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Comment by outside2344 | Hacker News Reader

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If you go look at the data and consider that ~34% of people didn’t vote, somewhere around ~35% of people voted for trump, and a little less than that voted for harris.

This whole notion where “half the country voted for this guy!” Is a tired and inaccurate trope.

The idea that the people who don't go to the polls and cast ballots don't vote is not true. They have chosed to have what the others choose. That is a choice and they made it, just like those that cast a preference via ballot.

Put another way, half the country decided that they would be better off being governed by a dimwit who could be outwitted by a dog, whether they voted for him or not.

> Put another way, half the country decided that they would be better off being governed by a dimwit who could be outwitted by a dog, whether they voted for him or not.

Exactly which president in the past 100 years are you referring to? I can come up a list if you’re not sure who was elected before Clinton.

that's much worse. Let's go back to the "tired and inaccurate" trope.

If you don't vote, you forfeit your vote. So yes, over half of the country voted for him, only those who are active enough citizens to get off of the couch count. 34% Trump, 35% FORFEIT, 31% Harris, we don't care about the forfeits. Democracy is about the active citizens.

I consider it not forfeiture of your vote but delegation of your vote to the voting electorate, and implicit endorsement of their choice.

Which makes it a lot more than half the country.

Have you voted in every primary and general election since you were eligible?

I have, for example, and I'm old. I don't judge people for not following my lead. I suppose you do.

Voting is compulsory in my country, so yes I have.

I only judge abstainers inasmuch as I judge anyone who directly votes for an outcome I don’t like. No more, no less.

> Democracy is about the active citizens.

You really believe that? If you don’t vote you’re not an active citizen?

I have no words.

Yes. The active passive citizen distinction is an important aspect of representative democracy. This was foundational per the federalist papers and the enlightenment at large. Kant enunerates the active vs passive distinction in “Doctrine of Right” and “Theory and Practice”. The US has many issues largely stemming from moving away from active citizen distinctions. If I were to have it my way we would raise the requirement and burden of both voting and office to eliminate the passive citizens from having as much say, and the leaches in office.

A citizen that don't vote for the most important election is clearly not very active.

My cousin was in a coma for 3 months over the election. They didn’t vote. Should we just deport them now?

Was a stupid fucking take.

Is there a particular meaning to 'active/inactive' that I don't know that justifies your out-of-proportion outrage? What is the problem with observing that 35% of Americans just don't care enough about this subject to go vote ?

Math.

“Half the country voted for X” isn’t accurate math. People just excuse away hard, hard logical facts and it makes me pretty fucking mad.

What a stupid fucking strawman. Was ~35% of the US population in a coma when the elections happened?

We are talking here about people who chose not to vote.

Strictly, yes your cousin is a passive citizen. But no sane human will call them out on that because obviously they had bo other choice.

>>good idea

Or maybe just the less of 2 evils. An intelligent asshat or non asshat that was an imbecile. It was time for a change.

There are so many things I don’t like about him but some of his policies such as immigration / border enforcement, natural resource utilization, federal workforce reduction, regulatory reduction and tariffs are absolutely legit imho and will take time to have an affect.

None of those ideas you listed were legit. But it would take much longer to refute than it did to simply list them off

That’s cool. We obviously don’t agree philosophically and any refutation you could possibly provide would be just like mine - with respect, an opinion.

wait - you agree that those are all issues, or with the executive orders for supposedly "dealing with" them? There is a very big difference.

> An intelligent asshat or non asshat that was an imbecile.

I like your implication that Trump is not an ass hat here instead of the biggest asshole ever elected to office

> There are so many things I don’t like about him but some of his policies such as immigration / border enforcement, natural resource utilization, federal workforce reduction, regulatory reduction and tariffs are absolutely legit imho and will take time to have an affect.

For most administrations yea, since they actually try to keep the government running and use a lighter touch, but since this guy took a sledgehammer to everything we’re already feeling the effects, unless you believe the inflation report that’s missing tons of data produced by people who replaced the leaders that gave him numbers he didn’t like previously

>> biggest asshole ever elected to office

I do agree and more was just trying to moderate my comments.

