I think the idea that the GOP is suddenly going to come to its senses and stop being a fascist movement that uses violence and terror to achieve its goals is one of the most corrosive ideas in American politics. The Republican Party is the greatest threat to our democracy we face and came very close to staging a successful coup.
That’s your message to the Democrats, seriously? How many Republicans still say they won in 2020?
There may be a sense of sour grapes in Democrats saying they won the popular vote, but at least it’s based in reality. Someone I know on Facebook once shared a post advocating abolishing the Electoral College because it favored Democrats.
I doubt Donald Trump is smart enough to make a sandwich much less rig an election. And his dedicated followers are dumber than he is.
Trump may think he chose the people he appointed. But do you really believe Trump knew the names of any of these people, much less their background and history? What would have happened was the Republican party regulars would have “suggested” names to Trump and assured him these people were Trump loyalists.
But you’ll notice these people didn’t hand Trump the election in 2020, like he thought they would. And when Trump tried to call up his followers and steal the election on January 6, we all saw what happened when a bunch of violent idiots try to practice politics.
Meanwhile look back to 2000. The Republicans stole that election with lawyers not rioters, which is the way you steal an election successfully.
What constitutes “creamed”? If you mean the 2016 presidential election, the overall national popular vote was 46.1% Trump, 48.2% Hillary; a narrower margin than the total third party votes. And Trump lost in 2020.
The “party poobahs” are actively engaged in a concerted national campaign of election interference, denial of voting access, spreading disinformation and conspiranoia about the reliability of the election process, and in multiple cases literally attempting to decertify or deny the outcomes of legitimate and well-validated elections in order to ensure that the “virulent right-wing of their party” (which is now essentially the mainline of the GOP) doesn’t get “basically sideline[d]”. And there is no indication that they will retreat from those tactics given that they are actively purging anyone who even vaguely questions that approach from their own ranks.
Stranger
If the Republican party reformed sufficiently to nominate Kinzinger or Cheney, we wouldn’t need to elect them.
But it’s NOT. The election is what the electoral college decides, not the people. It’s like arguing that one team “really” won the football game because they had more first downs, more time of possession, more yardage, etc… when the other team had a higher score. Yeah, one team probably outplayed the other, but in the end, what’s on the scoreboard is what counts.
And in Presidential elections, what goes on the scoreboard is the Electoral College results. Having a higher popular vote tally is more like having more first downs or more yardage. Good stuff, and usually will translate into a higher score, but it doesn’t mean you won if the scoreboard doesn’t reflect it.
And it’s… unseemly(?) as a result, for Democrats to harp on popular vote, because it doesn’t matter in Presidential elections, and looks like the Democrats are having sour grapes and splitting hairs.
Which, given what happened after the last election, is so mild as to not even warrant a reaction.
Really? Show me.
Another problem about citing the “popular vote winner” is that the very existence of the electoral college distorts the popular vote. Each candidate will barely bother to campaign in dozens of states, because those states and their EVs are seen as either completely out of reach or completely in the bag. So a Democratic candidate could increase his or her vote total by dumping resources into California or New York (or a Republican in Texas or Florida) and running up the score. But instead they end up dumping massive amounts of money into “purple” states because that’s where the game is won or lost.
We all know that the popular vote doesn’t matter. That’s part of the point. It should matter.
WTF? I should show you the lack of a pattern?
Whoops. Found it. Right in the garage next to the invisible pink unicorn.
Yes, and I don’t see any Democrats disputing that fact. Some may say that they should have won, but I don’t hear any saying that they did win. That’s what I meant when I said their complaints are based in reality. They accept the loss, but complain that the Electoral College distorts the will of the people in favor of Republicans. Call that “sour grapes” if you want.
In light of the 2020 election, I don’t think the Democrats are the party who need to suck it up and admit a loss.
News articles that mention ‘packing the court’ are typically about plans to add justices/judges.
First Google News hit for me: How Packing the Supreme Court Would Endanger Liberty and Erode Our Constitutional Order, Explained
In their furious response, several top congressional Democrats have openly called for “packing the court.” They want to rewrite the rules to expand the number of justices on the Supreme Court—so they can add more like-minded judges and skew its balance.
News articles that mention ‘stacking the court’ are typically about what the Republicans have been doing the last thirty years.
First Google new hit for me: How the Supreme Court Became the Extreme Court
During the past 30 years, Republicans began stacking the court with a new kind of justice—the zealot who not only ignores precedent but ignores reality itself.
But the whole idea is silly.
“You shouldn’t put more liberal judges on the court because Republicans will do the same when they have the opportunity,” is goofy whether you’re talking about packing, stacking, or any other methods. Republicans have already succeeded in creating a judiciary where a fringe viewpoint is vastly over-represented.
Democrats shouldn’t just do nothing because the Republicans might retaliate by doing a thing that they have already done.
While the popular vote may not “matter” in deciding the actual election, it nonetheless serves a valuable purpose. That is, showing the actual will of the actual people.
[quote=“Stranger_On_A_Train, post:53, topic:983343, full:true”]the logic processing unit on you Electronic Monk.
Stranger
[/quote]
This reference made me smile.
No, court packing has a specific definition, which involves trying to expand the number of justices on the court to change its political composition when you don’t like the one it has. If Republicans tried it, you’d accuse them of perfidy.
Was it court packing when the court was overwhelmingly liberal? FDR appointed 9 judges over his term, and Truman 4. Eisenhower appointed Earl Warren. This led to the most liberal supreme court, the Warren court. Nixon was elected with a very liberal supreme court in place due to the dominance of Democrats in federal politics in the past 30 yers. He could have made the argument that the court ‘no longer looks like the country’ and attempted to pack it. I’m guessing you would have opposed that.
Actually, what’s been happening is that the Democrats promise sweeping changes during the election, then win by razor-thin margins and can’t get past filibusters, or they change the rules to pass big changes with thin margins, angering half the country and setting themselves up for retaliation.
There’s a reason why you need 60 votes instead of a simple majority for major changes, and why you need even bigger margins for constitutional changes. It adds hysteresis and prevents the country from ping-ponging between one extreme and another every time there’s a slight shift in preferences.
One of the US’s biggest problems internationally is that the parties are so far apart, and yet both try to implement sweeping changes in policy whenever they have a single extra vote. To the rest of the world this is just chaotic. Support for wars or other countriesmor trade policies or environmental policy completely flip in America every time the popular vote moves by a couple of percentage points, leaving their allies hanging.
The public demands sweeping change every time their part gains power, no matter how thin the margin of victory. Politicians promise to comply to get the vote. They get elected, and reality sets in. That’s what’s going on. The fault is with the people who made promises they couldn’t keep, and with the peoole demanding radical action after a 1% change in the polls. On either side.
That’t what this guy said in this thread before you…
First hit on Google for “stacking the court” for me.
We can play this game all night.