Mourning in America - Trump Year One: November '16 to

yeah the electoral college gets things right most of the time anyway, whereas the senate (and even the house) are democratically unrepresentative 100% of the time

smashing the so-called leadership of the Democratic Party would work better, thankyaverymuch

http://i.imgur.com/mhfMarg.jpg

Can't top that today. I think we're done here.

reserved for moments when someone gets irritated because what went wrong during the 2016 U.S. election is being debated in the 2016 U.S. election thread

i found its applicability broader :(

lol

maybe, in some ways, we are all scheduled to be next week's leader of the discussion at the Thompson County Book Club

This is maybe a small point but nothing about asking electors to be faithless is subverting the Constitution - tho it may well be a futile expenditure of energy. For better or worse the intended model was that the electors would make individual decisions - that's what people elected them for. The Framers were hoping they could actually escape from political parties altogether and would have been surprised to find them enshrined by state law as part of the EC system. Obv the Constitution is a living document etc etc but while the EC not living up to the election-night expectations might provoke a political shitstorm it really would not be doing something outside of its institutional or constitutional bounds.

Can we close this thread? Too long and psychically damaging.

well yeah not getting out the vote in states like WI/MI/PA is specifically clinton's fault for sure

― k3vin k., Tuesday, December 20, 2016 12:33 PM (fifteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Losing Michigan by like 25% of a sold-out Detroit Tigers game is pretty inexcusable. Hell, the PA/MI/WI margin was one (1) Ohio State football game's worth of people.

It didn't take long for the Framers to figure out that the electors weren't being the independent critical thinkers the Constitution purportedly envisioned though

well now that we know the electors aren't going to defect on someone who is in clear violation of the Constitution it's probably a good time to have the discussion of why we need the EC anymore. even though it's somewhat fair and usually gets it right, a system that incentivizes candidates to campaign in and tailor their platform for 6-7 states, and effectively prevents 80% of the country's vote from "mattering" is kinda flawed, no?

everyone here agrees it's unfair

The counterargument you'll get from that though is that it will simply reverse the situation and candidates will campaign mostly in CA, NY, FL, TX and a few other urban enclaves, ignoring the rest of the country. It's an argument I don't happen to buy for a variety of reasons, but it's one opponents of eliminating the EC will make while relying heavily on "baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet" imagery that still sells.

electoral college is obv dumb and while it looks like we lost 00 and 16 because of it mostly due to unhappy accident, if the midwest keeps turning red we could be in a position where it's actually kinda fixed against us for an extended period.

but getting rid of it is not in the realm of the possible

― iatee

all right, let's hold it there.

one, "unhappy accident" is garbage, there has been a concerted effort by the republican party for the past 16 years to undermine democracy, suppress voter turnout, etc. not the main point, though.

two, we want to increase engagement in the democratic system? we just had an election where the two leading candidates were the most hated man in america and the most hated woman in america. the most hated man in america, a self-confessed serial sexual abuser, lost by several million votes and won the election.

and now people are saying "well maybe we shouldn't have a system where someone who loses the popular vote by several million votes doesn't wind up winning the election", and our response is to what, say, how naive, and start educating them about realpolitik?

how is this not the politics of futility in action? should we perhaps consider basing our politics first off in what is right, and using that appeal to galvanize involvement?

yeah, it's not going to be accomplished immediately, and if we set it out as an immediate objective you're going to generate tons of disillusion and failure, but this, i would say, makes a really great galvanizing long-term goal. it has an immediate and broad appeal to say that the president should be the person who wins the most votes. why on earth, when faced with people speaking out about what they want, is our first reaction to tell them why it's not _possible_?

there are no long-term goals.

Focusing on a hard to achieve long term goal is one thing. Doing that with no mechanism in mind for achieving it is another. The only remotely feasible way to change the electoral college is to win back enough state legislatures to pass NPV in states totaling 270 electoral votes (or the even harder road of winning back enough state legislatures to amend the constitution).

