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

i will agree that one of our biggest failures is the inability to get liberals to the polls or in anyway involved on a large scale between POTUS elections (duh).

my very conservative aunt used to make this really shitty - and frankly racist - comment about the dirty libruls' superior ability to push their agenda because they were a bunch of lazy bums living off the government who had all the time in the world to organize, demonstrate, strike, etc (*this was the 80s so i really don't even know what the actual fuck she was talking about), and how all the hardworking jesus-loving republicans had to actually go to work and keep the ship afloat.

kinda wondering is we're seeing the actual real-life inverse of her paranoid fever dream: a bunch of retired olds and angry un- and underemployed red staters, many who are heavily or completely subsidized by the govt, with nothing much to do but go to tea parties, politicized "bible studies", noe-confederate shindigs, threaten their congress-idiots and badger everyone in their real life and online communities into making America White Again.

NPVIC doesn't disempower GOP voters any more than they already are. It does the opposite for single-party states because all of a sudden their issues start to matter where before they couldn't hold a candle to New Hampshire. It makes every vote count. Except the territories, but that's a separate piece of legislation I want to work on at some point.

if you are a wyoming republican voter your marginal vote might not have any effect on the election, but your state still gets disproportionate say in the end result. the votes might be baked in but they're still helping to determine the winner, so it's deceiving to say they don't count - they count more. wyoming makes up 0.18% of the american population and gets ~.5% of the electoral votes.

and in a popular vote world, wyoming voter issues obviously don't get any attention because they're 0.18% of the population.

(and yes i appreciate that in a sense i'm trading my aunt's racism for some degree of classism/ cultural bigotry. but it doesn't change what i see "on the ground")

XP thanks for the pro tip I'll take Wyoming off the top of my list - do you think the Dakotas might feel the same way?

The EC, in many cases, detracts both from a constituency's ability to effect meaningful change and their impetus to even try. The US might not care about WY's particular issues in a popular vote world but the current framework doesn't give them any reason to make the rest of the country care or to, y'know, just gtfo of WY.

To an extent, maintaining the EC is not that dissimilar to promising to revitalize dead or dying industries.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-secretary-of-state-reject-john-bolton-moustache-transition-president-elect-cabinet-a7489576.html

did we talk abuot this yet

XP thanks for the pro tip I'll take Wyoming off the top of my list - do you think the Dakotas might feel the same way?

really the only red state republicans voters that have a lot to gain from a popular vote are in texas. regardless, my other point is probably more important than calculating peoples' voting power - which people might be able to overlook because it's kinda murky and confusing. even those texas republicans who might have marginally less influence in the election than they would otherwise are going to be pretty happy w/ the electoral college as long as they believe its existence is politically advantageous for republicans. which they definitely do at the moment.

Most importantly it's unjust. A few thousand people get to be the Real Americans who tell millions of other people that they don't count. It must be destroyed.

Please continue to waste your time trying to win a moral argument with pragmatism.

Isn't the pre-emptive "that will never work" faux savviness exactly what we all hate about the current Democratic Party? To the extent we can agree on anything besides that we're all doomed

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-secretary-of-state-reject-john-bolton-moustache-transition-president-elect-cabinet-a7489576.html

did we talk abuot this yet

tbh it's refreshing to at least know there's some kind of logic behind his picks outside of "what's going to benefit me personally"

I'm not disagreeing that the electoral college is shitty and undemocratic. it's also morally unjust that DC doesn't get any national representation despite having more people than wyoming. honestly that might be more unjust than 'we use this system of weighted voting to pick the president for archaic reasons'. but the reason why it currently doesn't have representation is the exact same reason we can't change the electoral college in the short-term - you can't separate the moral issues from the fact that the end result of these changes would be a transfer of political power in our direction and republicans know this.

good news everyone

https://www.aclu.org/news/aclu-comment-obama-rescinding-muslim-and-arab-special-registration-system

the reason why it currently doesn't have representation is the exact same reason we can't change the electoral college in the short-term - you can't separate the moral issues from the fact that the end result of these changes would be a transfer of political power in our direction and republicans know this

Yes and the same dynamic underpins every discussion of voting rights / voting access / voter id.

You can make the argument in the abstract, as an issue of basic civil rights, but everyone knows that the people who we want to be enabled to vote are presumed to be Democratic-leaning.

one of the reasons why you could hope for change *one day* is that unlike dc statehood / voter id stuff / giving felons voting rights, the electoral college is not *so* directly correlated to 'well, now democrats just get more voters. forever.' honestly probably is overall due to turnout stuff, but there are potential maps where the electoral college benefits dems, and it's not inconceivable that it costs the republicans an election one day. again, people forget that it actually came super close to happening in 2004.

it could be an issue becomes a moral and practical issue and maybe small/swing state voters actually end up willing to give up their advantage just so we have a voting system that they actually understand. but that's going to happen when it feels like a politically neutral institution, not right after it cost the democrats an election.

and also it's just a weird thing to spend any political energy on because in the long-term, 'winning the presidency' is one of the few things dems are actually kinda good at and well set up to do in the future.

