POTUS 2016 General Election Discussion Thread

[SackAttack]

Originally Posted by BishopMVP

This doesn't make sense. As of now the 3 biggest states are relatively ignored, while the candidates focus on the rust belt, NH, Nevada, Florida, now North Carolina and maybe Arizona/Colorado. (Outside of an arrogant enough candidate like HRC to think she had enough of a lead Texas & Georgia were in play.) And I assume legislatures in Montana, Idaho, the Dakota's, Vermont, Alaska etc can do the math and see they have a proportionally bigger voice in the EC system than they do as a straight % of population. Popular vote might happen, but the impetus will come from those coastal elites, not as a response to them.

It's easy to ascribe arrogance to Clinton now, after everything went to shit, but the available data suggested that they were in play. If she had turtled up, played prevent defense, and lost, she'd have been called arrogant for thinking it was in the bag and that she didn't have to try to expand the map anywhere.

I mean, I have definite problems with the way she ran her campaign - not visiting Wisconsin *once* after the primaries? - but I don't think attempting to put states in play that appeared within a normal polling error of being winnable was "arrogant."

Trump did the same thing in the Rust Belt, chasing EVs in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. All of those states looked solidly pro-Clinton, but were within normal polling error of being in play. The difference between Clinton going after Georgia/Texas and Trump going after the Rust Belt is who was apparently ahead and who was apparently behind.

Otherwise? You talk about the Dakotas, Montana, etc recognizing that they have more power under the Electoral system than under a popular vote, but they get taken for granted now. What, they'd be taken for granted MORE with a national popular vote?

Most of the Midwest gets treated as, yes, "flyover country" in elections. The Upper Midwest/Rust Belt gets attention, and Missouri is still treated as a swing state, even though it probably isn't any longer. The South, with a couple of exceptions, is in the same boat.

When you go +30 to +50 for one party with regularity, under the Electoral College, there's no benefit to running up the score. Yeah, okay, the 3 EVs that Montana, Wyoming, and each of the Dakotas bring to the table might be disproportionately more powerful than their population would be in a popular vote, but every vote past 50%+1 is wasted in states like that.

If a Republican can actually squeeze marginal votes out of the "Republican firewall," it's going to make more sense to visit Wyoming, or the Dakotas, or Alaska.

Yes, California and New York would probably get increased attention from a Democratic candidate because the margins there are so much greater than they are in New Hampshire, but if you think Clinton was arrogant for thinking Texas and Georgia might be in play, how much more arrogant would a Democrat have to be to think that they could just focus on Texas and California and call it good because population centers?

[molson]

The third party vote has been a little underrated in its impact. The top 4 third-party candidates got about 6.1 million votes combined. In 2012 the top 4 (which included Roseanne Barr) got about 1.75 million votes.

Edit: I don't know if that swung the election, but it explains why the voting turnout looks down when you just look at the top 2 candidates.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by molson

The third party vote has been a little underrated in its impact. The top 4 third-party candidates got about 6.1 million votes combined. In 2012 the top 4 (which included Roseanne Barr) got about 1.75 million votes.

Impact though?

I mean, the indications are that most of Johnson's difference in polling vs votes went to Trump. And that's around 2/3rds of the total of all the fringe candidates.

It's unlikely those votes would have changed anything other than possibly the popular vote total.

(I guess I'm not clear whether you meant impact on the election outcome, or impact in terms of there being simply "more". If the latter, it's a figure that's lower than Perot [i]and Perot II, similar to John Anderson, and less than George Wallace)

[SteveMax58]

Originally Posted by larrymcg421

This would be an interesting compromise as it is closer to a popular vote system, but the smaller states retain their voting power per person advantage.

The one drawback is you couldn't do fractional electors for a state. So for a 3 electoral vote state, if it went 51-49, you couldn't give them each 1.5 electors. The 51% would get 2 and the 49% would get 1. So you wouldn't be able to do a true proportional system, but it would still be better than winner take all, which makes zero sense.

Yep, thats one of the quirks that would need to be worked out. As you said, maybe you just round up in favor of the winner.