If you think you can use the electoral college as an issue to organize people to turn out in off-year elections to vote out republican state legislators, I'm all for it. What concerns me is vague ideas about what should change with no strategy.

BUT, caveat, you're talking about a massive effort to change what seems unfair to us "right now" because it just produced a result we don't like, when there's nothing stopping us from just fighting a better fight under the current rules, and when, if we do change the rules, the GOP will change their strategy to match anyway. Hillary Clinton's campaign practically acted as though national popular vote was already a reality and the electoral college was already gone.

I mean, yeah, maybe midterm campaigns could focus on that. Maybe prospective state legislators could campaign on promising to introduce "fair elections" legislation that would make sure presidential votes "reflect the will of the people" or something.

yeah, it's not going to be accomplished immediately, and if we set it out as an immediate objective you're going to generate tons of disillusion and failure, but this, i would say, makes a really great galvanizing long-term goal. it has an immediate and broad appeal to say that the president should be the person who wins the most votes. why on earth, when faced with people speaking out about what they want, is our first reaction to tell them why it's not _possible_?

because you have to get people who currently are winning elections off this system and states that greatly benefit from its existence on board, not just people who are pissed off and disillusioned

I guess my point here is, to anyone frustrated with Trump's win, we already have much more immediate and achievable political tools to fight him with than changing the rules by which he won the election -- they are called congress and state governments, and they would put a big check on Trump's power. And we have an uphill but non-impossible fight to retake congress or at least decrease their majorities only two years from now, or at very least god forbid keep the GOP from widening their majority. In the face of that very immediate and huge and important task, focusing on the electoral college feels a little like yelling at the gods, unless you think you can use it to turn people out to vote in red/purple states in 2018.

yeah, it's not going to be accomplished immediately, and if we set it out as an immediate objective you're going to generate tons of disillusion and failure, but this, i would say, makes a really great galvanizing long-term goal. it has an immediate and broad appeal to say that the president should be the person who wins the most votes. why on earth, when faced with people speaking out about what they want, is our first reaction to tell them why it's not _possible_?

because you have to get people who currently are winning elections off this system and states that greatly benefit from its existence on board, not just people who are pissed off and disillusioned

― iatee, Tuesday, December 20, 2016 1:10 PM (forty-seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^

man alive otm too

Hillary Clinton's campaign practically acted as though national popular vote was already a reality and the electoral college was already gone.

I wasn't in her inner circle, but this strategy would make much more sense if she thought she already had the electoral college win nailed down, which may have looked true in mid-October when final media buys were being made. During the final week or so she was doing the vast majority of her campaigning in states she narrowly lost, so she apparently understood the situation by then. That Comey shit was a very late development.

the adage of 'whoever is in the headlines is currently losing the election' came true imo.. trump was almost invisible during the last week of the campaign just sitting back ranting bs about draining the swamp.

meanwhile it was all comey and wikileaks over and over and over

Nate Silver's analysis on late breaking voters going 2:1 for Trump definitely supports that. It's not unreasonable to say Comey singlehandedly swung the election.

Oh good, so we should do everything exactly the same next time because nothing unexpected will happen at the last minute in future elections.

stopppppppppppppppppppppp

xp

In the Louisiana runoff, when Kennedy led Campbell by 14-16 points and was considered a lock, the GOP opened ten field offices and sent in Pence and Trump to campaign for Kennedy to make sure the democratic surge couldn't succeed. They were virtually assured victory and they cemented it. The Clinton campaign saw 5-7 point leads in battleground states and directed resources elsewhere.

One more iteration of "It's not unreasonable to say ______ singlehandedly swung the election" will convince me we need to destroy the donkey party FIRST.

Total turnout in that La. Senate race: 29%. It's hard to believe the Dems could do worse if they were intentionally tanking.

Generals are notorious for entering each new war fully prepared to fight the previous one. Obviously, we should follow their example, evaluate the Clinton campaign in exhaustive detail and follow strategies in 2020 crafted to counteract each mistake she made in 2016. Because we'll need to know how to win in 2016.

