Electoral College
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If you ask me, a popular vote system just neuters third parties and indie candidates even more.
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Aside from that, could you elaborate how abolishing the Electoral College would loosen the two-party system?
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I don’t see how you can believe one point but not the other, it makes no sense….
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Those points really don’t contrast at all. First I state that I believe that a popular vote system neuters third parties, then I ask how abolishing the Electoral College would help third parties. If the only alternative to the Electoral College is a popular vote, then adopting that sole alternative means crippling third parties.
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Of course third-parties would have a higher chance of winning the presidency if we didn’t have an electoral college. The electoral college is filled primarily with Republicans and Democrats. Remove that, and you remove party biasm, which removes part of the competition between the two parties and ergo it would negate the “two-party system” we’ve semi-legitimately had for like 200 years.
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Then we should also remove Congress, since both legislative houses are filled primarily with Republicans and Democrats?
The fact that the Republican and Democratic Parties would still dominate in Congress (as opposed to third parties) regardless of the Electoral College’s existence means that, as powerful political entities, they would still be sponsoring presidential candidates. The public would look at those two candidates the most, as it always does. In other words, removing the Electoral College does
nothing to shake our two-party system’s grip on society.
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You should see those videos that guy posted a few posts ago, it was really in-depth and interesting.
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*watches*
Alright, a few things about Video #1: The guy says that the point of the Electoral College is so that presidents pay attention to those smaller states. This is in spite of the fact that presidential races, as we know them now, did not even exist back in the day. The Electoral College protects the interests of those states, plain and simple (which, due to his above assertion now void, means the Electoral College is doing its job).
As for Video #2… December 19th of 2016 was a good example of how the video portrayed a false interpretation of how the Electoral College works. A unique example, at that, since Hillary supporters were holding out for the Electoral College to do the same thing that the video demonizes, and vote for Hillary instead of Trump (against the will of their states). Neither these delusions, nor the video itself, reflected reality that day, since state governments tend to have some measures against unfaithful electors, such as a fine, or outright denying their request (consider the elector in Maine who wanted to vote for Bernie Sanders, but was shot down).
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I do firmly believe that the electoral college remains one of our biggest roadblocks to allowing a third party candidate a chance at taking office. There's a lot of hypothetical situations regarding any of the elections in the past century I could pull up, but at this point I think you see my POV and understand why I feel the way I do. I can also see why you feel the way you do and I feel like, unless something said is unclear or contradictory, this is a good point to agree to disagree and part ways with the conversation. At least, in a public space. I'm chill with chatting in private about it from time to time but this thread is a big ol mess of text walls so I'd be more than glad to ditch it.
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Sounds alright to me.
Trump and His Policies
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Self Esteem = “Confidence in one’s own worth or abilities”, Ego = “A person’s sense of self-esteem OR self-importance”. The two are very similar, but can mean different things. He was not saying self-esteem is a bad thing, that’s retarded. He was saying an inflated EGO, as in, a shallow, arrogant sense of self-worth makes for a very bad leader. Trump is confident. But he’s also AMAZINGLY arrogant.
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Ego and self-esteem/confidence are not one and the same. I am not criticizing Trump for having confidence – I’m criticizing him for being egotistic.
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I wouldn’t say he’s
egotistical, but my reasoning’s further down.
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All of those protests outside suggest otherwise. Of course not everyone in the country at any given time feels the same, but this time it looks like there’s more actual Americans who disagree with his voice vs the people whose votes counted more than other human beings. Hence, the Electoral College.
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![](https://cdn.meme.am/cache/instances/folder637/500x/73228637.jpg)
I wonder why these totally organic protests don’t try moving out of Hillary-voting liberal cities, rather than go somewhere else to riot and destroy infrastructure…
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Uhhh, NEITHER!! What the fuck??? No leader should accept any kind of deal... They need to be reasonable enough to think it through.
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Well, I’m glad we agree that presidents shouldn't just take any deal (although why you disagree with a president rejecting a deal that's not in their country's best interests is beyond me). And Trump’s pride in himself and our country will be a good asset in terms of negotiating.
