ChiGoose

Tommy Eyerolls always sticking to the script. Typing in those talking points that contribute nothing to anything other than stroking his own ego.

The Electoral College was officially selected as the means of electing president towards the end of the Constitutional Convention due to pressure from slave states wanting to increase their voting power (since they could count slaves as 3/5 of a person when allocating electors) and by small states who increased their power due to the minimum of three electors per state.[31] The compromise was reached after other proposals, including to get a direct election for president (as proposed by Hamilton among others), failed to get traction among slave states.[31] Levitsky and Ziblatt describe it as "not a product of constitutional theory or farsighted design. Rather, it was adopted by default, after all other alternatives had been rejected." *** Both during slavery and also after slavery, well into the 20th century in fact, the states of the South stood firmly in opposition to the adoption of a national popular vote. The South was the bulwark of opposition during the period of slavery, of course, because slave-holding states received extra electoral votes thanks to the three-fifths clause. White Southerners, thus, gained added influence in the Electoral College, and if they had switched to a national popular vote, they would have lost that influence. *** In 1787, roughly 40 percent of people living in the Southern states were enslaved Black people, who couldn’t vote. James Madison from Virginia—where enslaved people accounted for 60 percent of the population—knew that either a direct presidential election, or one with electors divvied up according to free white residents only, wouldn’t fly in the South.  “The right of suffrage was much more diffusive [i.e., extensive] in the Northern than the Southern States,” said Madison, “and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of Negroes.”  The result was the controversial “three-fifths compromise,” in which three-fifths of the enslaved Black population would be counted toward allocating representatives and electors and calculating federal taxes. The compromise ensured that Southern states would ratify the Constitution and gave Virginia, home to more than 200,000 slaves, a quarter (12) of the total electoral votes required to win the presidency (46). You seem to be confusing how parties work with how elections work. There are no provisions in the Constitution for parties nominating their candidates because the Founders did not anticipate political parties (Washington famously argued against them in his farewell address). If you have a problem with party officials selecting the nominees, then you have a problem with basically every president before Nixon. You're also making a bunch of assumptions about me personally despite you not knowing me. It may come as a surprise to you, but I have no influence on how the Democratic Party selects its presidential nominee, nor do I agree with every decision it makes. You just seem to like to result to strawmen and assumptions because it's easier than dealing with reality. The idea that the electoral college makes every square inch of the country matter is ridiculous. Where is the breathless coverage of both candidates duking it out in Fargo or Cheyenne? Occasionally candidates travel to non-competitive states to boost local candidates, but there's no strategy of winning the election that is going to invest campaign resources in Wyoming, Hawaii, or Vermont, etc. Those places do not matter in presidential elections because of the EC. The millions of Republicans who vote in California and New York do not matter. California had more Trump voters than any other state in 2020 and none of them mattered, thanks to the EC. While my point has been more about how the EC is bad than an advocation for the national popular vote (which would be an improvement but doesn't solve the problems we're seeing), were the popular vote to decide the election, it would put *more* people and places in play. Any candidate who focused just on the big cities would lose because not only are the biggest cities just a small portion of the overall population, ignoring the majority of Americans who don't live in big cities would alienate them from the majority of voters. The current battleground states of PA, GA, MI, AZ, WI, and NV comprise of 15% of the US population. So even your fear of only 30% of the country mattering would be twice the current situation with the EC. I'm surprised you're not advocating eliminating the EC given that. Again, that's irrelevant from the conversation around the EC and I don't have any say over how the Democratic Party picks it's nominee. I just have to live with the choices on hand.

Tommy Eyerolls sticks to the script. Do NOT engage on the actual arguments. Do NOT inquire about what someone actually advocates for. For that is the path to revealing you are incapable of critical thought. DO throw out eyerolls. DO make a bunch of strawman arguments. DO follow the talking points. For that is how you feel superior despite adding no insight or value to the conversation.