I guess status quo is the path of least resistance but just surprised that I haven't heard somebody advocating a system similar to that approach rather than full-on popular vote.

[Buccaneer]

Originally Posted by SackAttack

The economy was in the toilet, but all of a sudden, it's not anymore! Magic at the ballot box!

You mean like the Nobel committee awarding the peace prize based on ballot box?

[Buccaneer]

Sack, Bush43 said he could squeeze a million votes from Texas if that mattered. I think with the 4 big states already solid colors, the other states should be more important. It's unfortunate that CA-NY-IL alone can get a candidate almost 40% of the way there nowadays.

[larrymcg421]

In the fictional country of Wimipany, where Trump wins WI, MI, and PA by narrow margins, and Clintons wins NY by a large margin:

Electoral Votes: Trump 46, Clinton 29
Popular Votes: Clinton 57.9%, Trump 36.8%

[stevew]

Originally Posted by larrymcg421

This would be an interesting compromise as it is closer to a popular vote system, but the smaller states retain their voting power per person advantage.

The one drawback is you couldn't do fractional electors for a state. So for a 3 electoral vote state, if it went 51-49, you couldn't give them each 1.5 electors. The 51% would get 2 and the 49% would get 1. So you wouldn't be able to do a true proportional system, but it would still be better than winner take all, which makes zero sense.

I kinda like the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact idea. Although a bunch of rules in statewide elections would need to be addressed. Namely that in some states i believe that absentee ballots are not counted if they would not decide an election.

[JPhillips]

Originally Posted by Buccaneer

It's unfortunate that CA-NY-IL alone can get a candidate almost 40% of the way there nowadays.

Why? That's where a lot of people live.

[JPhillips]

There was a time when this would have been a big deal:

"A conscious effort by a nation-state to attempt to achieve a specific effect" NSA chief on WikiLeaks

[EagleFan]

Originally Posted by larrymcg421

If you think people who live closer together deserve less rights than people who live far apart, then the Electoral College is a great system.

What I find interesting is the Supreme Court said states can't use their own EC-style system to decide elections on a statewide level (see: Baker v. Carr). So our own method of selecting a President is unconstitutional for the states to implement for selecting a Governor.

Still crying about the EC? It is in place to prevent a large portion of the country from becoming irrelevant. It does what politicians should do, it serves the states.

[EagleFan]

Originally Posted by larrymcg421

In the fictional country of Wimipany, where Trump wins WI, MI, and PA by narrow margins, and Clintons wins NY by a large margin:

Electoral Votes: Trump 46, Clinton 29
Popular Votes: Clinton 57.9%, Trump 36.8%

Thank you for this worthless information...

[larrymcg421]

Originally Posted by EagleFan

Still crying about the EC? It is in place to prevent a large portion of the country from becoming irrelevant. It does what politicians should do, it serves the states.

Except it doesn't do that. It makes even more of the country irrelevant than a popular vote system would.

[EagleFan]

I see where the liberals are confused. The EC was a compromise between the large states and the small states. It's the whole compromise thing they don't understand; unless that compromise is giving them everything they want (without having to give anything up).

[Buccaneer]

Originally Posted by SackAttack

You're kinda proving my point, though, Bucc. Right now, there IS no reason for a Republican candidate to spend much time in the GOP's "firewall" states. Aside from Georgia and Arizona, and the ever-present prospect of a purple Texas (which may never happen), most of those "firewall" states are pretty reliably double-digit states for a Republican. That includes, as I said, most of the Midwest, much of the Mountain West, and most of the South.

As far as the lament that three states get somebody almost 40% of the way to 270...population centers matter, and they'd matter either in the system we've got, or a popular vote system.

If you want to blunt the impact of population centers on Presidential elections (and I'm not sure why you would other than to grant rural areas much more disproportionate influence than they currently enjoy), what you do is keep the Electoral College but distribute Electoral Votes one per Congressional district.

And then you'd probably see the Democrats spend a half-century or more in the political wilderness as they tried to broaden their reach beyond urban populations; whether that's a bug or a feature is probably up to one's personal politics.

