Both of my children were Sander’s supporters and nether of them felt like she gave them the middle finger.
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It made sense in a smaller, more agrarian America. But it hasn’t scaled well into what we’ve become.
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The argument was made that in order to get rid of the electoral college is that since it requires a constitutional amendment to do so, that’s some serious ‘heavy lifting.’
We need to “lift heavy”; every vote needs to count.
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There’s a more immediate and achievable target on that front, though: voter suppression and the gerrymander. No constitutional amendments required there.
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Doesn’t matter which country you are in, the party in power is never interested in voting reform, so nothing ever happens.
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On the plus side there have been some court rulings going against the crap that has been played for gerrymandering. The changes won’t take place for awhile though damn it.
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You both make good points, but I’ll be damned if I have anything in the way of rebuttal.
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I don’t know. I like the system of checks and balances-- it protects us from mob decisions-- but I think it needs to be realigned to reflect that we no longer live in agrarian or manufacturing economies. And no, I don’t have the slightest clue how to do that, but I bet someone here does.
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I get your cynicism, and normally I’d be there with you. But there is the issue that this organisation exists, and it really does do what it claims to do:
Australia has plenty of problems, but voter suppression and electoral manipulation aren’t amongst them.
We’re 61% of the way there, via the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, though. In theory, this would be a path to make the electoral college irrelevant, by a means which is legal under the existing text of the Constitution.
The trick is that it will likely require support from at least a few conservative states to come into force (as there aren’t enough strongly-left-leaning states to reach 270 electoral votes on their own). Currently, every state which is supporting the NPVIC is liberal-leaning. And when you look at the current election results, that’s maybe not too surprising. As a practical matter, eliminating the electoral college would (based upon history) result in more Democratic wins in the presidential campaign. And maybe those red-leaning states aren’t so keen on having direct elections, if it means their state’s preferred candidate is less likely to win.
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The constant weak spot in all of this is almost always falls on the US census. A decade is too long of a time and there are some flaws in how it is carried out, and it may be the true “fault” at the bottom of this.
If the census data can’t reflect the US well and we build so much off the census data then we have a problem that may be compounding itself.
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And… if we want to change the census, we’re back to Constitutional amendments again.
Sounds like meaningful change in the US boils back down to going to the polls no matter what, fortunately and unfortunately.
It at least gives a relatively soft target for people to pressure their representatives over. If a party takes up the “improve voter turnout” mantle seriously it’s hard to fight against even if there will be diehards that will just bitch about partisan tactics no matter what.
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I have no idea what to think about this article. I know it’s supposed to resonate with me, but it only resonates a little bit with me. This can be generalized to any type of bubble, though, and though bubbles are insulating, they are meant to be burst.
I did say all but. Still, I was perhaps a bit hyperbolic. The attitude I saw from Clinton’s campaign and the mainstream Left towards the Sanders’ supporters after he lost the primary was basically one of grow up and vote for the establishment, which was really counterproductive. Just so I’m clear, I liked Sanders for POTUS better than Clinton, but I was always going to vote for the Party nominee to try and stop Trump, whoever it was. But the general attitude of Clinton’s campaign came across as one of entitlement.
Also, it’s a small point but one that matters: I didn’t say her, I said her campaign. Clinton herself seemed cordial enough, even if she didn’t exactly reach out to progressives; but her campaign was one of just suck it up and vote for her, which, while that’s exactly what a lot of those of us on the Left did, was no way to run a campaign. Contrast that with the exceptional campaign Obama ran in 2008 and I see a failure of the Party leadership that failed all of us, and of which she herself was but one facet.
A number of local level Democratic campaigns did much better without the national establishment of the DNC at the wheel, overcoming the odds instead of losing despite having the advantage. Maybe the DNC should be looking to some of those campaigns for candidates and campaign ideas, and some of the media seem to be doing just that, but it remains to see if the Party itself recognizes that it has and had far better candidates to run.
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The difference, in my humble estimation, is that Obama got a lot of votes for him, while she got a lot of votes against Trump from people who would have voted for a pineapple in a suit if it meant keeping Trump out of power. I’m not saying this to lambast Clinton. As a person I don’t care if she’s likeable and as politician her POTUS prospects are a moot point now. But unless the Democratic Party evaluates how it lost, it will repeat the same mistakes.
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Because Obama didn’t get a lot of votes against Bush? Obama was popular and had an incredibly unpopular president to follow. If Hillary really loses the election with +2 million votes the story of “Bernie would have done it” gets a lot weaker.
EDIT
Still means DNC needs to change - not even going to question that a little.
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That’s all I ask. I don’t think Bernie would have done it. But I don’t think Clinton’s failure is entirely because she’s the political upper-class (though that’s certainly part of it). I think it’s mostly because the DNC and the Left in general was arrogant and blind. We’ll see if this wake-up call upsets the liberal establishment’s complacency. I’m frankly not holding my breath.
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I’ve mentioned before; while I’m a US citizen, I’ve been living in Australia for more than half my life, and so I’m certain that a lot of the campaign communication has completely missed me. I see bits of media cover about the primaries, and I see the debates live, but that’s pretty much it; that’s where I get the majority of my information about how to cast my ballot. Anything else just doesn’t show up from out here. And most of the popular political commentary shows geo-block their online streaming, so those can’t be watched from here, either.
So please forgive me if this question sounds absurdly naive, but… when you’re drawing a distinction between Clinton herself and her campaign, what precisely is the difference? Is there lots more campaign communication going on that I’m just not aware of, simply by not having been in the country? Because certainly the vast (vast) majority of what I’ve heard about “here’s why you should vote for Clinton” has been spoken directly by her, either in the debates or in tweets on her Twitter account. I definitely miss all the campaign ads, except when one is controversial enough that I see the backscatter on social media and can kind of guess the shape the ad must have been, to have gotten that reaction.
Very interested in what I missed! (And incidentally, I’m one of those people “who would have voted for a pineapple in a suit if it meant keeping Trump out of power”. I suspect that many of us were.)
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Arrogant sure, but naive fits better than blind given the circumstances.
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