Couple of points on this: The Electoral College was created as a compromise to slave states. As such, it's been outdated for 150+ years The ostensible purpose of the EC was that the electors would serve as a check against the will of the people, voting for a candidate other than the one who won the popular vote if they felt that candidate was a danger to the country. It obviously does not work like this. Any idea that it's a "check against tyranny" is just wishcasting. The most common argument for it is that it gives the small states power. This is demonstrably false. Were it true, we'd spend every election season focused on the smallest states such as Wyoming, Vermont, Alaska, and the Dakotas. Instead, we're talking about Pennsylvania (5th most populous state), Georgia (8th), Michigan (10th), Arizona (14th), Wisconsin (20th), and Nevada (30th). If your support for an electoral system is based on the fact that it helps your team, you're not actually interested in democracy, you want authoritarianism disguised as democracy. Don't know why I would need an "excuse" for November. The race is currently a coin toss. Anyone who says they know definitively how it is going to turn out is just bragging about their ignorance.

“Letting the majority of Americans pick their president would be bad because it wouldn’t align with my beliefs. Arcane rules originally built around slavery are a much better system because they make it more likely that my team will win even if a majority of Americans disagree. I am definitely a good guy in this story.”

Not sure what his point is here. People aren’t eating bacon because of windmills that don’t generate power when there’s no wind?

Yes for executive positions. No for legislative positions.

By far the saddest and most pathetic account here. Posts constantly and loves to brag about how much of a snowflake he is.

The whole reason they rely on the “fake news” crutch is because Trump’s behavior is so boorish and gross as to be disqualifying for the presidency. Since they are enthralled by him, they must reject whatever depicts Dear Leader as anything less than infallible. American Juche.

Someone should take grandpa ranty’s phone away from him

Hey, give the guy credit. Normally he just posts the same thing over and over again. At least this time he had the decency to do a lazy google search.

Can you think of any differences between healthcare in France vs the United States? Also, what are the exceptions under the French law?

Well this is an unhinged rant not based on any reality. Just feelings and propaganda. For anyone who is curious as to why people actually get abortions: “The reasons most frequently cited were that having a child would interfere with a woman's education, work or ability to care for dependents (74%); that she could not afford a baby now (73%); and that she did not want to be a single mother or was having relationship problems (48%). Nearly four in 10 women said they had completed their childbearing, and almost one-third were not ready to have a child. Fewer than 1% said their parents' or partners' desire for them to have an abortion was the most important reason. Younger women often reported that they were unprepared for the transition to motherhood, while older women regularly cited their responsibility to dependents.” Seems like policies promoting safe sex and contraceptives would reduce unwanted pregnancies while programs to make raising and caring for kids more affordable would reduce abortions for people who currently can’t afford to raise kids.

If this amendment fails, maybe the anti-abortion crowd could shift focus from bans to addressing the root causes of why people get abortions. They’d probably find a good amount of support from the Dems too.

I’m surprised Walz gets as much credibility with the progressives as he does. Spent his career in the House as a moderate and wasn’t really considered a progressive in his first term as governor. It wasn’t until his second term that all of the progressive policy happened when the DFL had an trifecta, and even then he pushed back on several key initiatives he considered anti-business. Even Joe Manchin is a big fan of Walz as the VP pick. Seems like everyone can find something they like (or dislike) from his record.

Tommy Eyerolls sticking to his talking points. Stay on script, Tommy. Always stay on script.

Exactly. The only people who wanted Vance as VP are people who are Very Online. He greatly underperformed normie GOP candidates in Ohio in his Senate race.

After winning in 2016, Trump and MAGA have become more and more “online.” Their rhetoric and the topics they talk about resemble PPP more than reality. As I’ve pointed out before, most Americans are normies who don’t spend all of their time thinking and talking about politics. They certainly don’t follow the online rabbit holes of insanity we see around here. A presidential candidate who is Very Online is going to alienate a lot of voters who will have no idea what he is talking about.

Praying that everyone would forget that he was the one who negotiated the surrender directly with the Taliban, cutting Kabul out of the negotiations

Seems like this guy is really bad at talent evaluation. Maybe we don’t hire him to run the country again.

Not harassing the staff at Arlington so that they could make a political ad at a soldier’s grave.