I agree and disagree. I understand the point you are making especially after moving away from NY to a state where my actual vote does make a difference and every election can go either way, but the little guy (small states) need to have say and cannot be completely overwhelmed by the mass populations of NY, LA and Chicago.
How would they get overwhelmed if every vote actually counted? Whoever wins the popular vote would win the election, which is the way it should be, IMO.
Because of the concentration of population in a few areas NY, LA etc. while more "people" represent the needs and wants of a much smaller geographically region of the country with much different views and values than places as Montana, Dakotas, Kentucky etc. Not really much different than the reason for the "Connecticut Compromise" at the constitutional convention. Pure popular vote would have tilted things completely for states like Mass and Virginia.
@Dierking the savage buster. Don't think I forgot about you. Savege calling white trash. My teeth is hurting. What is your copay? Hahahaha. @Petrozza . Please don't delete this. let me have my fun with this white trash. Ban me tomorrow. He doesn't want to brag. Insecure white trash. Please Petro let me have my way with him. He thinks I haven't dealt with trashes like him in my life. Dierking my ass. 1:36 AM London time. I will deal with you tomorrow. Good night. Sleep tight.
So the fuck is this. There was a white trash called @Dierking and he is being schooled on this thread. Capish? On second thought, you are right. I will invite him to other threads so I don't ruin this thread. Sorry.
The original purpose of the electoral college was to keep power in the hands of the very wealthy and politically connected. People couldn't vote for a President they could only vote for an elector chosen by the political parties in their district. It was a fail safe against rampant Democracy subverting the rule of the political class. No elector has ever been bound by federal law to vote for the person whom they were pledged too at the time they were chosen. That said, very few electors have ever chosen to vote for another candidate. Some states choose to enforce voting for the candidate an elector is pledged too but 24 states totaling 246 electoral votes have no such restrictions. In modern times the electors have become a chokehold on the electoral process, since they are chosen by the political parties and as long as the two major parties get 51% of the electors they can prevent anybody else from winning the Presidency. In a theoretical three-way race in which an independent got 49% of the vote and the electors the two major parties could block his election by choosing to elect one of their two candidates by pooling their votes in the electoral college. A more likely scenario would be a strong independent getting 42% of the vote and maybe 40% of the electors and the two major parties choosing to maintain their duopoly on power by giving another person enough votes to win the election. Let's say the GOP decided Trump could not be the candidate under any circumstances and nominated Rubio as the Presidential candidate and Bush as the Vice-Presidential candidate. Let's say the Democrats wound up with Joe Biden as the Presidential candidate and Bernie Sanders as the Vice-Presidential candidate. Let's say Trump ran as an independent with a strong Tea Party platform and Sarah Palin as his Vice-Presidential candidate. So we have a three-way election and enough thoroughly disgusted and confused voters to give Trump-Palin 42% of the popular vote. Biden-Sanders get 37% and Rubio-Bush get 21%. However Trump-Palin get an unusually large percentage of their votes and electors in states that do not require the elector to stay with his or her candidate when the electoral votes are tallied. They're very strong in Texas, with 41% of the vote to Rubio-Bush 22% and Biden-Sanders 37%. They're very strong in NJ with 45% to Rubio-Bush 15% and Biden-Sanders 40%. They're strong across the midwest in Iowa, Kansas, Indiana and Missouri. The GOP ticket wins several states outright in the south, taking Florida, North Carolina and Virginia. The Democrats take California, NY, Illinois, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. Ohio and several other key states basically split 40-35-25 slightly favoring either Trup or Biden with Rubio in third place with the GOP establishment pulling out all the stops not to get blown off the map. The electoral college totals look like Trump 242, Biden 241 , Rubio 55. This result based on the electoral laws in each state would result in the election for President being thrown into the House of Representatives and the election for Vice-President to the Senate. Rubio-Bush can't throw enough electoral votes to either side because Florida and North Carolina have a statutory requirement that those votes