Thanks for the response. I think my initial reaction was to hypothetically think about where it would be 50 years from now: would only 4 states receive the majority of electoral votes out of 50 states?

And while I think there is a personal urban bias (never liked big cities much), I also do not believe political weight should be based on population alone. The interests and choices of non-urban economies have been vitally important throughout our history. That's why I love the bicameral compromise of 1787.

[SackAttack]

Originally Posted by Buccaneer

Thanks for the response. I think my initial reaction was to hypothetically think about where it would be 50 years from now: would only 4 states receive the majority of electoral votes out of 50 states?

And while I think there is a personal urban bias (never liked big cities much), I also do not believe political weight should be based on population alone. The interests and choices of non-urban economies have been vitally important throughout our history. That's why I love the bicameral compromise of 1787.

Maybe, but past isn't necessarily prologue. Agarian economies were massively important in the 18th and 19th century. Less so, now; the South is industrializing, and the idea of large agribusinesses are new, as well. I get that you don't want to leave the concerns of rural America behind in favor of the urban population centers, but that's kind of what you have right now. Whether you favor or disfavor urban (or agrarian) populations, the minority in either category feels forgotten.

Conservatives in states with large population centers, such as California, Illinois, and New York, have little to no electoral impact. They're spit in an ocean, electorally.

Liberals in rural America have the same problem. Maybe Wyoming isn't as populous as a "blue" state, but a left-of-center voter there has no impact on a national election.

And that's something the Electoral College can't account for. It concerns itself with the "interests and choices" of the "right kind" of voters in either case, leaving the others without a voice.

I'm not sure how I feel about the idea of a straight popular vote, but I think it's pretty clear the Electoral College leaves people behind regardless of what political affiliation you hold.

[Butter]

Originally Posted by EagleFan

I see where the liberals are confused. The EC was a compromise between the large states and the small states. It's the whole compromise thing they don't understand; unless that compromise is giving them everything they want (without having to give anything up).

Give me a fucking break.

You might need arm extensions to be able to reach around and pat yourself on the back enough for that.

Liberals have done nothing but compromise in the interest of governing for 25 years. It's the burden of being idealistic... You have try to actually get things done other than just consolidating your own power.

Weren't you a Johnson supporter? How'd that work out for you?

[tarcone]

Originally Posted by EagleFan

Thank you for this worthless information...

Is it, though?
Doesnt it underscore the importance of the EC?

Why is it more important that one state can dominate the results? Or 2?

looking at those states, why would NY be more important than those other 3 states?

[Butter]

Originally Posted by EagleFan

Still crying about the EC? It is in place to prevent a large portion of the country from becoming irrelevant. It does what politicians should do, it serves the states.

To be clear, I don't care much about changing the electoral process.

So explain to me how, with the electoral college, that 40 or so states weren't basically ignored, while 10 swing states got almost all the candidate visits. Or does that not count as "being irrelevant" for you?

[larrymcg421]

Originally Posted by tarcone

Is it, though?
Doesnt it underscore the importance of the EC?

Why is it more important that one state can dominate the results? Or 2?

looking at those states, why would NY be more important than those other 3 states?

Because it has more people? And NY wouldn't necessarily be more important in a pop vote system. If someone won NY narrowly and lost those other three states by a ton, then NY would be rendered meaningless. Replace NY with CA. A person winning by 1 vote in CA would defeat someone who won 90% in the other three states.

[Buccaneer]

Originally Posted by Butter

To be clear, I don't care much about changing the electoral process.

So explain to me how, with the electoral college, that 40 or so states weren't basically ignored, while 10 swing states got almost all the candidate visits. Or does that not count as "being irrelevant" for you?

No states were ignored, they all had access to information and ballot boxes, right? Why is there so much emphasis on candidate visits? When they showed up, did they do something special that no one outside of the state would know about?

I know that sounds a bit snarky but it seems like when a candidate visited Colorado, they all talked about most recent campaign controversy, which could have been talked about standing in Outer Mongolia. And paying lip service to a state's/locale's needs could have been addressed from anywhere, assuming they had access to a TV or newspaper or the internet.

