(December 3, 2016 at 10:24 am)Brian37 Wrote: You said it, Democrats need to figure out how to get people to the polls, but not just the polls, but how to expand the map.

They had their chance.

(December 3, 2016 at 10:29 am)Aegon Wrote:

(December 3, 2016 at 10:24 am)Brian37 Wrote: You said it, Democrats need to figure out how to get people to the polls, but not just the polls, but how to expand the map.

They had their chance.

Not this shit again.

I voted for Bernie in the primaries. BOTH his supporters and Hillary supporters had their minority scorched earthers. And I hated that about BOTH camps. But I find it highly hypocritical to say he is a smart man, AND I AGREE, then bail on him when he ended up supporting Hillary.

This is the problem with democrats. WE let our infighting divide us. WE allow ourselves to think short term. WE have since Reagan, allowed the GOP to gerrymander. WE have allowed them to divide and conquer. 

It should not have mattered if he had won either. WE still suck at tactics and we do not expand our map. The election is over so bitching about who did what wont stop Trump. What matters now is uniting.

(December 3, 2016 at 10:29 am)Aegon Wrote:

(December 3, 2016 at 10:24 am)Brian37 Wrote: You said it, Democrats need to figure out how to get people to the polls, but not just the polls, but how to expand the map.

They had their chance.

Not this shit again.

I voted for Bernie in the primaries. BOTH his supporters and Hillary supporters had their minority scorched earthers. And I hated that about BOTH camps. But I find it highly hypocritical to say he is a smart man, AND I AGREE, then bail on him when he ended up supporting Hillary.

This is the problem with democrats. WE let our infighting divide us. WE allow ourselves to think short term. WE have since Reagan, allowed the GOP to gerrymander. WE have allowed them to divide and conquer. 

It should not have mattered if he had won either. WE still suck at tactics and we do not expand our map. The election is over so bitching about who did what wont stop Trump. What matters now is uniting.

(December 3, 2016 at 11:40 am)Brian37 Wrote: What matters now is uniting.

(December 3, 2016 at 10:00 am)Tonus Wrote:

(December 1, 2016 at 3:52 pm)abaris Wrote: Elected exclusively by American standards. I would be hard pressed to name another country where the losing candidate actually leads by 2.5 million votes according to latest counts.

I think that the founding fathers of the US understood that the electoral college could lead to that result.  While they would not have wanted it to happen, they felt it important enough to give low-population states a say to take the risk.

I honestly don't think they gave two shits about small population states. They had two reasons for the electoral college, both favouring the south, the first being to overweight the slave owning states to ensure that a huge majority would be needed to end slavery (which eventually happened anyways) and the second to maintain the position of oligarchic government which was the hallmark of the southern colonies (and later states).

(December 3, 2016 at 10:00 am)Tonus Wrote:

(December 1, 2016 at 3:52 pm)abaris Wrote: Elected exclusively by American standards. I would be hard pressed to name another country where the losing candidate actually leads by 2.5 million votes according to latest counts.

I think that the founding fathers of the US understood that the electoral college could lead to that result.  While they would not have wanted it to happen, they felt it important enough to give low-population states a say to take the risk.  There are at least a few things about our government that are based on how things were done more than 100 or 200 years ago, but changing them can be difficult.  Getting rid of the electoral college will be near impossible because it would require the ratification of a new amendment by 3/4 of the states, and I think that there are too many states who would fear being disenfranchised under a popular vote system.

As someone who didn't vote for most of his life because of his stupid religion, I am keenly aware of how valuable that opportunity is.  But fewer than half of eligible Americans do so in presidential years, and far fewer still in between.  Those percentages are much worse as the demographics get younger.  And those younger voters skew liberal.  If we were somehow able to ditch the electoral college for a popular vote, those non-voters might be even less incentivized to get to the polls.  Republicans didn't just take the White House, they still have majorities in congress and have solid footholds in many local government positions throughout the country.  Instead of focusing on the electoral college, Democrats must figure out how to get more people to the polls.

As for the question in the OP: My thoughts on Trump are that he was more interested in running for President than in being President, and if the next four years turn out to be forgettable we'll have dodged a bullet.  But he already stumbled by publicizing a phone call with the President of Taiwan which could have long-lasting repercussions on our relations with China.  It's a bad way to start a presidency that hasn't even started yet.

There were only the 13 states at the time they created the electoral college, right?  And most states were small and had fairly similar populations.  There were no Florida's, Texas, or California's yet.
My understanding is they created the electoral college because they did not trust the "common man" to vote in an informed way. 
It seems to me this accidentally caused exactly what they were trying to avoid, which is easily swayed uneducated folks voting for a demagogue.

(December 1, 2016 at 3:04 pm)FatAndFaithless Wrote:

(December 1, 2016 at 3:02 pm)downbeatplumb Wrote: Maybe, but I 'm not alone surely. You can forgive the US much but not this, not this.
There was once a dream that was the US, you could only whisper it , but now that dream has been corrupted by greed ,racism and stupidity.

A Trump presidency isn't the apocalypse, you know.

I think it could be.

I'm not even joking, he's stupid enough to blunder into a major war.

