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Comment by hackuser | Hacker News Reader

Mao may not think popular opinion matters, and maybe he could ignore it in his dictatorship, but it's wrong in the U.S. The President leads a democratic political system, the heart of which is the will of the voters. Those in government need to keep the voters happy or they will lose their jobs; that's the way it was designed and the way it works.

It shows the cynicism of the GOP that they would adopt a talking point from Putin, endorse something so undemocratic, and pretend to suddenly forget the unprecedented resistance the engaged in when Obama was President.

Also, my point was relevant to the comment I was responding to.

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I think it is disingenuous to say popular vote matters in a country where voting is voluntary, to extrapolate the popular vote over the rest of the non voting population isnt fair. At best he lost the popular vote of the people who bothered to vote.

> extrapolate the popular vote over the rest of the non voting population isnt fair

I don't know what you mean by "fair", but the non-voting population has much less influence over politics than the ones who vote. Regardless, we have surveys showing the opinions of non-voters and Trump, at least a couple weeks ago, was at record levels of unpopularity among Presidents-elect.

But I don't see how it's relevant to the point, which is that elected officials are compelled to and do respect the opinions of voters.

>Regardless, we have surveys showing the opinions of non-voters and Trump, at least a couple weeks ago, was at record levels of unpopularity among Presidents-elect.

They should have voted then. They didn't vote, and when the guy they don't like get voted into office, they get all angry. Well, they should have voted.

>...elected officials are compelled to and do respect the opinions of voters.

Trump does. He's going to implement his policies, since the voters have voted him to do so.

> They should have voted then.

They did. First, Trump was behind the leading better by an historic margin for a candidate that won the electoral vote. And, second, Trump's popularity has fallen since the election.

In any case, your implict idea that public-to-elected-official interaction is limited to elections is contrary to the founding principles of this country.

> Trump does. He's going to implement his policies, since the voters have voted him to do so.

All voters have influence, not just the ones who voted for you and not just for one Tuesday every four years. He's the President of all Americans, not just Trump supporters.

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