I wonder if neither candidate visited any states but campaigned from their front yard or in the case of Trump, rooftop, whether the presidential vote (as oppose to other votes) would still be the same?

[CrescentMoonie]

Originally Posted by larrymcg421

Because it has more people?

We don't live in a democracy, so that's not a valid reason. The EC was devised, in part, as a way to keep more populous states from enforcing their will on less populous ones. It was one way from keeping too much power from being concentrated in too few places. The larger population areas already have an advantage in getting more EC votes. Add a true popular vote and they gain even more of one.

[larrymcg421]

Originally Posted by CrescentMoonie

We don't live in a democracy, so that's not a valid reason. The EC was devised, in part, as a way to keep more populous states from enforcing their will on less populous ones. It was one way from keeping too much power from being concentrated in too few places. The larger population areas already have an advantage in getting more EC votes. Add a true popular vote and they gain even more of one.

Why did you ignore the rest of my quote? You know, the part which showed that big states can have a huge impact or minimal impact in either system?

The whole point of my post was to show the folly of the winner take all system. And the winner take all can be absurd in either direction. Imagine someone winning the most populated states up to 270 EC, each by 1%, but getting destroyed in all the smaller states.

[MartinD]

Originally Posted by larrymcg421

The one drawback is you couldn't do fractional electors for a state. So for a 3 electoral vote state, if it went 51-49, you couldn't give them each 1.5 electors. The 51% would get 2 and the 49% would get 1. So you wouldn't be able to do a true proportional system, but it would still be better than winner take all, which makes zero sense.

One way to mitigate this would be to increase the number of electoral college votes, while retaining the current proportional allocation between states. For example, doubling up (to 1,076 instead of 538) would give a minimum allocation of 6 to the smallest states (and DC), where a candidate would need to get more than 58% of the vote (in a 2-way election) to get a 4-2 result, rather than 50% plus 1 for a 2-1 split.

[CrescentMoonie]

Just to hit at the idea of how much a popular vote approach would likely concentrate campaigning into fewer areas, the estimated US population for 2014 was 318.9 million. The estimated population for the top 10 MSAs for 2015 was 85.5 million, making it more than 25%. You almost get to half the population by the 33rd biggest MSA, Austin, and you've included every MSA over 2 million people.

You would be penalizing people for not living in urban areas and minimizing their voice. Rural and small town voters already spoke up in this election and moving to a popular vote system would almost certainly led to a further feeling of being disenfranchised.

[mckerney]

Originally Posted by CrescentMoonie

You would be penalizing people for not living in urban areas and minimizing their voice. Rural and small town voters already spoke up in this election and moving to a popular vote system would almost certainly led to a further feeling of being disenfranchised.

How exactly is this penalizing people who don't live in cities? They have one vote no matter where they live.

[SackAttack]

Originally Posted by CrescentMoonie

You would be penalizing people for not living in urban areas and minimizing their voice. Rural and small town voters already spoke up in this election and moving to a popular vote system would almost certainly led to a further feeling of being disenfranchised.

More than the status quo? Those rural voters are, as discussed elsewhere, kind of superfluous to their electoral goals at 50%+1 in the states they occupy.

For example: Tennessee is estimated to have 6.6 million residents. An estimated 119k of those are undocumented immigrants, so let's work from a base of 6.41 million. Something like 77.3% of those are of voting age, which brings us to 5.1 million. 2.49 million of those cast ballots for President.

Trump carried the state by 25 points. Let's say that non-voting citizens in Tennessee would have voted approximately the same as those who cast ballots - that it's a more homogenous state than, say, California or New York (or states further south of Mason-Dixon).

3.02 million potential voters, 61% casting their ballots for Donald Trump, is another 1.8 million potential votes for Trump in a state where not quite 700,000 of the ballots cast on his behalf were superfluous to his efforts to carry the state.

You're worried about the disenfranchisement of rural voters if the Electoral College isn't in play, but what about the 2.5 million voters who either didn't vote because their state overwhelmingly goes Republican under the current system, or did vote but were superfluous? If the concern is rural disenfranchisement, how do you tackle that? What's the incentive, in a politically homogenous environment, to turn out at greater numbers when running up the score does nothing?

