stringer bell
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Everything posted by stringer bell
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So disappointed. I thought I invented something.
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The exchange here between two mods, both with more experience than the general public about the topic, pretty much summarizes what the media has become. If we want to look for something to crucify Hillary Clinton for, there you have it, sent by a reasonable person with a lot of knowledge. On the other side was another reasonable sort (and military to boot!) who made a totally different case based on the same information. If those of us in the middle have predispositions one way or the other, we can find information to support our view. Just about every browser will present radically different views on issues of the day. It is much harder to discern reality, much less truth than it used to be IMHO.
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Still watching the popular vote total. Clinton now more than a million ahead and .8%. 22% of California's vote remains to be counted, so she'll likely increase her margin by at least half a million if not more and the percentage margin figures to be over 1.5%. When is this significant? 2 million? 2 percent? I don't know, but it is fodder for Democrats.
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According to the Detroit Free Press all votes have been tabulated, but not canvassed, in Michigan and Trump will add Michigan to his column. That will give Trump 306 EVs with a deficit in overall votes of almost a million, with the prospect of going over 2 million.
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I think Wisconsin's flip is tied directly to the voter suppression measures passed by the Republicans in the last five years. Overall voter turnout was down and I have to believe that part of the reason for that was laws and rulings making it tougher to vote. I fully understand that more popular candidates would have helped increase the vote, but the efforts to suppress the vote worked IMHO.
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I may stop reading Daily Kos, because "the sky is falling" according to them for sure. I think the GOP will pass quite a few laws that will have effects for a long time in addition to appointing a conservative to the Supreme Court, which really bugs me. Paul Ryan seems dead set on "fixing medicare" which I'm told means privatization. Hey I'm an old white guy I should be happy!
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Regarding the EC amplifying Obama's elections: The EC amplifies everyone's margin. Reagan didn't win 90-10, nor did Nixon or LBJ. The problem is that in two of the last five elections, the popular vote winner has lost and in Clinton's case, decisively. I think that if the result were reversed, there would be twice as much tumult, but that is beside the point. The EC is flawed because today with so much polling, candidates ignore most of the country to concentrate on a precious few states. The next time the EC elects a candidate who lost the popular vote, it might be a Republican. Then maybe some action might be taken.
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I would amend Levi's statement to say that the Electoral College allowed the folks in Iowa, Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin to flip their middle finger at .... The President is president of all fifty states, not just those listed above plus Nevada, Colorado and New Hampshire. If there is no Electoral College, each vote gets equal weight. Farmers, ranchers, steel mill workers and stay-at-home moms vote all equal the same no matter what state they live in.
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BTW, regarding the Electoral College, Silver at 538 has an article about that. He says that the EC relatively favored Obama, especially in 2012 and favored Kerry in '04, so it is likely it will swing back at some point. My argument remains unchanged--ignoring 80% of the country is undemocratic and having a system that has twice in the last five elections won the office for the popular vote loser is something that needs repair. http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/will-the-electoral-college-doom-the-democrats-again/
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Add the west coast as bright blue. Trump is running at like 33% in California, but there are still more votes for him in that state than any other except Texas and Florida and by the time they finish counting all the votes, he may have the most from California. Washington, Oregon and California are now being ignored as much as Texas, despite accounting for something like 75 electoral votes. The presidential campaign shouldn't come down to 5-10 states. The feeling by everyone that their vote might matter (pardon me) trumps every regional or geographical argument for the current electoral college. Some hybrid makes the most sense, but if I have to pick between an electoral college that has twice in sixteen years picked the popular vote loser and a system that gives the person with the most votes the office, I pick popular vote election.
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With the "winner take all" Electoral College, the so-called Swing States get all the attention. It doesn't matter if they are primarily rural or primarily urban. Why do people in North Carolina get so much more attention than those in New Jersey? It is because there is a decent chance for either party to win NC and just about no chance for a Republican to win NJ. If everyone has access to the internet and a television, all should be subjected to the same amount of election campaign. Campaigns would be different and I think better if every vote cast in every state meant the same amount and right now that isn't the case. If the electoral college was gone and the president was elected by popular vote, candidates might go to the farm, but it wouldn't have to be in Ohio or New Hampshire and they might go to a factory, but it wouldn't have to be in Pennsylvania. They could campaign from a suburban mall or a soul food restaurant, but those campaign spots wouldn't have to be in swing states. It is pretty undemocratic for the "loser" have more than a million more votes than the person elected. BTW, I'd feel the same if Trump won the popular vote and Clinton won the Electoral College.
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The current situation isn't rural/urban. How many visits did Trump or Clinton make to the Dakotas, Montana and Idaho? OTOH, there were plenty of visits to Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and Colorado. It is all about chances of winning the state. I think direct election by popular vote is better than what we have now, but there is probably some tweak to the EC which would improve the system.