It's not unreasonable to say that hyperbolic reductionism singlehandedly swung the election.

I've got Podesta on the line now. Should I tell him we're almost there? He's got an otm ready to wire us for the most succinct and devastating rewording of the issues yet.

what do you suggest we do, Evan?

I'm just poking fun. Only trying to echo sentiments that the analysis phase is a bit done to death at this point. I'm more interested in the posts with exactly that- the suggestions of what to do now.

Anything but this shit (my name is also Evan as it happens)

This is truly a question for all Evans out there.

agree (also an evan)

frogbs I have some bad news. Every other poster on this board is just yet another alt account of mine. Just you and me, buddy. Sorry.

In times of strife, we look to the Evans for guidance.

The Clinton campaign saw 5-7 point leads in battleground states and directed resources elsewhere.

this always seemed like a confusing strategy to me. you don't get bonus points for winning georgia and arizona. you either win or you lose.

kinda trying to approach this like a fan of a football team - the teams that regularly lose key games and go on a rampage of sacking everyone and rewiring everything from the ground up are the ones generally doomed to a decade of mediocrity.

you don't get bonus points for winning georgia and arizona. you either win or you lose.

iirc, you do get bonus points, in the form of more EC votes, and running up your EC vote and your popular vote totals strengthens your argument for that mysterious 'mandate' thing when dealing with a hostile Congress. A senator from Georgia or Arizona is going to be easier to persuade your way if you won their state, and a Representative, too, if you won their district, or even came damn close.

But this is more to explain the possible basis for their thinking than to endorse it, since they obv failed to win the main prize.

They also tried to run up the popular vote by sending resources to places like Chicago.

Still not clear on how the mandate magic is supposed to work, did it help in the last six years?

above logic makes sense in theory, just has very little relation to reality, where republican congresspeople are way more concerned w/ being primaried than they are w/ demonstrating that they're a moderate

mandate magic is a bit like consumer confidence, or the bandwagon effect. it's about creating a widespread feeling that the balance of power has shifted to the winner.

you don't get bonus points for winning georgia and arizona. you either win or you lose.

iirc, you do get bonus points, in the form of more EC votes, and running up your EC vote and your popular vote totals strengthens your argument for that mysterious 'mandate' thing when dealing with a hostile Congress. A senator from Georgia or Arizona is going to be easier to persuade your way if you won their state, and a Representative, too, if you won their district, or even came damn close.

also some downballot effects, in theory

mandate magic is a bit like consumer confidence, or the bandwagon effect. it's about creating a widespread feeling that the balance of power has shifted to the winner.

― a little too mature to be cute (Aimless), Tuesday, December 20, 2016 3:05 PM (forty-four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

and it can evaporate the second an opposition party decides to obstruct everything

I mean they clearly did all this stuff because they thought they were going to win those states and didn't need to do anymore, and that was clearly overconfident of them. I don't think "avoid hubris" is fighting the last war.

From TPM:

The following is from a former federal prosecutor with deep experience in public corruption investigations and prosecutions.

"I've reviewed the redacted search warrant that the Court unsealed today.

It confirms what we assumed all along: (1) prior to seeking the warrant and to Comey issuing his letter, the FBI had no idea whether these were new emails, or duplicates of emails they previously reviewed--all they could see was non-content header information (to and from); (2) the FBI had no information to suggest that the emails were improperly withheld from them previously; and (3) the FBI had no facts to justify the urgency in seeking a review of the emails prior to the election. This latter point is key. Generally, DOJ policy commands that prosecutors and agents refrain from taking investigative steps (even non-public steps like seeking search warrants) within 60 days of an election in a politically sensitive matter.
Bottom line: nothing new, no urgency, no obstruction, no reason to defy longstanding DOJ policy and risk affecting the election. And there was simply no basis for Comey's decision to make matters worse by issuing a public letter to Congress.

If the prospect of a Trump-appointed FBI chief weren't so scary, there is no question that Comey should be unemployed right now.