Well, you basically made my point. Elizabeth Warren is not regarded as “charismatic”; she’s “angry” and “XXXchy” and conservatives probably have a few four letter expletives they can toss in for good measure. I mean, how do we know she’s not really a lesbian, right?:rolleyes:
I’ve only read the first page of this thread but you can complain when trump has been on the receiving end of a 25 year hate campaign that has taken on all the attributes of a cottage industry.
Also there is a misconception that under a popular vote system that certain cities or states would choose the president. They wouldn’t, people would. And nobody’s vote would have more impact than anybody else’s, a fact which I suspect is at the core of many people’s objection to such a system.
Yeah! Fuck those city folk! What do people in the cultural and economic heart of the country know about politics? It’s totally better to have a system where a vote in Wyoming is worth several times what a vote in California is worth - several hundred times in the senate. Disproportionately favoring a small, mostly fucking stupid portion of the populace is much better. 
In fact, let’s go a step further. Each county should be worth exactly as much as each other county. It’s not fair that Los Angeles county be worth so much more than Nye county in the election - after all, Nye county is so much bigger! Several times bigger, in fact! After all, clearly what matters isn’t the number of people who vote, but the amount of area involved. Fuck those city folk who pile in, what do they know?
Sure, this means that if you live in Nye county, your vote is worth over 200 times what an LA county voter’s is worth. But this is clearly both okay and a natural part of a democratic system. One man, one vote, one totally unreasonable skewing of what that vote is worth based on factors that no longer hold any real relevance.
Donald Trump won in large states, actually. The use of bloc voting by large states outstrips whatever small advantage the small states get from apportionment. Pennsylvania slinging around its entire haul of 20 electoral votes based on a tiny 44000-vote lead was a lot more consequential than Vermont having a little bit more of a say.
I have heard all the explanations as for why Hillary is so hated, and I am still confounded.
But there’s more of those smaller states and the advantage there is cumulative. Admittedly the 2000 map illustrates this better than the 2016 one does.
But here’s the problem. Prior to 2000, the popular vote and the electoral vote parting company hadn’t happened all that often. But now it’s happened twice in recent memory. And all the rationalizations about “protecting against tyranny of the majority” or “allowing the smaller states to have a voice” begin to sound a lot like window dressing for “our guys won, neener, neener, neener”.
I sincerely doubt that the founders would have wished one party to go into every election with, say, an eighteen point handicap.
And speaking of how the Electoral College was supposed to function. Wasn’t it also supposed to serve as a last line of defense against manifestly unqualified candidates obtaining the presidency. How’d that work out?
The Left voted for Hillary in the General because the alternatives consisted of a nightmare, way back there, a buffoon. But no one on the Left was happy with her. She looked like a move to the right relative to the reaganesque Obama. Thus, there was probably a large contingent who held their noses to vote for her. Why would those people have a better opinion of her now?
So both the left and the right are incredibly stupid.
Great.
As said: nuke it from orbit.
One who steps in shit, cares not if it is the shit of a saint or a sinner. He has shit on his shoe just the same-Mark Twain or Einstein or Willy Wonka.
Regarding her loss, I’m disappointed, but not crazy. And you would have to be crazy to prefer Trump to her.
How is this relevant?
This kind of question comes up over and over. Why is my personal opinion even remotely an issue?
The answer is yes: I think a better system would be a nationwide vote total.
Now, what has changed, now that you know this?
Basically, yes, I think that’s fair to say. As someone who considers himself a progressive, I am increasingly disturbed by the radicalization of the left. I understand they’re pissed off at the long-ago radicalized right, but they’re not helping.
And now you’ve run out of arguments. Go start a thread about sexism affects American politics, business, and culture if you like, but in this thread you’ve lost. You’re moving the goalposts. Hillary ran a terrible campaign, if Joe Biden or any man did the same thing Donald Trump would still be president, and probably by a wider margin.
Do you really not get that a lot of posters are curious about your personal opinion? Why is that so strange to you? When I’m discussing something with someone, it’s important for me to understand their point of view, which includes understanding their personal opinions on the matter. And I expect others to want to know my personal opinion too. That’s a big part of an exchange of ideas.
I didn’t move any goalposts. I pointed out that Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden have basically the same neoliberal voting record but that Hillary Clinton gets blasted by fellow left-leaning and moderate independent voters while simultaneously talking in the same breath about how nice it would have been if Joe Biden had run instead of Hillary. I get your point that policies and perceptions of personality are two different aspects of the same discussion, but when one person is perceived as witch while the other is “charismatic” despite having basically identical voting records, there is an obvious discrepancy that requires an explanation. People are attributing the difference in popularity to things like Biden’s “affability” and “charisma” and being a “blue collar guy” you can “have a beer with”. What is ignored is that a lot of these same people, for reasons that they can’t explain, don’t apply these descriptions to female politicians. Not Hillary Clinton. Not even Elizabeth Warren or Kamala Harris.
Look, are there female politicians out there who don’t have Hillary Clinton’s baggage? Yeah I’m sure there are – but that doesn’t really address the fact that Hillary Clinton, in her time, in her career as a moderate progressive politician, has been subjected to a decades-long brutal campaign of character assassination by a political culture that is still largely comprised of and dominated by white males. It’s going to take a special kind of female candidate going forward to somehow escape the gravity of this toxic culture.
On that note, the possible irony here is that Donald Trump has potentially lowered the bar for any and all politicians going forward that perhaps a trash talking female firebrand could come out and change the landscape. I don’t think it’ll be an Elizabeth Warren that gets the job done. More like a Jenny McCarthy type who has sex appeal and can somehow balance that by having intelligent, mainstream ideas. But even so, you can look at that and realize that for a woman to be popular she’s going to have to give men a little bit off what they desire, which is sex or at least the fantasy of it. Hillary Clinton’s problem is that she was smart, ambitious, and not a barbie doll.
Again, voting records have little to nothing to do with the perception of personality. Those descriptions don’t apply to the women you mention, they do not resemble Joe Biden in personality. There is plenty of sexism in this world, I am not going to argue that point, Hillary Clinton has faced plenty of sexism, no argument there, but this hypothetical poll comparing a woman who lost an election to a man who didn’t run doesn’t demonstrate sexism. Mainly what it demonstrates is that voters are idiots who love a candidate until they lose and then are willing to throw their support to someone who for all practical purposes doesn’t exist. And sometimes women lose elections because they aren’t good enough candidates for reasons having nothing to do with sexism. That doesn’t mean sexism doesn’t exist, it just means sexism isn’t the only reason that a woman can fail.
This might smack of mansplaining, and for that I apologize, but one thing that always bugged me about Clinton is the fact that she *waited *- waited for her husband to retire before she started her own political career. How could be the entire country’s first choice for President if she wasn’t even the first choice for President in her own house?
If she’d been running for office while Bill was in the White House, she’d be harangued for failing to support her spouse like a Good American Woman. Bear in mind that attitudes toward the role of women have changed drastically even in the last thirty years.
I did address it, but apparently you were too dumb to understand. So in really simple terms: If some people post a thing in one thread, and other people post a thing in another thread, it’s because they’re different people, not because they’re sexist. And there’s nothing to reconcile when different people say different things.