The problem is that a lot of Trump supporters don’t really feel what he did was wrong. Sure, maybe it was technically illegal but they don’t see it as wrong. They want to see the Democrats lose in 2020 and see Trump get re-elected. So if Trump broke a few laws to make that happen, no big deal.
So in an effort to help people see how wrong this really was, suppose Trump hadn’t told Zelensky he was going to hold up the aid Congress had authorized unless Zelensky agreed to look for dirt on the Biden family. Suppose instead he had told Zelensky “Listen, we’re giving you guys four hundred million dollars in aid. And I want a piece of the action. If you want me to unfreeze the aid money, you have to put four million dollars in a secret bank account I’ve set up in Switzerland. When I receive word that the money’s in my account, you’ll get your money. It’s only one percent of the total so you’re still doing good on this deal.”
Does that help people to see how it’s wrong when a President lets his personal interests influence how he carries out the performance of his official duties?
Our fellow Americans? Me and my fellow Americans made the right decision; we chose Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump. Or are you claiming the election results were fake news?
The Electoral College system gave us Donald Trump and George W. Bush. Any system that fails like that should be abolished.
The EC isn’t the major problem. It produces a result that may sometimes run counter to the popular vote, but so do all parliamentary systems. The real problems are voter ignorance and voter apathy. The results would have been quite different if moderate centrists could have been bothered to get off their sorry asses and vote for the only candidate capable of governing.
It’s more than just ignorance and apathy. The big problem (and increasingly serious problem) is misinformed voters. Partly because politicians openly lie and get away with it, and partly because we have well-funded campaigns and foreign governments feeding lies to voters.
Well this leads to something illegal doesn’t make is immoral, nor should it. And O do believe this is true, but if one argues that laws are moral, you have just ended morality in any meaningful terms.
I understand that. And I think it’s clear that I feel that is a problem that we should fix. And I offered Donald Trump and George W. Bush as two recent examples of why it’s a problem.
As for why I brought it up in this thread, iamthewalrus(:3= wrote that we could fix the problem of having a bad President by voting for somebody else. So I was responding by reminding people that we don’t actually get to vote for the President.
Which of those electors did you vote for? Name him or her. SPOILER: You have zero idea who you voted for, other than that they maybe promised to vote for some ticket.
The US installs losers. Vote suppression and disenfranchisement: millions of eligible voters are shitcanned. Electoral ‘college’: a candidate with 28% popular vote can take the White House. Gerrymanders: a minority party takes a majority of legislative seats. Here, losers win. Is that fake news? Do you like being commanded by losers?
The federal electoral system values folks in some states more than others. A Texas or Florida voter is worth less than one in Vermont, Delaware, Nevada. Is that fake news?
But that’s going off-topic. Why is presidential lying okay but bribery ain’t? Sorry, wrong premise. If presidential lying sinks to “abuse of power” or “obstruction of justice” then it’s certainly not okay. We can’t just write off this POTUS as a compulsive liar, an immature lad with Tourette’s. He lies to cover his many crimes.
I completely agree – I was using the term “ignorant” broadly and meant it to include the concept of being misinformed, in the same sense as young-earth creationists and flat-earth believers are ignorant. And I agree it’s an increasingly serious problem, and it’s being exacerbated by rulings like Citizens United that allow special interests to spread misinformation like wildfire. Democracy can’t survive in a climate of ignorance and apathy. Some of America’s biggest problems – health care, gun violence, growing income disparity, poor state of public education – are due to this.
The best solution to politicians that lie is the ballot box. That doesn’t mean that the person you personally, or even that a slight majority of people vote for will always get to be President. That’s not how our system works. Sure, the Electoral College is imperfect and (very slightly) undemocratic, but there wouldn’t have even been a United States of America without it, so on the balance I’m going to count it as a net positive.
Establishing a Ministry of Truth with the power to disqualify candidates for lying too much or too blatantly is not a path that will end well. Nor would treating every statement made by politicians as under oath and susceptible to prosecution for perjury.
Or even that the person with the second highest vote count in history won’t lose to someone not even in the top ten, or that your vote will be counted at all (or that you’ll be allowed to cast it).
I agree, it should be a crime to knowingly lie for political gain. It’s exactly like false advertisement, which is committing fraud on the public. And political gain leads to monetary gain, so why do we allow one and not the other?
Imagine we had such laws today. They’d be federal laws, so they’d be enforced by the DOJ. Which is currently lead by a man appointed by Trump and confirmed by the Senate. Who do you think they’re going to prosecute?