(December 3, 2016 at 3:23 pm)Aroura Wrote: My understanding is they created the electoral college because they did not trust the "common man" to vote in an informed way.

It depends on who you ask/where you look. The nation was relatively small but also still influenced by the political structures and beliefs of the British and the men trying to figure out how to select a President had a number of issues to work out without really knowing how it would go, but hoping to avoid the pooling of too much power in one place. From this site:

Quote:The Constitutional Convention considered several possible methods of selecting a president.

One idea was to have the Congress choose the president. This idea was rejected, however, because some felt that making such a choice would be too divisive an issue and leave too many hard feelings in the Congress. Others felt that such a procedure would invite unseemly political bargaining, corruption, and perhaps even interference from foreign powers. Still others felt that such an arrangement would upset the balance of power between the legislative and executive branches of the federal government.

A second idea was to have the State legislatures select the president. This idea, too, was rejected out of fears that a president so beholden to the State legislatures might permit them to erode federal authority and thus undermine the whole idea of a federation.

A third idea was to have the president elected by a direct popular vote. Direct election was rejected not because the Framers of the Constitution doubted public intelligence but rather because they feared that without sufficient information about candidates from outside their State, people would naturally vote for a "favorite son" from their own State or region. At worst, no president would emerge with a popular majority sufficient to govern the whole country. At best, the choice of president would always be decided by the largest, most populous States with little regard for the smaller ones.

Finally, a so-called "Committee of Eleven" in the Constitutional Convention proposed an indirect election of the president through a College of Electors.

The function of the College of Electors in choosing the president can be likened to that in the Roman Catholic Church of the College of Cardinals selecting the Pope. The original idea was for the most knowledgeable and informed individuals from each State to select the president based solely on merit and without regard to State of origin or political party.

The structure of the Electoral College can be traced to the Centurial Assembly system of the Roman Republic. Under that system, the adult male citizens of Rome were divided, according to their wealth, into groups of 100 (called Centuries). Each group of 100 was entitled to cast only one vote either in favor or against proposals submitted to them by the Roman Senate. In the Electoral College system, the States serve as the Centurial groups (though they are not, of course, based on wealth), and the number of votes per State is determined by the size of each State's Congressional delegation. Still, the two systems are similar in design and share many of the same advantages and disadvantages.

The similarities between the Electoral College and classical institutions are not accidental. Many of the Founding Fathers were well schooled in ancient history and its lessons.

Quote:It seems to me this accidentally caused exactly what they were trying to avoid, which is easily swayed uneducated folks voting for a demagogue.

Sadly, an uninformed public can do some very destructive things, and we've gone from a society that had too few reliable sources of information to one that has too many unreliable sources instead.

Looks like he picked Ben Carson to lead HUD. 

https://twitter.com/i/moments/805766154790858752

(December 3, 2016 at 10:00 am)Tonus Wrote:

(December 1, 2016 at 3:52 pm)abaris Wrote: Elected exclusively by American standards. I would be hard pressed to name another country where the losing candidate actually leads by 2.5 million votes according to latest counts.

I think that the founding fathers of the US understood that the electoral college could lead to that result.  While they would not have wanted it to happen, they felt it important enough to give low-population states a say to take the risk.  There are at least a few things about our government that are based on how things were done more than 100 or 200 years ago, but changing them can be difficult.  Getting rid of the electoral college will be near impossible because it would require the ratification of a new amendment by 3/4 of the states, and I think that there are too many states who would fear being disenfranchised under a popular vote system.

As someone who didn't vote for most of his life because of his stupid religion, I am keenly aware of how valuable that opportunity is.  But fewer than half of eligible Americans do so in presidential years, and far fewer still in between.  Those percentages are much worse as the demographics get younger.  And those younger voters skew liberal.  If we were somehow able to ditch the electoral college for a popular vote, those non-voters might be even less incentivized to get to the polls.  Republicans didn't just take the White House, they still have majorities in congress and have solid footholds in many local government positions throughout the country.  Instead of focusing on the electoral college, Democrats must figure out how to get more people to the polls.

As for the question in the OP: My thoughts on Trump are that he was more interested in running for President than in being President, and if the next four years turn out to be forgettable we'll have dodged a bullet.  But he already stumbled by publicizing a phone call with the President of Taiwan which could have long-lasting repercussions on our relations with China.  It's a bad way to start a presidency that hasn't even started yet.

Er .  .

The Taiwan card might be a toe in the door for reigning in mainland China's recent embrace of imperialism as demonstrated in it's intimidation of Vietnam, the Philippines and others with their building naval and air bases in international waters.  Also, flying nuclear capable bombers around Taiwan was quite a provocation, and one remarkably unremarked upon.  Standing up to hegemony shouldn't be ruled out of hand when the hegemony wasn't part of the Nixon/Carter/Reagan arrangement that set up the cold shoulder to Taiwan policy Kissinger pulled out of his ass.

Probably too much to hope for, but if mainland China is sufficiently aggrieved/motivated maybe they should consider putting a muzzle on Little Kim's nuclear program . . . .

And China's over reaction (IMO) was definitely NOT the way to play this hand, new game, new rules, maybe they could do a consult with the Clinton Institute for further details?