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And that’s exactly what Trump didn’t do when it came to the negotiations with Mexico. He promised us that they’d reimburse us later because that’s what was “agreed on” allegedly, but there is absolutely no legal binding anywhere stating that they are supposed to. Either Trump lied to us in that comment, or he’s enough of an idiot to take someone’s word for it – which might I add is something a business man if anything should be cautious of. Mexico’s giving us the middle finger now. The wall is getting built, and WE’RE paying for it – not Mexico. Their president literally said they left because Trump “could not be negotiated with”. And all that talk about the Tariffs still don’t seem very reassuring. Meanwhile, Trump is too proud to accept that his idea may not be the best for our interests.
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“Something a business man should be cautious of?” Are you a billionaire who won the presidential election? What leads you to believe you’re better at negotiating than he is? Need I remind you that Trump managed to get CNN, MSNBC, and Fox to pay for his campaign (figuratively, of course)?
You’re seeing the tariffs (which you said you agreed with earlier, since business wouldn’t exploit low-wage labor in Mexico) as an afterthought when they’re one of the prime instruments in getting this whole plan to work. How can Mexico be holding all the cards, when they stand to lose their outsource-fueled industries to the basic principles of price affecting purchase? A rise in unemployment won’t help against the cartels. Neither will stronger border control, which will force Mexicans who don’t like the way their country is to stay put. Public dissent will rise, and that’s not something I believe the corrupt, cartel-bribed government of Mexico is ready for.
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If you really wanted to "tighten the border" just have more security trained and patrolling the border. It'd be cheaper, it generates jobs, and it doesn't take 10 years and impose even more on the environment and our wildlife. As far as the jobs that building the wall would create goes, let's go back to all that infrastructure that needs fixing up because our infrastructure is severely lacking, to say the least. Mmm, infrastructure.
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Well, he’s getting to work on the former,
based on Section 8 of this executive order.
As for repairing infrastructure… Trump’s plan to bring back jobs (manufacturing, coal, etc.) will, assuming success, fix infrastructure by providing employment and income (some of which goes to taxes). This will help sustain more direct methods of fixing infrastructure in a way that the usual loans and bailouts could not.
(Also, where are the 10-year estimates coming from? Do they take into account the rugged, unbuildable terrain in East Texas where the wall is planned to end (not the entire border)?)
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So… he claimed it was rigged because he thought he was going to lose, then he unexpectedly won, so now he’s happy and thinks it isn’t rigged? That is not a sign of a proper statesman – you don’t baselessly accuse the system of being rigged just because you think you’re losing.
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Could you spare a bit of time to look back on my comment?
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It’s not that the Electoral College benefitted him, it’s that it bowed to the will of their states despite his fears that they were a political oligarchy, and the “rigged system’s” last line of defense. If some random third-party candidate won, and the Electoral College went with them, Trump wouldn’t continue his anti-electorate rhetoric, since it clearly wouldn’t be part of the rigged system there, either.
Basically, he changed his tune because he was proven wrong, and he happily admitted it.
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Doesn’t look like I said it was because he thought he was losing, then he didn’t. Looks more like he was not afraid to admit he was proven wrong. Then again, could it be because neither of us can read Trump’s mind, much less the person who hasn’t stayed well-updated on Trump, and watched his campaign and “thank you” rallies (and thus, is unfamiliar with how he operates)?
Article written: Friday 21 October 2016
Can we turn this time machine around real quick? Just real quick. Trump’s improved his pro-Voting ID rhetoric a LOT,
now that his claims have support.
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You make it sound like it’s a TV show or something. My metric for Trump being a successful president is based on how the US and the rest of the world’s people come out the other side – and right now he seems to be running roughshod over all sorts of people.
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“Make it sound like a TV show?” Well, close, this is an internet community. We’re free to talk to each other as we please, be it asking questions, answering them, or declining to answer.
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… The friendships that develop between members makes the atmosphere of the Oddworld Forums very informal…
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Also, I’m just nitpicking here, but I wouldn’t factor “the rest of the world’s people” into whether Trump is a successful president of the United States in the end. Whether he’s a successful leader of the free world (a role which his “America first” mantra implies he doesn’t prioritize) is more appropriate.
Anyway, thank you for your response.
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But the issue here is that Trump is trying to effectively put the genie back in the bottle – he’s not imposing tariffs to protect the producers in America, he’s hoping that killing trade with Mexico will bring industries that are gone back from the dead.
