this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2024
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He lost the popular vote in his first election and it was just decided that he would get to play President anyway. I don't know how much any of these people are going to care about what the voters want this time around...
Right, but he won the electoral vote, the only one that actually (and frustratingly), counts.
"won" may not be the best term for what he did with the electoral vote... I'd say he probably bought the electoral vote
Yeah, if we could not be 2016 election deniers, that be great.
Electoral college won't change until Dems flip states like Texas or something to where the presidential seat is guaranteed every year.
If the DNC didn't want Trump to win, they shouldn't have put up Hillary. If the repubs didn't want Biden to win, they shouldn't have put up Trump.
Sadly, I think the DNC made a mistake in not setting up a replacement for Biden and letting him try for two terms.
There actually were quite a few issues in 2016 that legitimately could have caused him to win.
He literally lost the election. Less US citizens voted for him and he lost, that's not denial that's what happened. The electoral college just decided the votes of the American public weren't important enough to uphold because of "reasons" that I have yet to hear an explanation for
He barely lost the popular vote, and in the end the electoral college decides. It's complete denial to act like it was a landslide. Even if you agree the electoral college is problematic it was a bad election.
If you don't want to think about the electoral college, the popular vote has to be a landslide, not what it was in 2016.
You can even look it up and this isn't even the first time this has happened. it's the 4th time. It doesn't even get the most blatant discrepancy
So votes don't matter and we should all just stop bothering and accept whatever happens to us? Seems like a pretty bleak outlook...
You should definitely take the time to learn how the election actually works in the United States. Nothing illegal or unprecedented happened. The electoral college decides who wins the election, and their allocation is determined by the number of citizen votes in each state. Each state has a different number of delegates, so picking up wins in key states with a lot of delegates is important. Key states can win you the election, even if you lose the popular vote, as it did for trump. We don't live in a direct democracy, we live in a representative democracy, aka a republic.
Required reading for you
And the way that the electoral college was made is very much reasonable if you consider the history of the United States. When you realise that in the beginning, the US was very much like the EU is now, a loose federation of states, the structures that are in place make a lot of sense. The problem is that the US now views itself like a single unified nation instead of a federation of states, and those structures stopped making sense.
I was just thinking a few days ago about how we have always been a unified country during my life, but how it feels more like each State is its own little country lately. Especially with States like Texas and Florida moving hard in one direction, and States like California moving hard in the other. The confederation of States doesn't seem like a workable solution now though, because the federal government has amassed so much power. It would be sad to see us split apart too, after having been something fairly great for a long time. IDK if they still teach the Articles of Confederation in school anymore, but reading those really allowed me to understand our country's structure a lot better.
Votes matter but you also have a system in place, and if you're necking the 50/50 vote point expect that system to matter. Going to lala land and imagining a system that isn't how your system actually works doesn't fix anything.
Get more people to vote
Discourage 3rd party bait picks that will never get elected because they don't even have a local/state/anything presence
As an added bonus, you'd probably need to get people more interested in house/senate elections if you actually wanted to do anything about the electoral college. Cause it's not being changed at the presidential level.
Yes, that's how elections work in the USA. You don't win by popular vote, you win by getting the most state delegates across all 50 states.
I'm thankful that you've said "some Russians".
Remember when people were taking pot shots at power stations a couple years ago? We'll probably have more stupid shit like that.
For your local power utility in Rural America, that's just your average Wednesday. Somebody gets mad about something and shoots out a couple transformers or yard lights. I've even seen someone actually hit and sever the line once, which is actually pretty impressive considering how small it is. Morons with guns.
We had a guy throw spoiled meat all over the breakers one time. He was mad at us that the power went out and his food in his freezer all defrosted and went bad. He has a substation right behind his house, so he went to town. Real cool dude.
That's not how civil war happens. What would happen is that elections results would be put in question (for example some states would challenge the results and there would be disagreement among legal experts as to what to do next), both candidates would start issuing orders and different parts of the military would start obeying different candidates. You weren't that far away from this last time. Fortunately for you the military chain of command wasn't compromised but the government was absolutely ready to abandon the democratic process and split. All that was needed was for Pence to commit to the plan.
Civil wars can happen in a lot of different ways, it's any set of circumstances that leads large swaths of a country to fight other large swaths of it.
Sure, what I'm saying is that just because Trump supporters wouldn't be able to fight the military it doesn't mean that there will be no civil war.
Ah, I see. Yeah, that's true.
Good, the kill-billies can take a ride on the electric chair.
What if I'm any sort of minority and/or female
What does that have to do with anything said in the comment you're replying to?
...And by then, it'd be too late.
People need to organize now, not just to prep for violence but to ensure there's some kind of social safety net to fall back on when shit hits the fan.