[JPhillips]

A system where one party has more votes for the president, more votes for the senate, and more votes for the House and loses or is the minority in all three is not a recipe for national stability. Falling back on, those are the rules, won't keep people from viewing it as inherently illegitimate.

[Butter]

Originally Posted by Buccaneer

No states were ignored, they all had access to information and ballot boxes, right? Why is there so much emphasis on candidate visits? When they showed up, did they do something special that no one outside of the state would know about?

I know that sounds a bit snarky but it seems like when a candidate visited Colorado, they all talked about most recent campaign controversy, which could have been talked about standing in Outer Mongolia. And paying lip service to a state's/locale's needs could have been addressed from anywhere, assuming they had access to a TV or newspaper or the internet.

I wonder if neither candidate visited any states but campaigned from their front yard or in the case of Trump, rooftop, whether the presidential vote (as oppose to other votes) would still be the same?

I don't disagree, but some people seem to think that the electoral college magically makes candidates pay attention to places they wouldn't otherwise. I think there are inherent flaws in all possible versions of the electoral system. Still not sure why the simplest system wouldn't be the most fair. The pat answer is "candidates will ignore rural areas". The truth is that they do that now in most cases, even when going to "rural" states. Not a whole lot of candidates going to a 400 person gathering in Bumfuck, SD. Except during the primaries, where each state is on a staggered voting system and you are fighting for hundreds of votes instead of millions.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by JPhillips

A system where one party has more votes for the president, more votes for the senate, and more votes for the House and loses or is the minority in all three is not a recipe for national stability. Falling back on, those are the rules, won't keep people from viewing it as inherently illegitimate.

Yet somehow that party held the House, the Senate, and the Presidency all at once, less than six years ago. Amazing that they managed to do that with the minority of voters. 😋

If you look at the counties that Obama won once that went to Trump in this election, it should be clear as a bell that there is more than enough ground to be gained by both parties if they simply properly engage those voters. Obama did it. Clinton did not. Trump did. Let's not pretend because of one crazy election with two wildly unpopular candidates that somehow we've reached a tipping points where the Democrats cannot win because of the way the system works.

[JPhillips]

But that isn't true since 2010 with the House. Some of the problem is sorting, as Dem constituencies are generally piled together and Rep constituencies are more spread out, but gerrymandering also plays a major role. If the GOP wins big in statehouses in 2020 the problem will only be exacerbated.

This is where I'm a natural conservative. I believe in institutions, norms rules, and stability. Those are being eroded quickly, the results will be very detrimental.

[TroyF]

Originally Posted by SackAttack

It's easy to ascribe arrogance to Clinton now, after everything went to shit

No. It was easy to think that during the election for a number of reasons.

I equated her campaign to a football team who had forced 5 turnovers, injured the starting QB of the other team, was the benefit of a horrible call by the refs and went into the locker room up 7.

Her candidacy was littered with problems. Her thinking Texas was actually in play was the biggest. She could certainly see what the rest of us could see: That Trump was going after the rust belt and that was where he felt he could beat her.

Trumps only hail mary to win this thing was to break up the rust belt. I don't give a damn what the polling told her, her main job once she saw that was to protect those states at all cost. That was her blue firewall.

She badly miscalculated.

[CrescentMoonie]

Yawn. I'm becoming tired of the incessant crying from the left. I didn't vote for Trump, can't believe he won, but am kind of glad that it's showing how entitled and immature much of the DNC base has become.

You knew the system, your horrific candidate couldn't be bothered to physically set foot in a state like Wisconsin, and you lost to a buffoon who can't even put together a transition team and cabinet without massive infighting. It's a good thing that you can't just ignore a huge chunk of the country and win the presidency. The system, which could stand to be tweaked, wasn't the problem and doesn't need to be thrown out.