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Such as? I'm not sure what they might be. The only scary thing about popular vote election of a president is that if the race were really close, a nationwide recount would be long and arduous. How close? I would guess a margin of 100,000 or less nationally would be close enough. I wouldn't exactly classify that as an "imbalance". BTW, I've said Clinton will win the popular vote by over a million and I'm sticking with that. According to CNN, 30% (about 4M votes) of California's vote has yet to be counted. Clinton is winning California by more than 25%, so if she increases her lead by 25% of the remaining California vote, she would increase her lead of almost 700,000 by another million. Her final margin may be more than one full percentage point. As I've noted before, you can add another 1% to Clinton's margin (+.5% for Clinton, and -.5% for Trump) and Trump still gets 270 electoral votes.
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Agree on the Electoral College. I don't advocate any challenge to Trump's election--he won under the rules in place--but a campaign devoted to 7-10 swing states isn't fair to the other 40+. On Trump's election and a Republican Congress--I am 62 years old. I don't think I'll live long enough to see the undoing of the inevitable excesses we are bound to see. Americans get what they deserve in elections. Perhaps we will see an upturn in interest in the political process.
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Clinton had the Obama coalition minus Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa. Thank you Big Ten.
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My final comments about the election of 2016: Trump won, Clinton lost. I am shocked that this would happen, but I am not going into the streets to protest. The man won fair and square. The reasons I believe he won are depressing IMHO. He appealed the disaffected, the angry, nativists, racists, and 2nd amendment zealots. The Republican party allowed this man to advance through the primaries despite his lack of knowledge and experience and a history of comments that wouldn't allow him to be a bus driver for a public school. Clinton was flawed and unliked. She still is going to end up with a plurality of about a million votes. Is that going to become a thing? We can't undo this election, but perhaps we can find a way to have the president represent a plurality of the voters. The Democratic party has a lot to do. They can't win elections in most of the United States. They need to again in some respect represent the "little guy (or gal)" as was thought from the Depression through probably the 70s. Finally, voter turnout was the lowest in 20 years. We need to keep making voting easy and people need to see that their votes can make a difference.
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I am stunned that enough people voted for Trump. That said, there is a disconnect between the masses and the parties that greatly favors Republicans somehow. They have managed to paint Democrats as the party of the government despite the fact that they have control of everything except the presidency and in two-plus months they will have that. There is an undercurrent in the anti-government stance that blames others--non-whites, immigrants, gays etc. for what is wrong. I have thought the discontented should buck up and realize they don't have it too bad, but it hasn't happened, at least in elections. Democrats have become the party of welfare, not the working person and it is killing them. I am 99.9% certain that Trump and the Republicans will do nothing to truly help this segment's lot, but until Democrats can get a good share of their votes, they are going to keep losing.
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When they finish counting all the ballots, it looks like Clinton will have about half a million more votes than Trump, which is approximately the same "margin" that Gore had over Bush. What is interesting is that Clinton could have added one percent across the board and still wouldn't have won. Trump won states totaling 280 electoral votes by over 1%, so I guess maybe the system is rigged. I wrote on Election Night that Democrats will have to endure the trifecta is DC, but that things really look up for them in the next cycles. They probably won't take back either chamber of Congress in 2018, but I predict that they'll make big gains in the House in 2018 unless Congress and Trump can succeed and I sincerely doubt that. 2020 will be the chance to take back the Senate and the White House and set up a much different redistricting scenario in 2021.
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FWIW, Clinton just pulled ahead in the popular vote. I've got to go to work.
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The timing for the Democrats in 2020 might help them with their gerrymander problems. If, as I expect, a Trump presidency is an abject failure (perhaps with a lot of scandals), 2020 might be a year like 2010 was for the Repubs, plus there will be a presidential election that year. If people in this country still think Congress sucks and that the country is headed in the wrong direction, the entire mess would have to be laid at the Republicans' feet.
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I think we're there.
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OK, why hasn't Florida been called? It was at 95% an hour ago and is at 96% now.
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It looks like Clinton will need a high-wire act to win--carry PA, MI and WI by small margins. She's lost Florida and Ohio and is not sitting great in NH for what it's worth.
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How accurate are exit polls? I have been looking at basic information like gender, figuring that is a near 50-50 split in numbers (always a few more females). Examples: Trump +12 with men in MI, Clinton +11. Should be just about a dead heat, no?
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Doing some math based on exit polls, it looks dicey for Clinton in Michigan and Minnesota of all places.Virginia is certainly tighter than I thought it would be and Florida looks to be very close.
