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Comment by throw0101a | Hacker News Reader

> Had the Democrats put up anyone who was less divisive than Hillary Clinton then we are not where we are today.

You say this like Clinton did badly: she got 2.9M more votes than Trump!

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidentia...

Most of the voting public rejected Trump in 2016. It's just that 77K of those votes were in the "wrong" places (MI 10K; PA 44K; WI 23K).

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I said that he lost the popular vote.

My point is that many of his 2016 votes were "anyone but Clinton." If he had a more appealing opponent, it wouldn't have been close.

Isn't your claim falsified by this election? This opponent was someone else. Trump didn't lose many votes.

The reality that's hit me this year is that most Americans will vote for anyone who wins "their" party's primary. Everything else is rationalization.

I'm saying that both elections were decided based on hate of the opponent, not support for the winner. That's backwards from what it should be.

That's how it's been for at least decades. Democrats voted for Gore from hate of Bush. So this is a structural problem you're stuck with. Unless you come up with a stronger force than a pandemic with 100,000 fatalities.

Ranked choice elections, or something that gives seemingly fringe candidates a chance. Skip primaries for party candidate and use the extra time for more debates.

I don't think so. They wanted Trump. And people wanted Clinton, I have seen them. And people wanted Biden.

It is denial to say they don't want Trump. They truly do want him.

I assumed the same, but I've seen in CNN's live coverage on election day (unfortunately I can't find it now) that in an exit poll (I don't remember where) only 2 of 5 Trump voters said they voted against Biden (and not for Trump), but 3 of 5 Biden voters said they voted against Trump (and not for Biden).

Have not people checked and realized that trump got more votes this time ?

I think he did 62.9 million last time and is at 70.5 now.

More people got out and voted, and more people voted for trump than before.

Yeah. It's all about getting us off our asses and into the voting booth.

I think this also explains why more partisan rhetoric wins. It gets more people mobilized, while not really hurting you with moderates. It only hurts you with people who think. Who're a tiny minority. (I'm not convinced I'm one of them.)

> most Americans will vote for anyone who wins "their" party's primary

I agree in principle, the majority of people will just vote party line. But there is no doubt that Trump supporters came out in force in 2020 far greater than 2016. I cannot for the life of me understand why so many people think Trump is an ideal choice for President, but I do continue to try and listen, maybe I will finally get hit with the clue bat. I've got Trump fans as friends, but they can never really articulate why I should agree with them other than 'democrats bad'. And that doesn't resonate with me, because I need something more than simple tribalism to guide my choice.

Tom Nichols, Never Trumper and former GOPer:

> A Large Portion of the Electorate Chose the Sociopath

* https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/11/large-port...

Trump got more votes this election. The "anyone but clinton" line is a falsehood. The real reason Trump won is because huge swaths of Americans feel disenfranchised because we no longer control the entire worlds economy like we did for the 30 years after ww2. They're entitled brats who feel they deserve more even thought they're already the wealthiest group of unskilled workers in the world. And the republicans realize that and are willing to lie and say they can bring that America back.

"Entitled brats" is a little harsh. What salary should an unskilled American be entitled to? (An Indian with the same skills might get a few dollars a day.) Do you live on that amount? Would you be happy about it to, if you had been born with worse genetics or a worse home environment?

You're right, it is too harsh. I'd feel the same way if I were them. It's very difficult to come to the realization that your life will be worse than that of your parents and grandparents(at least economically). It's unfortunate that they've fallen for republican bullshit because I think it's pretty clear that democrat policy is better for them in the long run, but democrats aren't willing to lie and they're very bad politicians compared to republicans.

This post is a great example of the attitude that led to exact to the Trump win.

The middle class in America paid for globalization in a way that the lower and upper classes have not. I spent enough time in other countries to truly appreciate that there are 1 billion less people in poverty because of globalization. But they are also very many angry people who will point out that globalization has not been great for them. The only politician who They felt they could turn to was Trump.

Globalization isn't a choice. It's a fact. I understand being angry that your job is gone, but no one can bring it back. All of the factories in the world being destroyed was extremely lucky for America, and it probably won't ever happen again. America will never manufacture the vast majority of goods for the whole world again because now other countries can manufacture much of their own stuff, let alone stuff for us. Democrats and republicans both know that, but only democrats admit it. Trump won by pretending he can change it. I do blame the democrats for their horrible messaging. It doesn't matter if your platform is better if you can't convince people.

Globalization was a choice. It was a choice forced on part of the world as part of Pax Americana. If the USA had not done so, the world would be badly vastly different.

I agree. But it is also a political choice. Lets not forget, you may have the opportunity and move where the money is, but, if its in china, it will be a different world. So it is not really a fair game, where there is a world to conquer and everyone can start something.

And also not to forget, that the social systems, that we have built to make up/downs in the cruel nature more bearable, they have not been globalized. It is, when one looks at each country, still very local. If everything is more distributed and in different political zones, i think, they will fall apart, as the money went somewhere else, where production happens.

