Actually, no, they didnt. If the People had their way, Hillary would be the President.
Soon as I hit enter to post that, I figured someone would be along to say this. 
Technically, you are of course correct. But we all know, or should know, the rules about how we elect the president. My statement stands.
If you don’t want the popular vote mentioned, don’t refer to what “the people” want. We are all aware of the EC, but we are also aware that it does not necessarily reflect what the majority (or even a plurality) of Americans chose.
I have no complaint about the popular vote being mentioned, I assure you. In fact, I would encourage it in other contexts/threads, to illustrate the ridiculousness of the EC, and hopefully to convince people who aren’t on board with getting rid of it to reconsider. And also, I tried to explain earlier that I don’t think the American voters are a monolith. That “the people” are diverse in beliefs. But all of this has nothing to do with what I have tried to get across here in multiple posts: Under the rules currently existing for electing a president, Trump won, Clinton lost, and whatever was needed to get Hillary to the Oval Office didn’t fucking happen. Democrats, in the end, have no one to blame but themselves, for that, and Barrett now sitting on SCOTUS.
Sure the game is rigged but if you don’t play, you can’t win, eh?
And this, in a nutshell, is why blaming the Democrats is bullshit.
The US system is currently inherently rigged in a variety of ways in the Republicans’ favor even before you factor in their extreme voter suppression tactics. To say that it’s the fault of the Democrats that they are unable to overcome the gross bias in the system (legal and otherwise) is to handwave away that bias and behavior. It is at best an argument steeped in naivety, and at worst one presented in questionable faith.
One can certainly make the argument that the only way to fix the system is for the Democrats to gain enough support to overwhelm that bias, but that’s not remotely the same argument as claiming they’re at fault for the problem in the first place.
Let me say that my use of the word “blame” might not have been the best way to put it. But all of this about voter suppression, and inherent rigging of the system, and bias both legal and otherwise, is so far afield of what I have said here, that for a moment I wasn’t really sure if you were responding to me. 
Of course, I know that you are! I’m just saying, Trump was elected, he gets to name nominees for SCOTUS and any other court he is allowed to, right up until the day he is no longer president. Ya don’t like it, Dem senators? Suck it up, and do something about. But otherwise, you have no choice but to play by the rules as written.
ETA: What does this mean: “… at worst one presented in questionable faith.” Surely you aren’t questioning my desire to have an honest discussion about this, are you???
And those rules include a built-in gerrymander in the Senate to favour Republicans. Just suck it up, Democratic senators.
Suck it up, in the context of you can’t, just like the McConnell did, come up with a BULLSHIT rule for when you don’t get your way.
::taps on microphone:: Is this thing on? How many times do I have to say this?
They didn’t make up a rule. They made up a political excuse. No new rule was required, because everything they did was completely constitutional and within normal precedent.
There have been 29 supreme court openings in the last year of a presidential term. In ALL 29 cases, the President put forth a nominee and did not wait for the next President. This includes Eisenhower, who nominated (and had confirmed) a justice who retired on Oct. 15 just before the election. That was William Brennan.
Of the 29 nominations, 19 happened when the President’s party controlled the Senate, and 10 of those were nominated before the election. Of those 10, 9 were confirmed.
Of the 10 election year nominations that occurred when the opposite party held the Senate, only 1 justice made it through.
So when the Republicans refused Merrick Garland, they were acting within the law and within historical precedent. And when they confirmed Amy Coney Barrett, they STILL were operating within the law and within historical precedent.
What the Republicans are guilty of is hypocrisy, for making up a bullshit reason for not giving Merrick Garland a hearing. And IMO, they should have had that hearing and allowed a vote. Garland still would have lost, though.
But in every other way, the Repuboicans did exactly what almost every Senate has done with an election year nomination: Put them through if the President is in the same party, and torpedo the candidate if the President is in the other party. Both Republicans and Democrats have behaved this way during the entire modern court era.
Sure, the Republicans are hypocrites. Just like 90% of all politicians. And I think they made a poor political calculation in trying to invent a reason for rejecting Garland instead of just saying, 'hey, we were elected to act as a check on the executive, so we’re simply not going to do it."
Yep. But that is gonna haunt them and Moscow Mitch. Mitch did it just to show how big his dick was.
If you mean by that “fundamentally incorrect and designed to cast aspersions”, then sure.
