If Bloomberg succeeds in buying the election, we will never have another president who isn’t a billionaire again. This is a far greater, long term threat to American democracy than anything posed by the Trump administration’s lawlessness.
He appeared to run a cost effective campaign. The endless free coverage provided by pundits and commentators who continuously mocked was transformed (by him) into a strength. He also made full use of social media to reach as many people as he could. I'd be hard pressed to name another candidate who so effectively used twitter.
The slogan and the hats too. Make fun of him all you want - but it was an effective and cheap marketing campaign. More importantly - its a message that resonated with a lot of people.
That's how you win elections.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/feb/21/outside-coas...
"“OK. You want to talk about Trump? I voted for Trump!” I asked him if he was pulling my leg. He laughed. “No way. I may be a Muslim, but I am a businessman first and I am not stupid. Many Muslims here did. Under the table.” He added with a big smile: “We are Americans. We have diverse views also.”"
Clearly there are a lot of minorities who voted for him.
At no point did someone fail to deliver their message. HRC's message (to the extent that it could be parsed) just didn't click with a lot of people. Trump's did.
The rules for winning a presidential election are well known and well established. You have to win a majority of the electors spread over many states. This means composing a message that broadly resonates with the country. Trump did that. HRC did not.
Hillary Clinton's message resonated with over 3,000,000 more voters, however unfortunate their distribution was.
I believe it's a strength of the US that we have different voting methodologies for different roles. One for the House and a _different_ (yet also fair!) methodology for the President.
While these reasons were partially born as a result of compromise - the compromise is rooted in some good political theory.
We would be worse off if we only had one method and not the other. But we have both and we are stronger for it. I'd like to keep both. I think most ardent defenders of the electoral college would say the same.
You really want to celebrate a compromise that was made to enable to states to maintain chattel slavery? The electoral college is only fair in 2020 if your goal is to elect candidates who have fewer votes nationally. It no longer serves any philosophical or practical purpose.
Slavery is merely one kind of divisive issue that can be used by a candidate to leverage seeds of distrust, disdain and disagreement to gain leverage over the other side. Even without slavery, there were other issues that divided North and South. Anglophile vs. Francophile. Agrarian vs. Industrial. Federalist vs. "Jeffersonian Repulicans". Federal powers. vs State. Small states vs. Big States.
Something like an electoral college itself encourages compromise over divisive issues. You can't make just an appeal to populous coastal regions to win. You can't just make an appeal to moneyed northern industrial cities. You can't just make an appeal to agrarian southern interests. As we continue to change shape, candidates have to learn its shape and pull back to the middle if they want to win.
I like that modern candidates really have to get out there to so many different states and "press the flesh". They need to know a substantial portion of the country. A national vote would slowly put an end to this. And I think that's dangerous.
Consider today's angry issues - the debate over the 2nd amendment or Roe v Wade. A national vote would result in situations where a candidate can take a very strident position on topics like this and win - but it would ultimately lead to more division rather than trying to wrestle ourselves to some sort of compromise.
So I think it's really unfortunate to dismiss the EC as though its some sort of slavery preserving institution. It really promotes compromise and chills regional passions even if they are a large majority.
> Something like an electoral college itself encourages compromise over divisive issues.
I can name exactly one time this has happened and I don't think the Compromise of 1878 is something we should be holding up as good governance. Our current issues are a direct result of that compromise.
The EC only served to increase tensions at several points in our history - 1800, 1860, 1878,2000, 2016. I can't think of a single time it has served to increase unity or harmony. We have had a few individuals who were more-or-less consensus candidates (Monroe and Eisenhower), but that had nothing to do with the EC.
> You can't make just an appeal to populous coastal regions to win. You can't just make an appeal to moneyed northern industrial cities. You can't just make an appeal to agrarian southern interests. As we continue to change shape, candidates have to learn its shape and pull back to the middle if they want to win.
So instead the candidates spend their time raising money to run ads and pandering to about 6 swing states, which winds up leaving far more people out of the process than if every vote was worth, you know, one vote.
> I like that modern candidates really have to get out there to so many different states and "press the flesh". They need to know a substantial portion of the country. A national vote would slowly put an end to this. And I think that's dangerous.
See above. Trump literally knows New York City and nothing else. He lost by 3,000,000 votes. How is a national vote more dangerous than a system that happily elected an unpopular demagogue? Especially when the stated function of the EC is to prevent such an event.
> Consider today's angry issues - the debate over the 2nd amendment or Roe v Wade. A national vote would result in situations where a candidate can take a very strident position on topics like this and win - but it would ultimately lead to more division rather than trying to wrestle ourselves to some sort of compromise.
We've had the Electoral college for the entirety of the existence of those issues. They are more partisan than ever, with no compromise on the horizon (in large part thanks to the EC appointing 2 unpopular presidents in 16 years).
> So I think it's really unfortunate to dismiss the EC as though its some sort of slavery preserving institution. It really promotes compromise and chills regional passions even if they are a large majority.
You have demonstrated no proof of your claim. The fact that all of these issues are at historic highs really underscores the fact that what you are arguing simply isn't true.
There basically would be no country without it.
If we got rid of it today, every state that relies on equal representation would be in their right mind to secede rather than be legislatively bullied by the more populated coastal states.
The U.S. is a democratic republic, because the power stems from the people (demo-), not from a small group of people (oligo-) or a single person (auto-).