be cast for the candidate they are pledged too, that being Rubio. In the House you'd think that Rubio and Bush, being the establishment candidates in an overwhelmingly Republican House would have an advantage. However the problem is that each state casts one vote for President, that being a tally of the majority of the representatives in that state. With the strong Tea Party lean of the Trump-Palin campaign and the way the House delegations sit it looks like Trump Palin will have 26 votes in the House to Biden's 21 and Rubio's 3. The GOP establishment will be decimated in that circumstance. Trump and Palin and the Tea Party will become the new establishment over the next 4 years. There is a way out for the GOP establishment however and they decide to offer the Democrats a deal. They pull heavy strings in the Oil industry and get Oklahoma's 7 electors to agree to vote for Biden for President and Bush for Vice-President. Virginia's electoral votes are cast for Biden for President and Rubio for Vice-President. Virginia state law is advisory and not binding on the electors with no explicit penalties nor charges related to not voting for the pledged candidate. New Jersey, not wanting the election in the House of Representatives decides to vote for Biden for President and Bush for Vice-President. Suddenly Biden has 276 electoral votes, enough to be President but there's still the Vice-Presidential election, which goes to the Senate since nobody has a majority of the votes there. The Senate more safely under the control of the GOP establishment votes for Jeb Bush for Vice-President and the world is saved from the specter of a Sarah Palin Vice-Presidency in an administration tat would have little to do with her, leaving the opening for lots of mischief. It's far-fetched but it's a really weird year.
Hm. Well, the extent to which I assume you mean Obama "cut to the left" after 2008 is a discussion in itself. Imo and very briefly since this is the GOP debate thread, I think there were 3 basic issues that pertain to that discussion. One was the stimulus package, taking a basically Keynesian response to the catastrophic failure of the market, which actually had begun by the Bush Administration with TARP - if this had not been done, the economy would have collapsed. Yes Obama was criticized for such things as saving the auto industry. But that was the right move, and I bet if the GOP had won the White House, they would have done something similar, albeit they would have sold it on national security grounds. The second was the ACA, which was something the Dems had been trying to do for decades. They got their shot and they went for it. No big surprise there. Sure the right was not happy, but then as now they had no real alternative other than continuation of the status quo. The third is the much more murky area of regulatory reform and overall fiscal policy. Here the Dems have on one and not been able to accomplish anything due to the GOP in Congress in regard to fiscal policy, while in the agencies they have pursued basically an old school approach. Imo, the EEOC, HUD, the EPA, all do important work. But they have failed to improve their approach, and have largely lost the opportunity they had to improve their approach. More controversial has been the group of policies that govern immigration. But I don't know I would say the Dems took a turn to the left here. So I am at a loss to guess what you are pissed off at, although I do have my own issues with them.
Without saying more I will say I am very familiar with Westchester County, and I think it is a fascinating case in terms of how national politics plays out on the local level. The one thing you left out is that that same County that votes solidly for the Dems at the presidential level currently has a Republican County Executive, Rob Astorino, who is in his second term. Yes, he lost to Cuomo in 14 running for Governor. And in fact he even lost in Westchester (while winning Suffolk County, in eastern LI, by comparison). But he won when he ran for County Executive, twice. When Astorino ran the second time, his opponent was the very left wing mayor of New Rochelle. The latter attempted to run a national campaign against Astorino, saying he was against abortion and that sort of thing. But that's not really a local issue, or to be exact Astorino did not make it one, other than saying he was a right to lifer. Instead Astorino has run a pretty tight ship in terms of expenses and avoided corruption. But he also has been adamant opposing a litigation brought by HUD aimed at overturning local zoning laws to pave the way for "affordable housing" construction in the NYC suburbs. In other words, I think Astorino won in part because these voters who vote Democratic in national elections supported his efforts to oppose overreach by the federal government in the form of the HUD litigation.