We will see.

> But it is also a political choice.

It's also an economic choice: the suits could have shared the economic benefits more (or politicians redistributed more), but in Capitalism excess 'created value' tends to go to the owners (Capital), and so we got a rise in the concentration of wealth over the last forty years.

You're describing the Democrats platform. Clearly this is not why Donald won.

And in a globalized world, if someone has built something, that is of use for many, a few will be even more richer than in today's term, by the nature of it. It is simply not comparable to some local baker, where only a few citizen will go to on a day.

The divide between the have and have not could be stronger, though, when you dont have, maybe that is still a lot more to what you have today (e.g. medical progress), it is just not as much as the ones at the top.

And then the cycle continuous, the divide will be used to form agendas, and so on.

I think what hinders us the most in installing a proper system for globalization, that all these areas have grown for centuries and it is definitly not easy to unify and agree on something. I hope, people have answers for that. I definitly do not want a system like communist china for that, i just "escaped" one myself, even though it probably has many advantages too. :-)

The US did not have to allow China into the WTO, that was a choice. The US did not have to turn a blind eye to the fact its product get way less market access in China than Chinese products get in the US, that was a choice.

I can go on and on and on. While America could never return to the post WW2 position, there were ways to make the current position bearable which were not taken due to ideological and political reasons.

Starting trade wars would not be good for the us. It would just lead to more international dominance from China. At least we can be competitive in the services sector with current policy. Trade wars would just make us even less competitive. Moving away from a replaceable manufacturing economy to a high skill services economy is a good thing, and cutting off other countries would make the us worse off.

Trade wars are sometimes justified. Your suggested strategy does not only have bad political and human consequences - it's not stable strategically.

Eventually, China will use its huge manufacturing edge to create a military advantage - this is already starting to happen - and then it could bully all of East Asia to give its trade massive advantages, while absorbing Taiwan.

The US must rebalance before it is too late. Hopefully latest technological development might make this rebalance easier.

It has more to do with the fact that every first world economy is visibly broken and very unequal. It's not unique to the US.

I don't think so. It's not like Trump or the republicans are even pretending to be focused on reducing income inequality. Remaining better than other groups is a priority for Trump voters. If they just wanted everyone to be better off they'd vote Democrat.

In reality, in 2016, abstention won the election and it wasn't even close.

Yo, it's not just one thing. Clinton, party, absent, jerks, EC are all factors.

And yet it doesn’t matter to the above posters point. You can blame the electoral college if you want, but it just means the type of demagoguery to get elected is different.

Hillary Clinton had a very long history of antagonizing anytime she could people on the right. For example remember her slut-shaming of bull Clinton’s accusers, or her attack in the “vast right wing consipriacy” trying to defend her husband from the totally untrue charges from Monica lewinsky. The reality of it is that the Democrats have to appeal to more than just their base to be elected. They seem to of learned that lesson this time.

> You say this like Clinton did badly: she got 2.9M more votes than Trump!

You say this like Clinton did well. This is a sub 5% advantage over a racist game show host.

> You say this like Clinton did badly: he got 2.9M more votes than Trump!

That's because a few blue states have huge population such as California.

Are you implying that each Californian should count for less than one vote?

No one is implying that, that's how it works and is intended to work.

It's a historical quirk rather than intention. No sane democracy would have the electoral college system today.

I agree with your last sentence, but this is very clearly the intention. Small states threw a fit when they were writing the constitution so now we're stuck with this bullshit.

That’s not strictly true; the original intention was for slaveholding states to have a roughly equal voice in presidential elections without letting slaves vote. Smaller states threw a fit about counting slaves as full citizens for the purposes of representation, which is how we arrived at the Three-Fifths Compromise.

I'm talking about Connecticut compromise, which created the electoral college, not the 3/5 compromise.

The Connecticut Compromise created the Senate, not the electoral college. The explicit purpose of the electoral college was to give more power to slaveholding states without enfranchising slaves.

The Three-Fifths Compromise is intrinsically related to the electoral college, because it instructed how to count slaves when determining how many House seats a state would get.

I'm not sure if you're aware, but the senate is the reason the electoral college isn't democratic. Every state gets two senators and because of that 2 bonus electoral college votes. That's why Wyoming gets 3 times as many electoral college votes per person as California. Without the senate the electoral college is just a popular vote. The 3/5 compromise doesn't even exist anymore because slavery is now illegal.

> I'm not sure if you're aware, but the senate is the reason the electoral college isn't democratic.

That’s one of the reasons, but not the only one. Another problem is that electors are allocated to the winner of the state popular vote no matter how close it is.

> Without the senate the electoral college is just a popular vote.

Even if you didn’t count Senators for the purposes of electoral votes, you could still end up with one candidate winning the popular vote and another winning the electoral vote.

