electoral College helped my guy this time, so it must be really good") then you can find some data that supports that argument. That won't make it right, nor will it make it "incredibly ironic" if the greater data set doesn't support that argument.

[dok]

Originally Posted by Raider30

Ps: aside from all that I'm curious as to exactly how much you think your vote or perhaps someone from a 'lesser' state will count when the politicians skip dealing with you to focus on promises and delivering the goods to the more populous states? You know that's exactly what will happen, because that's the way politicians and politics works. I'd prefer to continue to at least keep the appearances up that they have to care about everyone.

Right now, all they need to care about, if you think this is the way it works, is the swing states. It's not as though Democrats need to do something special to win Maryland or California or Hawaii, nor do Republicans need to do something special to win Wyoming and Nebraska and Idaho and North Dakota and Oklahoma and West Virginia and Montana and Arkansas and Alabama and Mississippi and Tennessee and Kentucky.

If it was natural popular vote, then they would care about more places, not fewer, because every population center would be a place to gain supporters, not just population centers in Florida and Ohio and Pennsylvania and Michigan and Wisconsin. There's millions of Republican voters and potential Republican voters in California (it did elect a Republican Governor twice this century, remember?) and Maryland, just as there are millions of Democratic voters and potential Democratic voters in Texas and Utah and Georgia and Kentucky. If it was national popular vote, both parties would care about all these places.