American Politics Discussion Thread

[Mjmd]

I did want to briefly again touch on the absurdity I'm allowing in equivalating Democrats trying to make voting easier and more accessible vs Republicans trying to make it harder and also targeting urban areas. Don't get me wrong Democrats are only doing so because they think voting math favors them, but it also happens to be the right thing to do.

[Charriu]

BTW I would love if somehow we could get rid of the electoral college. Its a huge liability to our democracy.

My fuzzy memory is that it was designed to protect small, rural states from being dominated by large, urban states.  Seems to be working as designed... 

Darrell

To my knowledge the electoral college is more or less the same system since the beginning of the USA. Remember that back then there were only the 13 colonies/states, all of them more or less equally sized. The system with electors was implemented because in a pre-telegraph world not every citizen had the time and money to go to the capitol and cast their vote. That's why they voted for trustworthy electors. These electors would go to the capitol, inform themselves about the candidates and vote for the next president.

[Mjmd]

That is the public face of the origins, but like most of history its about power.

James Madison wrote on populist democracy:

“There was one diffi­culty however of a seri­ous nature attend­ing an imme­di­ate choice by the people. The right of suffrage was much more diffus­ive in the North­ern than the South­ern States; and the latter could have no influ­ence in the elec­tion on the score of the Negroes. The substi­tu­tion of elect­ors obvi­ated this diffi­culty and seemed on the whole to be liable to fewest objec­tions.”

The electoral college system leveraged the 3/5 compromise to help keep power even between the north and the south. People always forget what a miracle it is some kind of constitution was written at all and then we for some reason hold it up to be perfect. There were some very smart people who wrote it. They put some good checks in place. But, like most of history there were a lot of battles for power in it. Most of early US history is trying to keep power balanced and keep the United States held together.

[T-hawk]

There has been no proof of fraud, quite the opposite. Again we know there was no fraud because of multiple recounts, audits, investigations.

No, we don't know this, because the courts refused to look. And recounts and audits don't help when they're just recounting the same fraud. Easy examples would be throwing out a box or set of ballots before they ever got counted, or say a nursing home worker filling out all the mail-in ballots to the facility. No, we don't know that any of that happened, but there was clearly the motive, means, and opportunity.

Answer this directly: Do you think that the side that thinks Trump is Literally Evil Racist Genocidal Hitler would not commit fraud to keep him out of office?

[Ginger()]

Can you answer this question?  If your side really thought that Trump was Literally Evil Racist Genocidal Hitler or whatever, wouldn't you do everything you could to cheat him out of votes?

Mjmd, you didn't answer that.  Do you think that the side (ok I won't say "your" side) that thinks Trump is Literally Evil Racist Genocidal Hitler didn't try to cheat him out of votes?

T-Hawk you've admitted Republicans tried to overturn the election, you just think it was justified in some way (which you've never been able to prove even a pretext for that stands up).

The protests are justified, because we cannot know if the election was stolen, because the courts refused to look for fraud.  Accepting an election result without the auditability to know if it was legitimate is the danger, since a party that succeeds in that gains the power to do it again.

this is a textbook example burden of proof fallacy. 

“Do you think that they didn’t?” —providing no evidence that they did, just an assumption of intent and character

“we cannot know if” —of course not, you can’t prove that something never happened.
Proving a negative is a ridiculous onus, and any side can play that game

[Mjmd]

There has been no proof of fraud, quite the opposite. Again we know there was no fraud because of multiple recounts, audits, investigations.

No, we don't know this, because the courts refused to look.  And recounts and audits don't help when they're just recounting the same fraud.  Easy examples would be throwing out a box or set of ballots before they ever got counted, or say a nursing home worker filling out all the mail-in ballots to the facility.  No, we don't know that any of that happened, but there was clearly the motive, means, and opportunity.

Answer this directly: Do you think that the side that thinks Trump is Literally Evil Racist Genocidal Hitler would not commit fraud to keep him out of office?

The courts never had a fraud case in front of them as far as I know. Republicans were mostly challenging election law and protocol, which is why a lot of those got thrown out as those should be challenged (and logically so) before the election. Again, paper ballots are a key control and why we use them. We have TONS of checks in place against fraud. REPUBLICAN ATTORNY GENERALS VERIFIED AND HAVE DENOUNCED THE FRAUD CLAIMS (again this time, we might have issues going forward). Should Democrats be able to claim fraud with no proof and overthrow an election? Do you want to go down that path?