[Marc Vaughan]

Originally Posted by CrescentMoonie

Yawn. I'm becoming tired of the incessant crying from the left. I didn't vote for Trump, can't believe he won, but am kind of glad that it's showing how entitled and immature much of the DNC base has become.

I think you can expect a certain amount of unrest until its proven that Trump isn't going to victimize minority parts of the population like LBGTQ people or specific minority groups (ie. Mexicans, Muslims etc.).

His appointment of a known racist to a position of influence isn't something which has reassured these groups for fairly obvious reasons and as such I don't see their actions as 'incessant crying' more as attempting to indicate their stance and hope that he is as claimed a 'president for all people'.

[CrescentMoonie]

Originally Posted by Marc Vaughan

I think you can expect a certain amount of unrest until its proven that Trump isn't going to victimize minority parts of the population like LBGTQ people or specific minority groups (ie. Mexicans, Muslims etc.).

His appointment of a known racist to a position of influence isn't something which has reassured these groups for fairly obvious reasons and as such I don't see their actions as 'incessant crying' more as attempting to indicate their stance and hope that he is as claimed a 'president for all people'.

If that was being done with a more introspective, "how did we screw up so badly", approach, that would be fine. Much of it is refusing to admit a problem with the self serving bubble that produced a terribly unlikeable candidate, whose campaigning choices were stunningly arrogant, and then blaming everything (racism, misogyny, education levels, electoral college, etc) other than the constant talking down to/ignoring the concerns of significant portions of the country.

They chose Hillary Clinton despite knowing how much, rightly or wrongly, the country didn't like or trust her. She confirmed part of the reason for disliking her by putting together a campaign strategy that was little more than a gigantic middle finger to a significant portion of the south and midwest. Those two things, in combination, were the reason she lost.

Trump is an idiot. He may be as racist as some of his campaign rhetoric was. He's almost certainly as misogynistic as his worst campaign rhetoric was. He won because he at least pretended that the voters that the DNC/Hillary held their noses up to were actually worth his time and said he would do something about their plight.

[Marc Vaughan]

Originally Posted by CrescentMoonie

If that was being done with a more introspective, "how did we screw up so badly", approach, that would be fine. Much of it is refusing to admit a problem with the self serving bubble that produced a terribly unlikeable candidate, whose campaigning choices were stunningly arrogant, and then blaming everything (racism, misogyny, education levels, electoral college, etc) other than the constant talking down to/ignoring the concerns of significant portions of the country.

I don't know anyone here locally who is taking that approach - most were not particularly in favor of Clinton but backed her because the alternative (Trump) was abhorrent to them.

Most talking heads I've seen in the press are admitting that the Clinton choice wasn't great and that they underestimated the situation, I think that was obvious by the fact they thought Texas was in play at one point ...

[larrymcg421]

Originally Posted by CrescentMoonie

If that was being done with a more introspective, "how did we screw up so badly", approach, that would be fine. Much of it is refusing to admit a problem with the self serving bubble that produced a terribly unlikeable candidate, whose campaigning choices were stunningly arrogant, and then blaming everything (racism, misogyny, education levels, electoral college, etc) other than the constant talking down to/ignoring the concerns of significant portions of the country.

Um, if you can't see many posts that do exactly that here or in the other thread, then you're just ignoring reality.

They chose Hillary Clinton despite knowing how much, rightly or wrongly, the country didn't like or trust her. She confirmed part of the reason for disliking her by putting together a campaign strategy that was little more than a gigantic middle finger to a significant portion of the south and midwest. Those two things, in combination, were the reason she lost.

Hmmm? The midwest I get, but not the south. The electoral college dictates she must ignore large parts of the south. In fact, one of the criticisms of her post-election is that she shouldn't have spent money in Texas and Georgia. she had the best Dem performance in 20 years in both states, but it had zero effect on her election prospects due to the winner take all system.

Trump is an idiot. He may be as racist as some of his campaign rhetoric was. He's almost certainly as misogynistic as his worst campaign rhetoric was. He won because he at least pretended that the voters that the DNC/Hillary held their noses up to were actually worth his time and said he would do something about their plight.