You didn’t moderate your comments by painting him as the opposite of what he is.

That is called lying

I don’t know how to connect constructively with people who have this viewpoint. Like, no matter how terrible Trump is as a human being, it’s okay because supposedly some of his policies will eventually pay off.

“Look, I know he’s an utter piece of shit who is a known con artist and surrounds himself with sycophants and his policies are demonstrably failing to achieve anything that he claimed, but like, he’s cracking down on immigration and that seems worth unraveling democracy.”

>>I don’t know how to connect constructively

Yeah we probably never will. The part of him that everyone hates is creating a division in the nation. On the flip side I disagree so much with what the Biden administration did I am willing to accept his faults and will bide my time until Vance and Rubio take office when hopefully the hate will subside and we can start to come together as a country.

The part of him that I hate most is that he’s exposing a huge chunk of the country as being willing to continue to support a man who very clearly cares nothing about democracy or the country except to the extent that it lines his pockets.

> hopefully the hate will subside and we can start to come together as a country

Trump got elected on a platform of divisiveness and hate and he’s continued that playbook since. You can’t support him and then seriously say you want the country to come back together.

The emotional hate I see is mostly centered around the person and not his policies. I am hopeful yes that once that divisive aspect is gone we can at least have somewhat normal discourse about policies and centrist ideas.

Centrist ideas like abducting people off the street and sending them to deportation camps without due process under the assumption of guilt? Or centrist ideas like sending troops into politically opposed states out of spite? Or sweeping tariffs imposed without congressional approval? Or centrist ideas like the president having virtually unlimited authority and freedom from criminal prosecution for effectively any act?

What centrist ideas do you believe are going to come from any of this? Because this stuff isn’t centrist.

I wonder how many true citizens have actually been deported? Do you have any specific cases to cite? The sheer number of people that are being processed is due to prior administrations open border policy. They didn't enforce the law that has been approved by congress (since you mentioned congressional approval) and by doing so have created the situation which we now find ourselves. Want to change the law? Do it correctly.

The troops were there to protect Federal Law Enforcement and Federal property. I imagine that would happen in any case regardless of political affiliation. In any case I 100% support that. Federal Officers are there to enforce the law.

>>freedom from criminal prosecution for effectively any act. Were you referring to Biden's son? Seems within scope of the comment.

The US specifically doesn’t gather or publish stats about citizens who are detained or deported. Shocking, that.

But you can easily search on Google and find some info. Propublica has an article claiming they investigated 170 cases of citizens detained by ICE, some without communication for more than a day, some physically abused. There’s info out there.

Are we only concerned about deportations of citizens, though? Not illegal detentions? Not abuse? Not deportation of legal residents?

> The sheer number of people that are being processed is due to prior administrations open border policy.

Obama got called the deporter in chief because he deported so many immigrants. It’s possible to enforce immigration laws without having a bunch of masked men snatching people off the street.

I think there’s a real conversation to be had about immigration. But that’s not what’s happening.

> Want to change the law? Do it correctly.

Agreed. Follow the law. Deporting residents in violation of court orders is not following the law. Denying due process is not the law.

Maybe Biden should have enforced the law more effectively. Trump flouting the law doesn’t fix that.

> Were you referring to Biden's son?

No. I was referring to the president. And the Supreme Court essentially granting the president immunity for any and all actions.

Are you under the impression that Hunter Biden was president at some point? Or maybe you believe that Biden being addicted to coke and buying a gun is somehow relevant to any of the actions Trump has taken

Or maybe you’re not acting in good faith and you’re invoking this as a distraction.

> Want to change the law? Do it correctly.

This is incredibly rich coming from the person defending Trump, the man who is ruling almost exclusively via executive order.

> The troops were there to protect Federal Law Enforcement and Federal property.

You are OK with them performing rule lawyering to get around the intent of things like not deploying the military into US cities against US citizens. When Trump posted his "Chi-pocalypse Now" meme, do you think he was implying the military was going to Chicago to "protect federal property"? His exact phrasing in the Tweet was "I love the smell of deportation in the morning".