@dick_nixon
It is always a tragedy if the president dies in office. If the next one should die I fear it would be much worse than that.

I feel I can say this given the crap being peddled by Trump's doctor.

At present someone is nominally in charge. If Trump should die, no one is obviously in charge. No one likes or is loyal to Pence.

in the long-term, 'winning the presidency' is one of the few things dems are actually kinda good at and well set up to do in the future.

True. Even in this sorrowful time, Democrats came a lot closer to winning the presidency vs. winning a majority of governorships, state legislatures, the U.S. House, etc.

dem pres won 4 out of the last 10 elections last so they do about as good as a coin toss

Donald J. Trump – Verified account ‏@realDonaldTrump

The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes
8:50 am - 22 Dec 2016

wtf is this supposed to mean

@realDonaldTrump: The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes

http://pix.iemoji.com/images/emoji/apple/ios-9/256/thinking-face.png

Xp

He's going for a Reagan-esque koan and wrote a moron-esque scribble

channeling the spirit of general buck turgidson

absolutely. The Tea Party proved it's not as hard as people think to change the direction of a party with a relatively small group of committed activists. I don't think you'll see quite the same degree of focus on the left, but I think you'll see larger numbers of people getting involved.

The Tea Party was astroturfed fully formed from the heads of the Koch Brothers!

This was Putin yesterday:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C0S7_gNUoAEOiNR.jpg

I must furiously masturbate in public until the scourge of public masturbation has at last been curbed.

It's an obvious Commie trick, Mr. President. We are wasting valuable time! Look at the big board, they're getting ready to clobber us!

Newt backtracks on "draining the swamp," on video!

https://twitter.com/jeremyscahill/status/811986402099527680

lap it up, lapdog

Trump HIMSELF has already pointedly said, on video, at one of his own rallies, within the past week or so, that 'drain the swamp' was foisted upon him and that he thought it was stupid and that he never believed it. The fuck is even going on.

But I'm sure if asked, he would deny ever saying the thing he was filmed saying.

I'm like 90% sure he's exhibiting signs of dementia

I can think of no other reason for the shot that is going on with him.

Shit*

That seems like one of Trump's weird tics, to go on those ex tempo asides during his speeches about whether some campaign phrase worked, whether he liked it, etc. I always find it jarring to hear.

It's very, idk, solipsistic? Does it actually excite his base?

The campaign was the greatest event of his life. He's savoring it. From Janurary 20th on out it will all be downhill and he knows it.

remembering that trump cares only about himself explains that pretty well xp

Trump being Trump is what got Trump elected.

regarding electoral college -- thing is, I always figured it existed to keep guys like Trump from winning every time. Can't always work, but without it, surely we end up with many more demagogues, no?

one is plenty

the electoral college may have originated as a way to protect from demagogues or foreign influence, but now it's merely a formality and giant gerrymander, and nothing more

p much

The campaign was the greatest event of his life. He's savoring it. From Janurary 20th on out it will all be downhill and he knows it.

― a little too mature to be cute (Aimless), Thursday, December 22, 2016 12:48 PM (seventeen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah. i think that if there were a way for him to resign gracefull and in a way that doesnt admit fault/frailty/weakness he would do it

On Tuesday, TechCrunch obtained Cook’s response on Apple’s internal network to a question from an employee about the Trump meeting.

Cook first described how it was critical for Apple to “engage” with governments on what he called “our key areas of focus.” According to Cook, these include “privacy and security, education,” “advocating for human rights for everyone,” “the environment and really combating climate change” and “creating jobs” — i.e., nothing as mundane as money.

But in the third paragraph, Cook acknowledged, “We have other things that are more business-centric — like tax reform.”

Here’s what Cook’s vague description meant: Apple wants a huge tax cut, and Trump has promised to deliver one that would save the company about $40 billion to $50 billion....

https://theintercept.com/2016/12/22/apple-ceo-tim-cook-met-with-trump-to-engage-on-gigantic-corporate-tax-cut/

https://techcrunch.com/2016/12/19/tim-cook-explains-to-apple-employees-why-he-met-with-president-elect-trump/?ncid=rss

good ol' disruption

the electoral college may have originated as a way to protect from demagogues or foreign influence, but now it's merely a formality and giant gerrymander, and nothing more

― k3vin k., Thursday, December 22, 2016 1:58 PM (twenty minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It most certainly did not originate as a way to protect from demagogues or foreign influence.

well yeah it actually was to increase the political power of slave states, which it still does, but that was the high-minded rationale at least iirc

President-elect Donald Trump named the senior staff of the communications department for his administration on Thursday, including Republican National Committee spokesman Sean Spicer as press secretary.

Trump's transition team announced that in addition to Spicer, Hope Hicks will serve as director of strategic communications; Jason Miller will serve as director of communications; and Dan Scavino will serve as social media director.

Hope Hicks seems like one of the very first Trump hires who seemed out of her element on day 1.