My buddy lives in Armonk and years and years ago he was running for the extremely local position of Building Inspector and they held a little Q & A session for voters and some woman asked him where he stood on abortion. Lol. _
More on lessons about Westchester County. Which as I said is a fascinating place in terms of national politics. Let's start with the fact that Obama carried the County in 2012 with 60% of the vote, with Romney getting only 38%. Sounds very blue, and in that respect it is. But is this your 47% looking for a government handout crowd? First of all, only 5% are government workers on any level. So it's not that. Average household income (median, which skews lower, of course) is @$81k, while NYS is @$57k, and US national is @$52k. Average household net worth is just under $1million, while the national number is about $484k. That's more than double. The mean value of a single family house in Westchester as of 2013 was nearly $725k (likely well over that today). Only 40% of county residents are renters. Crime statistics are below half of the national average, while the rate of gun ownership is less than 8% of households. Education levels tend to be much above the national level, while attendance at public schools is average or near average, until you get to college, then the rate of private institution enrollment goes up significantly. So, how come a place like that votes Democratic for President despite having a Republican County leader? I have my theories. But if you knew the answer, I think you understand part of what is going on in national politics today. Westchester on the economic numbers you would think should be, at least historically, a GOP electorate. It is the home to the Rockefellers, but also now to the Clintons. What has happened?
A fascinating case? Maybe NYT reading grist to the outside observer but not really. National politics playing out on a local level? Again, not really (your professed au courant familiarity with West. Co. aside). In a nutshell, while Democratic challenger (and New Rochelle mayor) Noah Bramson attempted to use national democratic talking points (guns, abortion, etc.) against Astorino, it was in essence nothing more than a strawman-type campaign attempt to draw attention away from the "local tax issue" card Astorino originally used to unseat a 12-year Democratic incumbent (Andy Spano): Westchester having the highest real estate taxes in the entire U.S. and spending more (per capita) than all 62 other counties in NYS. And while the HUD issue may've also caught some wind in the papers, it really wasn't that much of a hot button ballot box issue either. Further, "voting blue" in Westchester is hardly limited to the presidental level either. Our congresswoman Nita Lowry (good broad) who has served us for over a quarter of a century is a Democrat as is the case with our two State Senators one of whom recently replaced a Democratic institution (Suzi Oppenheimer) who also served for over a quarter century. In the NYS Assembly, West. Co. democrats hold 5 of 6 seats. Further locally, the administrations of all Westchester's 6 cities (Yonkers, New Rochelle, White Plains, Mt. Vernon, Peekskill and Rye) are Dems. save for Rye whose former (Dem.) mayor of 12 years is now a State Assemblyman. "Lessons?" y'all talking about lessons? You're actually correct - there are still a number of traditional country/GOP enclaves, i.e. containing the "Skip/Biff/Muffy" crowd. I live in Scarsdale, 10583 which is predominantly progressive and while zip code '10583' might've been wasp-city back in the day, the ethnographics have changed. "Muffy & Buffy" are more in Bronxville, Rye and yes, parts of Larchmont (Manor), Briarcliff Manor, etc., etc. In short, there are the Bronxvilles, and then on the 'blue' side of the fence there are the Chappaquas (an enclave in the Town of New Castle and home of Bill & Hillary), i.e. there's a lot of monied blue among the nantucket red-clad Biffs. but i digress (sorry to the others for the long-winded 'local' hi-jack)
I agree, it should be the popular vote...I remember when I was getting deep into the election back in 2000, still a young pup but I was fearing the thought of Bush winning and Al Gore getting screwed over because of Florida and its stupid hanging "chads" I imagine a world with Gore as President for 8 years would have transcended things...The popular vote should take precedent. Nominee George W. Bush Al Gore Party Republican Democratic Home state Texas Tennessee Running mate Dick Cheney Joe Lieberman Electoral vote 271 266[2] States carried 30 20 + DC Popular vote 50,456,002 50,999,897 Percentage 47.9% 48.4%