And again, this doesn’t change the fact that putting tariffs on Mexican trade means that Americans will be paying for the wall, not Mexicans.
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And China, don’t forget China. I won’t act like there’s something you don’t understand, since you demonstrated your understanding pretty well:
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Of course as a business they will move to capitalize on the current situation as best they can; they need to continue to make a profit, and refusing to work with the president and setting themselves up for a tariff would only serve to hurt their bottom line.
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Yet you still ask what kind of magic wand Trump has. If you can say that Trump’s presidency is going rocky so far (implying how the rest of his term will go), then I can say that Trump’s progress on bringing back jobs isn’t half bad (implying how the rest of his term will go).
And again, you haven’t explained how, exactly, encouraging the purchase of less expensive non-Mexican products (with prices lowered even further by Trump lowering the business tax) means Americans are paying for the wall. The same goes for increasing visa prices and taxing/forbidding fund wiring to Mexico.
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“Imposed” is a very loaded word in that statement which should tell you the intent, and if he was positive he probably would have said so in more certain terms. I doubt the numerous outlets who covered it with negative headlines would have gotten that sentiment from nowhere, either.
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So now we’re going into the connotations of words. Where you see “imposed” as a grudging description of Trump’s intentions, I see an apt description of the strength behind Trump’s decision. I’m sure Trump would agree,
given he himself said he would “impose” such a tax. Hey, maybe him using the word “impose” influenced Mark Fields’s choice of words, as well?
Also, in case you didn’t notice, “the numerous outlets” have tried to spin everything against Trump for a while (which often plays into his own hands). Something tells me they won’t give that up any time soon, either.
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To be clear, Mattis has not changed Trump’s mind – Trump has just said that he will leave the decision up to Mattis; he still “absolutely” believes torture works. Don’t spread misinformation.
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So you concede that Trump is not opposed to trusting the judgement of others over his own on issues? Rather than just fire them, like President Jackson did repeatedly when cabinet members didn’t do as he said? Doesn’t seem very egotistical of him. It’s almost like he’s behaving presidentially.
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Plus, you can’t fight an ideology – ISIS is a terrorist organization, and they recruit extremists in other countries by convincing them that they have to do god’s work. I’m not knowledgeful enough to know how to combat ISIS better than we are, but Trump’s reaction to that seems to be to discriminate against Muslims and people of Iranian blood or other nationalities.
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Anyway, you don’t beat ISIS by pissing off more Muslims and validating terrorists’ anti-US rhetoric and turning away vulnerable refugees.
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Yes, let’s beat ISIS by using the exact same strategies we’ve been using in the constantly worsening Middle East for decades, rather than change the formula. I mean, it’s not as if Trump’s travel ban WASN’T targeting Muslims… right?
Surely Indonesia, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, and Nigeria must be on this "Muslim ban" list?
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The issue here is that while I’ve identified how your source is biased and provided sources to back this up, all you’ve done is say you feel like my sources are biased and described why you feel they might be biased.
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Did you get our posts mixed up?
The most “identifying” you did to my source is a grand total of one sentence about how it has a right-wing bias and is anti-Islam. Rather than back that up, you then went on to restate the two sources I disagreed with earlier; you did not compare your sources’ points with mine in any way. All you did was, as I said, dismiss my source because you don’t agree with it.
Meanwhile, this is what I said:
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Personally, I disagree with the sources you present, since they handwave the issue. One concedes that immigrants are behind the increase, but then saying that it’s really the fault of xenophobic Swedes (despite Sweden being very multicultural and xenophilic) and poor management of refugee shelters (How refugees could be any worse off than where they came from is beyond me; what about halting the flow of refugees until better conditions can be provided?). The other skirts around the truth by saying it’s due to “socioeconomic factors,” blames it on the Swedes (despite cases of hate crimes, apparently, being speculation, based on cited articles), and shifts the issue to sexual assault in general (as if not looking into who the perpetrators are will help women and case studies in any way).
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Did I mention bias in there? I’m looking at this post of mine, and I can’t find a single accusation of bias. All I did was identify your sources’ points, and explain how I believe the reasoning behind these points is faulty.