And we can (and have) talk about mistakes Hillary made in her campaign, while still talking about the problems with our current electoral systems. It's not an either/or situation.

[ISiddiqui]

Originally Posted by TroyF

Trumps only hail mary to win this thing was to break up the rust belt. I don't give a damn what the polling told her, her main job once she saw that was to protect those states at all cost. That was her blue firewall.

She badly miscalculated.

Seems very hindsighty to me. What if Clinton turned Georgia? Would folks be slamming Trump for going to try to turn the Rust Belt when polling showed he was vulnerable in GA?

[larrymcg421]

Originally Posted by Buccaneer

No states were ignored, they all had access to information and ballot boxes, right? Why is there so much emphasis on candidate visits? When they showed up, did they do something special that no one outside of the state would know about?

I know that sounds a bit snarky but it seems like when a candidate visited Colorado, they all talked about most recent campaign controversy, which could have been talked about standing in Outer Mongolia. And paying lip service to a state's/locale's needs could have been addressed from anywhere, assuming they had access to a TV or newspaper or the internet.

I wonder if neither candidate visited any states but campaigned from their front yard or in the case of Trump, rooftop, whether the presidential vote (as oppose to other votes) would still be the same?

One thing I think you're missing is that the 24 hour national news sites will only play the juiciest clips of rallies. But the local press is going to cover when Trump talks about NAFTA in Wisconsin or when Clinton talks about immigration in Nevada. And if someone is developing a platform, the swing states will have more influence than other states in the development of that platform.

[Butter]

Originally Posted by CrescentMoonie

and then blaming everything (racism, misogyny, education levels, electoral college, etc) other than the constant talking down to/ignoring the concerns of significant portions of the country.

What are their concerns? That they want heavy industry / coal back? It's not coming back, and telling them it is is a straight up motherfuckin' lie.

That they want Mexicans deported, blacks profiled, and the Islam religion banned? That's racist as shit. That's not "blaming" anything, that's calling a spade a spade.

That they want an outsider? That outsider is going to be putting in tons of insiders in positions of power. The LEADER OF THE GOD DAMN PARTY THEY SUPPOSEDLY DON'T TRUST is going to be White House Chief of Staff. It don't get no more insider than that.

Please tell me what the concerns are that were "ignored" since you know them so well.

I'll give you "unlikeable candidate", because what really happened was 20 years of "the Clintons are lying liars who lie and murder people they disagree with" manifested itself in the "redneck" voting in unbelievable proportions for Trump. There is a reason the map looks so segmented this time, much worse than with Obama. And it's not because Hillary ignored some imaginary issue. It's because they fuckin' HATE her and it's been practically imprinted on many voters for literally 20 years.

Yes, the Democrats were blind and stupid to that to nominate her in the first place, I'm the first one who'll cosign on that.

[CrescentMoonie]

Originally Posted by Marc Vaughan

I don't know anyone here locally who is taking that approach - most were not particularly in favor of Clinton but backed her because the alternative (Trump) was abhorrent to them.

Most talking heads I've seen in the press are admitting that the Clinton choice wasn't great and that they underestimated the situation, I think that was obvious by the fact they thought Texas was in play at one point ...

Racism and the electoral college have been the main arguments of several people here since the moment the results started coming in.

[molson]

Clinton blew it, but I'd still vote for her over Sanders. And I'd have to go third party if it was Trump v. Sanders.

I get how the shock of Trump winning makes Clinton look really terrible, but, a lot of people really did like her, and not just as a "lesser of two evils". I get why she couldn't inspire millennials in the primaries, or minorities to come out in the general, but there must be a lot of late 30s regular white guys like me who would have loved more of the Bill Clinton/Obama years, which was the appeal of Clinton to me.

[CrescentMoonie]

Originally Posted by Butter

What are their concerns? That they want heavy industry / coal back? It's not coming back, and telling them it is is a straight up motherfuckin' lie.

Or, you tell them that those jobs aren't coming back and then present a real, feasible means of training them for new jobs. Pretty much anything other than mostly ignoring them and then calling people who may vote for your opponent deplorable.

