2020 US Elections

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@BluePhil8 said:
I’m not saying one is better than the other, but my simplistic understanding is that if the popular vote is the decider, surely candidates would just pander to the large coastal cities and ignore middle America. When in power, they’d surely put more resources in to the large coastal cities as they are the deciders for re-election. Am I wrong in this?
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Or to put it another way - they would have to pander to all the people on an equal basis and not the rural white rednecks that get a disproportionate influence under the current system. When you look at the map - no one lives in the middle and the middle is a big block of red.
 
@BluePhil8 said:
Well I can’t say I agree with that mate, having seen towns in Northern England with barely any investment, closed shops, fewer jobs, run down housing etc.
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I do get what you're saying, and there's merit to that. But the states we're all focused on right now - Wisconsin, Michigan, Central PA - are poster childs of economically depressed areas that have been on the decline for decades. The electoral college doesn't bring actual investment to these areas, just a few speeches and endless ads every 4 years when politicians pretend to give a shit and then go back to not caring.
 
SWP's back said:
1) Supreme Court is 6-3 conservative and hasn't been Liberal since 1970. The last 5 justices have been elected by a party that received fewer votes.

2) Electoral college not remotely democratic and was set up to protect a bunch of white, rich slave owners.

3) How can anyone remotely argue that a popular vote is less democratic than the current system?
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I'll just do all of this in one.

None of this addresses the point. The point is that the US has a political system that has functioned for several hundred years. Some people are saying that they want to protect that system from somebody else who is going to subvert it. Then they say that they want to completely change that system.

Do you see how protecting a system from change and then saying you need to change it are opposite positions that cannot be held simultaneously?

And people can argue that the popular vote is less democratic in the case of the United States because the United States is not a democracy and not a country in the traditional sense but instead is a union of collective states who are all supposed to have equalised voting power. This way, having 100 million people in Texas can't decide what the rest of the Union does.

Trevor Morley's Tache said:
The only reason Dem's would increase the size of the Supreme Court would be to redress the balance.
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Hmm yes, "redress the balance". Fun slogan. The legally accepted candidates aren't to their liking so the way to solve this is to change the law so that they can put their own candidates on the SC. Which will definitely have no possible negative impact going forward. Setting a precedent that changing the SC numbers in order to "balance it" is definitely not something that anybody will ever use nefariously in the future. Seems like a great and totally unexploitable idea that definitely will not come back to bite the Democrats in the future in the same way that removing supermajorities for judicial candidates had zero harmful effects for them.

But again, this is besides the point. The point is that protection of a system against change and change of a system are opposites.

This is 100% true and one of the most basic things to understand possible. I'm sure that everybody with a single ounce of common sense can roundly agree with this simplistic idea and agree it's a contradiction in terms.
 
Damocles said:
Hmm yes, "redress the balance". The legally accepted candidates aren't to their liking so the way to solve this is to change the law so that they can put their own candidates on the SC. Which will definitely have no possible negative impact going forward. Setting a precedent that changing the SC numbers in order to "balance it" is definitely not something that anybody will ever use nefariously in the future. Seems like a great and totally unexploitable idea that definitely will not come back to bite the Democrats in the future.
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Again you seem completely oblivious to the fact the Supreme Court has grown or shrank 7 times before.
 
“A key takeaway. Trump polled at least 3 million more votes in 2020 than 2016. His vote share has increased. Time to bury the idea his 2016 victory was a historical accident. A large swathe of the USA has read the fine print & clicked on the terms and conditions of his presidency.”
 
aguerrrroooooooooooo said:
I think 80:20 is pushing it, maybe 65/70 for Biden
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I'm basing it on best odds of 1/4 on Oddschecker. Most others are offering 1/5 which would equate to an 83% chance.
I agree that it probably doesn't reflect reality but at this stage it's probably as good as you'll get now it's down to the last few states and they can take account of detailed voting patterns.
 
yankblue said:
I do get what you're saying, and there's merit to that. But the states we're all focused on right now - Wisconsin, Michigan, Central PA - are poster childs of economically depressed areas that have been on the decline for decades. The electoral college doesn't bring actual investment to these areas, just a few speeches and endless ads every 4 years when politicians pretend to give a shit and then go back to not caring.
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It’s right to point that out. Would a change to the popular vote change that? I don’t think it would. I don’t agree with you @Gaudion M, if these people’s votes don’t mean anything, which would be the case if the US switched to the popular vote, they would be damned to eternal poverty. You might disagree with their politics, but the only way to turn any of these states blue is to care for your fellow man.
 
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