And goalpost move completed.
It’s funny - this whole “Yes, the system is heavily biased to benefit a minority demographic already disproportionately in control and who use that advantage and their power to further game the system in their favor, but the people who are being disadvantaged by that system should just ‘suck it up’ and work even harder to overcome the rigged nature of the system and the gaming of it” argument sounds so familiar…
Oh right - that’s why.
“It doesn’t matter that it was hypocritical, unethical, and against every precedent - what’s important is that it was legal. And anyway, Both Sides Do It.”
I swear, it’s like Bricker is in the room, only twice.
Huh, I blame the people that voted for Trump and the Republicans, not the people who voted for Clinton and Democrats.
If this was true of 90% of Democrats, they wouldn’t have had such limited success during Obama’s first two years. The reason Obamacare was the only major legislative accomplishment from those two years is largely because the Democrats weren’t hypocrites and decided to try genuine bipartisanship in the senate.
I simply meant, Trump got elected and Clinton did not, and if people had voted differently the outcome could have been different. Being that that did not happen, as I will now repeat for the umpteenth time, Democrats have to live with it, and Trump was within the bounds of the Constitution to appoint Barrett to the court. And I’m not moving any goalposts. You come in here and start talking about things I did not raise, such as gerrymandering, and certainly that is a problem that contributed to Clinton’s loss. But that is another subject entirely in the context of what I have said here.
Adding to above: And I love how I speak in generalities, then you bring up gerrymandering specifically, and then demand that that now be what I was talking about. You want to discuss gerrymandering? Then bring it up and ask my opinion.
Technically true, but Republicans have won federal power despite having fewer votes, not just in presidential elections but also congressional elections.
They have disproportionate power to begin with. They’re using the disproportionate power they already have to ensure even more disproportionate power to influence policy even when they are not in the majority.
It exposes the flaws of our democratic system. The question is do we simply agree to play fair within that system when one side is clearly never going to play fair and intends to continue using their power simply to hamstring a party that represents a majority of what people in this country want?
The question is do we allow 5 or 6 people who were put on the bench along purely partisan ideological boundaries to derail legislative initiatives like Obamacare (or whatever version it becomes) just because we should adhere to some convention that only we are bound to follow?
No. That is just fucking stupid.
It didn’t have to be this way - there was no law ordained in the Constitution that said, “Liberals shall be the party of the urban and conservatives shall be the party of the rural, thus giving conservatives the advantage.”
The Constitution was the Constitution. It just so happened that Republicans eventually, hundreds of years later, came to predominate in many, rural, states like Wyoming and South Dakota while liberals concentrated themselves in a few big states like New York and California. But there was never any reason why liberals couldn’t have populated themselves into Wyoming or South Dakota. If they did, they’d completely negate and swamp the conservative rural advantage.
Well think about it: who are liberals and who are conservatives?
How did liberals become “liberal”? Why?
How did conservatives become “conservative”? Why?
People have interests. People often vote based on what they perceive to be happening to them and those around them. It’s not always straight economics either that motivates the vote; voting behavior can be directed by perceptions of tribal membership and fears of being politically neutered and displaced. That’s the fear that fueled the South to secede, for instance. You see that same level of fear today in rural and suburban white America.
And do what?
The reason that these states are underpopulated is specifically because they have little economic value. What draw is there to these states?
It’s not that Democrats moved to cities, and Republicans moved to rural areas, it’s that those areas had an effect on the people living there.
Living around many other people, people who are different from you, tends to make you more tolerant. Living in more homogenous and sparse population tends to make you more xenophobic.
Living in an area that is more prosperous economically tends to make people more generous with their wealth, and living in places where it is harder to eke out a living tends to make people more stingy.
So, it will likely remain the case that those who live in rural areas will continue to support policies and politicians who support a less inclusive society and smaller government, while those who live in urban areas will continue to promote more diversity and social services.
It will continue to be the case that a smaller and smaller number of people who live economically unsustainable lives will dictate to the greater and greater majority of people who are trying to prosper, in spite of having to support those who are working to prevent that very prosperity that allows them to continue their lifestyle.
It’s not that Republicans came to predominate those areas, it is that us vs them and negative sum mentalities came to predominate those areas, and Republicans have taken advantage of that bigotry and privation in order to dominate over the will of the majority.