Constitutionally meaningless, yes. But not morally meaningless. And the Senate is not really part of it, the popular vote is valid there for senators at least.
And it is Trump the one that gets sick when he is reminded of it every single day.
Trump couldn’t care less. He intended to win via the Electoral College rather than the popular vote and that’s exactly what he did. He might pay lip service to challenging the popular vote numbers as a tactic to keep his critics from gaining the upper hand, but on a personal level he’s the one who took the golden ring. He’s the one who’s in the White House, signing executive orders and twisting the arms of CEOs and flying around in Airforce One, and to him that’s what counts.
Someone should remind him of that.
In what way is it morally meaningful? And for the Senate, I think the “meaningless” part is adding all the votes for Senators together. Generally, it is not the the goal of any party to maximize those numbers. (HRC, supposedly, tried to maximize the popular vote, but few presidential candidates do.)
I like it. Even if it didn’t work I’d still want the Left to take this advice, because the advice is “stop being the villain.”
Because Trump and followers are right now lying about and minimizing the worth of millions that did not vote for him.
We should not forget that one big lie does involve an accusation from the big man himself that the popular vote was won by the Democrat thanks to fraud. It is more than just a moral issue, Trump and buddies do want to make the wedge against immigrants to become larger, regardless of the pain that it will cause.
I also do think that going forward the attitude of summarily dismissing the opinion (or votes) of the majority makes a mockery of what many conservatives have told us about respecting the consent of the governed; you see, a lot of things like this have been put forward to make the point that what people has suffered in some states should be the most important thing to look at, and disregard what many more do see as their no less important problems in big cities. IMHO all the problems should be taken a look at, but I do think that now that the other team is in control (and the current edition is indeed worse that previous ones) the continuous refusal to acknowledge that most did not approve of the solutions that they are proposing will only lead to huge overreaches and bad solutions that will run into more opposition than usual. Not much of that would take place if Trump had also won the popular vote.
By now, I would hope we’ve learned our lessons about polls and polling. I am not at all convinced that the Trump and the GOP can be so easily dislodged. Rondon’s articles (I think he’s written more than one lately) are a pretty fair assessment of where things stand right now. The democrats need minority outreach but they really, really need to be able to have another wing in the party that feels comfortable walking into bars with pool tables and the fanciest beer they serve is Budweiser on draft. The left does talk down to people - I do it myself occasionally. It’s tempting. But he’s right: it’s not very successful in the long run.
Wow, you didn’t just move the goalpost, you changed the game from football to baseball! Of course it’s morally bad to lie. That has nothing to with it being morally meaningful to win the popular vote.
I’m already over the reasons why the Democrats lost, and yes, even if we do know how harebrained the scandals were the reality is that it was easy for the Republicans to drive the Democratic turnout down with Clinton as the candidate. Not gonna happen again and right now Trump is demonstrating to the group that did vote for him but had voted before for the Democrats that Trump was not lying about what he was going to do about trade wars and seeding further divisions among Americans.
You see, many on that group did rationalize their votes by believing that Trump was not going to do much of that. Unfortunately they forgot to take a look at what the current congress is made of.
In what way is a national popular vote valid? Why would republicans care about Hillary Clinton running up the score in voting districts that probably aren’t going to vote republican anytime in the near future?
Democratic-leaning voters really need to have a firm reality check here. We’re the ones who lost traditional strongholds here. We’ve been losing states that were once reliably democratic or at minimum reliably moderate: Ohio, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Florida, Montana, and Missouri among others. The Republican party has completely and utterly dominated politics at the state level. They’ve also increased their majorities in congress. The democrats have focused on the big race while getting worked in other races. Even if Hillary had won, she would have faced a powerful tandem of republicans in congress and governors.
Perhaps he does, but it’s also a clever ploy. Trump’s twitter tirades put the attention squarely on him and diverts attention away from whatever executive orders he’s signing. And Rondon’s right: it has the effect of polarization.
Again, someone should tell Trump that it should not be like that, but Trump is making it so. His uneasiness with what happened with the popular vote is indeed the reason for that.
You did miss post #26
By very narrow margins, with a weakened candidate.
Gee, should that be the Democrat’s fault?
And the executive orders already added the worst of the reasonings to oppose Muslim refugees into the mix. As pointed before, the populism Trump is pushing is the one coming form the worst angels of our nature. It is important IMHO to never forget that a plurality, and looking at recent polls, that most of the people are not like that.
I think we are at the end of the Yellow Brick Road at this point. I’ll not disturb the curtain any longer.
I doubt it mattered that much. I think most people who voted for Trump did so with eyes wide open, and progressives (I consider myself one) don’t really do themselves any favors by living in this separate reality. I think progressives are making the same mistake they accuse conservatives of making, which is living in a bubble. We need to get out of it. Doesn’t mean we have to agree with them on anything, but at least sit down next to them at a bar and listen and talk. And agree to disagree if need be.
And I think it should be pulled. I’m just saying that it is by taking the popular vote into account that we have the moral duty to demand better and prevent a slide towards the normalization of a pseudo populist leader in the USA.
The discussions that progressives continue to have since the election are no different than the ones before it in which a number of people assumed Clinton would win, and they could prove it by referring us to Sam Wang’s chart-filled blog. We know how that turned out.
I do not think that demanding justice for minorities, refugees and yes, justice and fair deals to the significant number of the poor and middle class that voted for Trump should be considered a separate reality.
I don’t think anything that I said does prohibit efforts at that. Only that there is no need to change a lot to help and understand what the people at the bar think. But at the same time I do think that a lot of the people at the bar will ignore that a lot of what Trump did promised that it would happen in their neck of the woods will become a reality.
I mean: The people at the pub will not ignore that what trump promised to many in the rust belt (regarding coal jobs specially) will not happen.
I think that what most people who voted for Trump haven’t expected him to do was round up all the illegal immigrants en masse and ship them out of the country, or start killing the families of terrorists. You know, things like that. I think as far as efforts to keep jobs in or bring them to America and to thoroughly vet Muslim immigrants, most of Trump’s voters by far expected he would do that.
Political correctness and other tactics/practices of the left have sewn and are sewing far more divisiveness in this country than anything Trump has done. By. far. All over the country people are being called names and attacked over the most trivial and wrong-headed nonsense. Calling a woman beautiful (as did Brent Musberger and Steve Martin), being photographed playfully jumping on a black friend’s back (as did Ellen Degeneres with Usain Bolt), or ‘culturally appropriating’ hairstyles and clothing deemed belonging to some other race, are all examples of how people on the left are just looking for ways to attack people for some manufactured slight.
This country, under liberal influence, has transitioned from being a melting pot into a seething mass of micro-populations all at each other’s throats for an apparently endless number of so-called offenses, the number of which grows exponentially every day. This country as a whole has never been more in the grip of liberal social activism, and it’s never been more divided and combative over so many things as it is now. The idea that Trump is the one who’s dividing us is laughable.
The point was about the good number of people that were misled into voting for Trump or not voting at all. And this is grating that a good number did so because of the specific Democratic candidate.
Sure… [sarcasm]