The problem with sides is if you think the other side is the enemy you will believe them capable of anything. I distrust those in power. I certainly fear the path republicans have put us on. I could see Democrats doing it in the future. That is part of why I think its so important to be vocal now and why it should be the ONLY issue this election (again an area Democrats are failing at right now). The 2nd pillar of democracy public accountability has to come out hard against a party we KNOW KNOW KNOW pressured legislatures, attorney generals to overthrow their election. A party that sent fake slate of electors and doesn't care. A party that is fine throwing out fraud claims with no proof. Right now there is clear proof one side tried to overturn (which you've admitted). There is no proof the other side tried. I'm not thrilled to be putting the fate of our democracy in the hands of Democrats, but there is no other choice.

Edit: thanks Ginger for naming Burden of Proof fallacy. I've tried to stay on top of all the logical fallacies used, but there are soo many.

[Miguelito]

BTW I would love if somehow we could get rid of the electoral college. Its a huge liability to our democracy.

My fuzzy memory is that it was designed to protect small, rural states from being dominated by large, urban states.  Seems to be working as designed... 

Darrell

Not quite? What it does is to weigh highly votes from states with a low total population, because a state gets as many electors as members of congress, including the senators. Those are many rural states but also eg the vote of soemone from Delaware or Rhode Island is worth much more than that of a Texan voter, and I believe those are highly urbanized states (I looked up Delaware; sixth lowest population but also sixth highest density). If DC became a state it would be very urban and grossly overrepresented in the EC, third only to Wyoming and Vermont. *
Now I'm not really sure what the case is for rewarding people living in a small state, or in a rural area for that matter, with a more valuable vote over other citizens, generally I would think one person, one vote is a pretty intuitive rule for rule by the people. Also no idea why an election for a single national office should be held by the states, each according to their own ruleset, but you do you.
Where I really think the system is a catastrophic failure and why I'm writing, because I haven't seen it pointed out, is the combination of winner takes it all with the elector system. First, it enables presidents being elected with millions less of votes than their opponent. But imo even more importantly it rewards political division in states. The states that get all the attention from candidates are those that are neatly divided 50/50 among their electorate. A savvy campaign will focus on winning over voters in these divided states, prioritizing their issues (one criticism of HRC were her perceived vitory laps in California). The interests of voters in "small, rural states" matter nothing for the presidential campaign as long as it's assumed that they will vote red anyways. As do the interests of the millions of voters in California, or Illinois, or Texas. But Florida man's do, because the state might be a pickup. Having a split electorate seems like a really arbitrary measure for distributing political relevance among states.

* the EU also does this, to a larger extent - as a German, my vote for the EU Parlament is 13 times less valuable than that of a Maltese voter (and the French are slightly worse off), and the Commission (executive organ) has straight up one member per country. But the EU is decidedly not a country, while I guess most US citizens would say that the Union is one.

Answer this directly: Do you think that the side that thinks Trump is Literally Evil Racist Genocidal Hitler would not commit fraud to keep him out of office?

Has any leading Dem politician indicated they think so, or was it just someone on twitter? I guess that most of that side just thinks that he was a really really bad president.

• Ftr evil, yes;
  
• racist, probably not - I think he wants the support of racists and therefore throws them a bone here and there and a bunch of meat on top, but ultimately Trump seems to only care about himself to a comical degree. Might be casually racist but not an ideologue because he just has no convictions besides his own greatness
  
• genocidal, it might be argued that his complete roll back on greenhouse gas reduction (not that there was too much to topple) has geno-/omnicidal potential (clearly no intention but ignorance/indifference), but you have already let us know that you are smarter than the thousands of people that actually dedicate their life to researching the issue, so I guess I will not impress you.
  
• Hitler, no sure as hell not. And I don't even mean that he lacks the stature to be a villain of historic proportions, he really is a better person and politician in a multitude of ways, of course.
  

Btw, doesn't it give you some pause that according to you, "your" side threw dozens of lawsuits against the election, and none of them impressed a judge to even hear the case? Is the republican party just incapable of finding half decent lawyers, or is it maybe that there is just no case? Or are you only referring to the Pennsylvania case you keep banging on on? I don't know the details and can't care enough, but even if Pennsylvannia was flipped, don't you still need like three other states to also have cheated in favour of Biden, which had repubs in charge of the elections? Do you realize how crazy that sounds?

This is getting lengthy, but a I also wanted to pose a little thought experiment:
Let's say US government were to ban all travelers from subsaharan African countries. But there's an exemption for direct descendants of people who originated from countries currently allied through NATO, because allies can be trusted. Or... countries that also contributed significantly to immigration into the US in the timespan of let's say 1870-1940, because there clearly is a longstanding cultural connection. - that wouldn't be racist, right, because nationality is not a race, correct?