I only ever mentioned bias when you, I’ll say it again, dismissed my source in its entirety due to the point of view of who wrote it. Even then, I only did that to provide a hypothetical scenario where I dismiss your sources for a similar reason. And not even because of bias!
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You say that I fall back on the “convenient immigrant boogeyman,” yet amidst your defense of your sources, your only rebuttal to mine is that it’s right-wing and anti-Islam. Would I be correct to dismiss your sources just because I don’t agree with them?
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Did I say that I felt your sources were biased? I’m looking at this post of mine, and I can’t find a single accusation of your sources being biased, just that I didn’t agree with them; either way, however, I brought up your sources’ points and, rather than dismiss them, explain why I thought they were wrong. Sadly, it seems you cannot afford to respond likewise.
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That implies that only a like-minded crowd of xenophobes would be comfortable siding with Trump.
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No it doesn’t, and I don’t know why you’re suggesting that. Anyone who feels like they benefit from siding with Trump will do so.
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I brought that up because you said so yourself:
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If you back a hateful, xenophobic, egotistical fascist-enabler, I imagine having to defend that viewpoint must get pretty tiring. I will try to contain my sympathy.
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Unless you mean to say that siding with someone is the same as being comfortable doing so. In that case, why did you assume that backing Trump gets tiring if that would mean I’m not comfortable backing him?
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(Also… Trump’s only a fascist-enabler in the sense that his victory in the election has sparked violent protests run by people unwilling to see the status quo die, who see fit to physically lash out against their detractors, rather than let them be heard.)
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I feel like I’ve seen this argument before, do they pass out cue sheets for you all to stay on-message or what?
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You seem to be skirting around the issue. Do you, or do you not, agree that actions against Trump and his supporters reflect fascism far more than anything Trump or his supporters have done, and would you substantiate your claim?
(By the way, we couldn’t have cue sheets passed out if we wanted to; we’re a social media-based grassroots movement, and don’t have centralized coordination. Not like groups like Antifa and CTR, which are externally funded. We’re not even that well-off on social media, if you look at cases like Reddit censorship of The_Donald, and Twitter shadowbanning Trump supporters.)
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If anything, candidates like Bernie Sanders were more logical picks for an advocate of women's rights.
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(Off-topic, but, apparently, there was a debate between Bernie Sanders and Ted Cruz. I’m assuming you’re more engaged with (and more knowledgeable of) Bernie’s activity than I am, so did you happen to catch any of it?)
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EDIT: So with that put aside, how about them Environmental Protection Agencies?
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I’m going to be honest, I don’t know squat about the EPA (other than that they were pretty helpful in stopping DDT usage), so most of what I’m about to say is stuff I looked up.
Anyway, protecting the environment sounds good (I think we’re already at the point where everyone gets “pollution = bad”), but the EPA’s worthy of suspicion like any other government body. The most relevant bone to pick with the EPA is that it
kept quiet about the lack of corrosion prevention in Flint, Michigan’s pipes. That article explains that it was due to technicalities in how issues like water safety are split between federal and state governments (the EPA got into a stalemate with Michigan’s own Department of Environmental Quality over pipe regulations), and it took months for the EPA to receive guidance on taking matters into its own hands (too late to prevent the crisis). From this, it’s clear that, from how the EPA is currently structured, it can’t respond immediately to potential crises.
In another incident, this time in 2015,
EPA agents accidentally caused contaminated water to flood out of a gold mine, and into the Animas River (which feeds into the Colorado River), apparently due to
a failure to communicate between the team and its leader; the leader was waiting for the Bureau of Reclamation’s advice on how to handle removal of mine debris, while the team proceeded with removal (they assumed they could judge the mine’s water level without carrying out standard procedures).
In both cases, it seems like the EPA’s biggest problem is communication shortcomings, both with other federal agencies and within its own ranks. I don’t know how any solutions to this would work out (I can’t think of any similar cases). Personally, I’d prefer reform; it looks like the EPA is meant to take the role of an arbiter between federal regulations and the states’ responsibility to enforce them, so giving it more power to publish its own findings (without having to communicate), and less power to intervene (leave it to the states, which will be pressured to act by these findings, lest they take sole responsibility for catastrophes), would maintain this role. I think we can both agree that just axing it is jumping the gun, though.