If I was voting in a swing state, I would have voted for Hillary because Trump is just that bad. Thankfully my vote was in a midnight blue state so I could try and pump up the vote for Gary Johnson in hopes that the Libertarian Party would get federal election campaign funding next time around.

[ISiddiqui]

Originally Posted by CrescentMoonie

Or, you tell them that those jobs aren't coming back and then present a real, feasible means of training them for new jobs.

You mean what Bill Clinton tried to do? Add to that, Obama and Dems went to the mat to save the auto industry? Sooo... that ignoring them?

[CrescentMoonie]

Originally Posted by molson

Clinton blew it, but I'd still vote for her over Sanders. And I'd have to go third party if it was Trump v. Sanders.

I get how the shock of Trump winning makes Clinton look really terrible, but, a lot of people really did like her, and not just as a "lesser of two evils". I get why she couldn't inspire millennials in the primaries, or minorities to come out in the general, but there must be a lot of late 30s regular white guys like me who would have loved more of the Bill Clinton/Obama years, which was the appeal of Clinton to me.

I get that, but where her unlikable reputation comes in, is in the exit polls. I've seen numbers as high as 51% of Trump voters did so because they disliked Hillary as opposed to 42% voting because they strongly favored him.

Whether it's valid or not, you have to address the elephant in the room in campaigning. Address her good points instead of running months of ads that focus solely on your opponents horrible statements to the point that voters become numb to it.

[CrescentMoonie]

Originally Posted by ISiddiqui

You mean what Bill Clinton tried to do? Add to that, Obama and Dems went to the mat to save the auto industry? Sooo... that ignoring them?

Did Hillary do it?

[ISiddiqui]

Originally Posted by CrescentMoonie

Did Hillary do it?

Did Hillary do what? Tell them she's going to have retraining programs? Rust Belt Democrats who wanted Clinton to come to their states actually warned her that promoting job retraining doesn't work - folks think it's bullshit. They wanted her to try to promise to do things to repatriate manufacturing jobs, because that's what works (though it's not going to happen - repeal any trade deals you want)...

These Rust Belt Democrats Saw the Trump Wave Coming | Mother Jones

[Easy Mac]

Originally Posted by ISiddiqui

Seems very hindsighty to me. What if Clinton turned Georgia? Would folks be slamming Trump for going to try to turn the Rust Belt when polling showed he was vulnerable in GA?

Clinton gained a net 70k votes over Obama in 2012. That's not even close to turning.

[larrymcg421]

Originally Posted by CrescentMoonie

Just to hit at the idea of how much a popular vote approach would likely concentrate campaigning into fewer areas, the estimated US population for 2014 was 318.9 million. The estimated population for the top 10 MSAs for 2015 was 85.5 million, making it more than 25%. You almost get to half the population by the 33rd biggest MSA, Austin, and you've included every MSA over 2 million people.

You would be penalizing people for not living in urban areas and minimizing their voice. Rural and small town voters already spoke up in this election and moving to a popular vote system would almost certainly led to a further feeling of being disenfranchised.

As I've mentioned before, a popular vote system hasn't stopped Republicans from winning Georgia. They didn't need to introduce a system where the metro Atlanta counties are weighted the same as rural counties. They were able to get the rural vote out to cancel out the urban vote. That happens in many other states, like Texas. Rural voters can outnumber urban voters in a popular vote system. It happens all the time.

[CrescentMoonie]

Originally Posted by ISiddiqui

Did Hillary do what? Tell them she's going to have retraining programs? Rust Belt Democrats who wanted Clinton to come to their states actually warned her that promoting job retraining doesn't work - folks think it's bullshit. They wanted her to try to promise to do things to repatriate manufacturing jobs, because that's what works (though it's not going to happen - repeal any trade deals you want)...

These Rust Belt Democrats Saw the Trump Wave Coming | Mother Jones

Interesting. I don't remember seeing anything from her about those actual plans. That's another of her failures campaigning, at least nationally, in that almost all of what I saw was trashing Trump instead of focusing on what she would do. I remember people here saying you could find her position on things on her website, but how often did she promote those things in other formats?