[T-hawk]

this is a textbook example burden of proof fallacy. 

“Do you think that they didn’t?” —providing no evidence that they did, just an assumption of intent and character

I'm not talking about proof here. I'm just talking about general perceptions. Do you think that election workers on the side that thinks Trump is so horrible would not commit fraud to keep him out of office?

There was no proof to any level that should have been overturned. I've been clear on that before. What we don't know is if the Democrats committed any cheating or fraud and just got away with it because there's nothing in the system to catch it. This unknowability justifies the Jan 6th protests.

Answer this directly: Do you think that the side that thinks Trump is Literally Evil Racist Genocidal Hitler would not commit fraud to keep him out of office?

The courts never had a fraud case in front of them as far as I know.

That's not the question I asked. I wasn't talking about courts. I will keep asking this until you answer it. Do you think the side that thinks Trump is so horrible would not commit fraud to keep him out of office?

[T-hawk]

Answer this directly: Do you think that the side that thinks Trump is Literally Evil Racist Genocidal Hitler would not commit fraud to keep him out of office?

Has any leading Dem politician indicated they think so, or was it just someone on twitter? I guess that most of that side just thinks that he was a really really bad president.

That wasn't answering the question. And the exact adjectives aren't the point (though it's funny to see the side that loves to call him Hitler suddenly saying that he isn't.) The question is still this: Do you think that the side that thinks Trump is so horrible would not commit fraud to keep him out of office?

Btw, doesn't it give you some pause that according to you, "your" side threw dozens of lawsuits against the election, and none of them impressed a judge to even hear the case? Is the republican party just incapable of finding half decent lawyers, or is it maybe that there is just no case? Or are you only referring to the Pennsylvania case you keep banging on on? I don't know the details and can't care enough, but even if Pennsylvannia was flipped, don't you still need like three other states to also have cheated in favour of Biden, which had repubs in charge of the elections? Do you realize how crazy that sounds?

I'm only referring to PA, yes, I haven't read in detail of any others. And yes, flipping PA and even also GA wasn't enough to swing the national outcome. I never said that should be changed. I'm just justifying that there is enough unknowability and uncertainty for the Jan 6th protests to be justified, and the question of "how can you support the insurrectionist side" falls away when that is the side that is trying to prevent a stolen election.

"Impressing a judge" isn't how a case gets heard. It gets heard by following legal requirements. The requirement of standing was missing here - other states had no standing to force PA to do anything about its own election laws. And I actually agree with this - PA is sovereign in this matter and any disputes are internal to PA.

This is getting lengthy, but a I also wanted to pose a little thought experiment:
Let's say US government were to ban all travelers from subsaharan African countries. But there's an exemption for direct descendants of people who originated from countries currently allied through NATO, because allies can be trusted. Or... countries that also contributed significantly to immigration into the US in the timespan of let's say 1870-1940, because there clearly is a longstanding cultural connection. - that wouldn't be racist, right, because nationality is not a race, correct?

This is correct, nationality is not race. There may be correlation but that does not make a policy racist.

Suppose there's a country club that charges $100k for membership. The demographic reality is that more white people than black would be willing and able to afford that. Is the country club racist?

[Ginger()]

Unknowability doesn't justify shit. You can concoct any fantasy that sounds semi plausible (your 'disgruntled' election workers, ignoring for the moment the ridiculous scale and uniform silence required).
As long as you present a world line or possibility without direct evidence and just speculation, I reserve the right to ignore it out of hand. This is the basic epistemology 101

Furthermore, this is a pathetic red herring for the real and directly proven efforts of the Republican party to publicly and overtly overturn the election, as Mjmd has documented at length.


Oh and you keep parroting something about everyone believing Trump is terrible and the worst thing ever. You need to log off twitter and go meet real people. People certainly despise Trump, but many liberals believe Bush Jr. was worse (or at least they did before Jan 6). You're cherry picking the most extreme voices and painting a general characterization.
Furthermore, the hypocrisy of this hypothetical coming from the right is laughable. The people you are defending literally invaded the capital with the intent of executing the representatives performing the inauguration ceremony.


All your "rebuttals" to Mjmd and Miguelito have followed this template:

Sure, we have direct hard evidence of the right restricting voting rights, outright rejecting results, conspiring to rig elections, and trying to stir up a putsch when that all failed, BUT that doesn't really matter because the left might have done [X] similar thing, and since we'll never know for certain, we ought to receive it as a respectable possibility that merits consideration. 

Note that even if the hypothetical was in anyway true or had standing, the argument is still just a sad whataboutism that ignores magnitude.
The layers on this fallacy onion just keep piling up.