You're not wrong, it's a horrible system

It's intention was to give slave owners more voting power without actually letting slaves vote. It was wrong then and still is now.

https://time.com/4558510/electoral-college-history-slavery/

Your (implied) counterproposal is not neutral either: you are suggesting that rurals and suburbans should be ruled by young type-As who are willing to pack themselves into tiny, overpriced apartments and make their careers a top priority well into their middle age. Why should that culture dominate?

> Are you implying that each Californian should count for less than one vote?

In a federalist republic, yes that's exactly what that means. The country was deliberately designed as a collection of independent states, and not a single population whose diversity is merely geographic.

> The country was deliberately designed as a collection of independent states,

Hmm... Couldn't it be argued that this haven't really been the case since the civil war?

When I lived in SF, most Americans I met weren't originally from California (not had they lived there long).

You're making the implicit assumption that more of those people exist than the rural and suburban types, in which case... Yes? Your comment cuts both ways - one of those groups is going to be the dominant culture and if your argument is that the smaller one should win, I don't see the reasoning to back it up.

The coastal city culture is already dominant in all types of media and academia and large corporations.

The electoral college moderates the effect. The big states still dominate. Just not as completely. The small states have their voice instead of being completely irrelevant. It's not that they "win" or even have an equal say.

It's not about winning. The original motivation for the US's structure is to impede lawmaking at the highest levels unless absolutely necessary. Making laws is not making progress.

You've assumed that everyone agreed at some point on majoritarianism, which never happened.

Open minded question: Maybe yes?

If states don't have an ability to have a voice for themselves as states, what's the point of them at all? They gain this small but important nudge towards autonomy from the electoral college.

I think states already get that enough through the senate.

I really think the president should be by popular vote, but don't see any way this would ever get changed.

The senate is one mechanism, but its mere existence is not reason enough to consider it sufficient.

The NPVIC[0] is actually inching closer and closer to being in force. It will still take a long time, but I see it actually possibly working eventually.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Intersta...

IMO, states choosing to enter an agreement like this of their own free will, is the appropriate way to get a popular vote, if that's what the people want, while still retaining the right of the electoral college.

I personally disagree with a state choosing to sacrifice its voice in such a way, but it's its right to do so, to award its votes how it sees fit.

I think this agreement won't work. When it matters, it would be ignored by some state and any enforcement can be challenged as circumventing the constitution

Yeah, I can see there being difficulty. It's the type of thing that sounds good to a lot of people before they find themselves in a situation where it actually makes a difference. When it suddenly kicks in and people say, "wait, what?", I can see there being legal action or something. But I think it would also be too late, if it's already been accepted as law. It might prompt people to want to start undoing it, but there may be an instance of it applying first.

In case you're not aware of the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Intersta...), take a look. It's doable.

You can still have states and also have a national popular vote.

The remaining point of having states would be that local state law can still vary.

This is true even if we got rid of the senate, the EC, and every federal body had purely population-proportional representation (which I am in favor of).

Federal law overrules local law, so they are intertwined. A vote at the federal level is in many ways a vote on local laws, too.

While technically true, this isn't always the case in practice. After all, marijuana is still illegal in the eyes of the Federal Government but this has done very little to deter state-sanctioned dispensaries in more than a handful of states.

That means it sometimes is the case in practice.

I wasn't disputing that. I was pointing out that there are notable exceptions.

Okay. I guess I'm saying that's irrelevant. For local & federal law to be intertwined doesn't require there to be a lack of exceptions.

Not fully. It's already pointed out that federal law overrules state law, but it's important to remember that congress is only supposed to be able to make federal law on a small set of enumerated issues. IMO the issue is when you have an expansion of what congress is able to make laws on which limits what states can do.

States are not people, why should states have a voice? What voice would that be, if not the one of the people who live there?

States having a voice is the whole point of a state. If states shouldn't have a voice, they should be phased out.

But they do have a voice, they are an entire level of gov't. They shouldn't necessarily have any particular say in the election of the president.

States "have a voice" in the local justice system and laws, as well as senators.

Making the president of the whole country be elected directly by the whole country would not make states redundant, far from it.

Because the constitution says the states elect the president. That's how it works. In modern times this means the people of each state decide, by popular vote, how their state votes.

You're saying it should be like this because it is like this. That doesn't take us very far.

In most countries states (or provinces or departments or whatever they like to call their subdivisions) exist in order to have some degree of internal autonomy. They can have their own laws and institutions based on their historical culture. That's enough. They don't have to have any special treatment at the Federal level.

How do you feel about the fact that this kind of thinking basically rules out the possibility of Puerto Rico from ever becoming a state? Or California splitting into two states?

And? There are/were plenty of GOPers even in "blue" states, and they counted in the PV as well. Further, it is generally not states that "are blue", but rather more urban areas:

* https://www.city-journal.org/html/real-engine-blue-america-1...

> There's a decisive break between Democratic and Republican support at a population density of 800 persons/per square mile.

* https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-04-01/how-the-d...

Yes, this is often ignored.

In 2016, California had the 3rd most votes for Trump, with 4.5M.

Similarly, despite losing the state 52/43, Texas contributed the 4th highest count for Hillary.

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