> Were you referring to Biden's son? Seems within scope of the comment.

What are you talking about? He obviously means the *PRESIDENTIAL IMMUNITY* ruling SCOTUS handed down recently. Don't be obtuse, Biden's son does not have presidential immunity for his actions.

And again, this is rich coming from you considering the people that Trump is pardoning this term...

The "emotional hate" isn't for the singular person, its the methods used to enact and enforce policies that this admin is taking, which will continue even when he is gone so long as the senior staff running things in the background are still there.

Hahahaha amazing. Yeah dude asks anyone, everything is going super well. Really hope you bought a ton of Trump coins or bibles or whatever dumb shit he’s selling these days

Isn’t that crazy? Absolutely not a good look and an insult to the institution of the office of the Presidency.

$Trump coin!!!

Why is he not in jail right now for the most obviously transparent bribery scheme in the history of US politics!?

Why is nobody screaming about this?

He is protected by the most corrupt supreme court in history.

The New York Times has reported extensively on Justice Clarence Thomas’s acceptance of luxury travel, real estate transactions, and other gifts from Texas billionaire and GOP donor Harlan Crow.

A whistleblower complaint filed by Kendal B. Price, a former colleague of Jane Roberts at Major, Lindsey & Africa, revealed that she earned approximately $10.3 million in commissions between 2007 and 2014 for placing lawyers at top firms. [1]

The Times reported that Justice Samuel Alito has faced ethics questions related to his relationship with conservative donors and political allies. Although his 2025 disclosures claimed that he received no gifts during the previous year, prior reporting noted that he had accepted luxury travel and accommodations paid for by wealthy individuals with interests before the Court. He has defended such trips as falling within disclosure exemptions.

Justice Neil Gorsuch was the subject of a New York Times story in late 2024 that addressed his connections to billionaire Philip Anschutz, who helped steer him toward his earlier legal and judicial appointments.

[1] https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/wife-of-chief-justic...

>> Why is nobody screaming about this?

Probably because this is the least of our worries comparatively.

How is a corrupt administration the least of our worries?

Everyone knows Illegal Immigrants are going to DESTROY AMERICA if We don’t Destroy it First!

It was waaay more than 50%, and good ideas take time to execute but it's going swimmingly so far.

Well, no. It was 49.8% of the people that voted from him, which was ~44.4% of the voting age population.

Harris only got 48.34%, so less popular vote than Trump. I was one of the 1.85% that voted for 'others', but still would have ranked Trump over Harris (this isn't so much a praise of Trump, just found him and Harris a couple of the absolute worst options), so it very well may be greater than 50% if you narrow those voters just to Trump and Harris, and absolutely over 50% if you discard their votes.

It's contested and speculative, but a reasonable projection of Trump V Harris gives >50% to Trump in a finall runoff for majority.

Ok, but the claim was

>… waaay more than 50%…

You posted a lot of words to still not prove that claim

>>>Or maybe just the less of 2 evils. An intelligent asshat or non asshat that was an imbecile. It was time for a change.

>>Well, no. It was 49.8% of the people that voted from him, which was ~44.4% of the voting age population.

>You posted a lot of words to still not prove that claim

A response was that Trump was the 'lesser' of the two evils.

Someone then claimed Trump got less than the majority of all votes.

Then I pointed out that when you narrow it to the 'two evils', which was the original claim, that it quite likely the majority.

In fact, if you restrict to the two evils, trump did get the majority of the vote of the 'evils.' And if you forced those who voted for someone other than the 'evils' to pick an 'evil', something like 80+% of them would have to pick Harris in order for Trump not to get the majority vote of a runoff for the evils. Possible, but I think unlikely (also consider a very large portion of those 1.x% remaining were libertarian votes who tend to lean more R than D).

You skipped this quote in your unrolling, which was in the middle of your supposed timeline

> It was waaay more than 50%, and good ideas take time to execute but it's going swimmingly so far.

I’m assuming you’re in bad faith now, so have a good day

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