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Ansem

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Pennsylvania Congress already said they electors will go to who wins the state popular vote.  Sorry Trump.

BTW Trump isn't conceding and has many lawsuits, big and small!  His lawyer, some dog woman who sold her soul, when asked about evidence said...she's not giving away her strategy!  LOL! 

Also Maher got it right, not just Trump trying to not leave, but his nickname.  Trump is a "whiny little bitch".  No more clear than now.  Would love to see him break into tears in public.  Yeah he is no strongman like his idols.  Hey but he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, a trust fund baby who has had everything handed to him his whole life.  

People are celebrating like the end of a dictator cause that is what it is.  This showed (at least it seems) that our institutions, that democracy held up against the greatest threat to it since the Civil War.  People are crying, laughing, dancing, partying all over and I can't blame them.  The joy I felt when the election was called was immense.  I could barely sleep these past few days.  I want Trump to be held accountable and go to prison, but for now I'm happy that he is going to be gone!  Most of his lawsuits thusfar have been tossed, and it looks like Biden is going to get 306 EC votes.  It doesn't come down to a single state with razor thin margin.

 

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8 minutes ago, Shrimperor said:

Man the parties i am seeing on the TV is like if a dictator was removed.

I think the celebration is justified. A dictator might not have been removed, but the fall of democracy was certainly prevented, or at least delayed.

Just now, eclipse said:

Hate to be a killjoy, but it's not over until the EC casts their vote.  Some states don't have any penalties for faithless electors.

According to Google, Biden should have 290 electoral votes right now, so there needs to be 21 faithless electors to change the results, and I do not think it is likely to have that many faithless electors.

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Yeah, not seeing it either.

So many faithless electors is an outright rejection of the will of the people. That's not even making things downhill, it's jumping off a cliff. Would they dare?

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34 minutes ago, eclipse said:

Hate to be a killjoy, but it's not over until the EC casts their vote.  Some states don't have any penalties for faithless electors.

It didn't stop George W. Bush from getting elected, and I still remember there being faithless elector talk during that one (although admittedly I wasn't exactly voting age at the time...)., and the electoral votes were a lot closer then.

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I had already warned about faithless electors back when it looked like Arizona and Nevada were on the verge of being called two days ago, creating a 270 result for Biden. And my warning was mainly to point out how key Pennsylvania (or Georgia which was still a big question mark) would be to padding out Biden's lead so that it's no longer an issue. What I didn't also mention is the crisis republicans would face if these electors ever DID change the result, intentionally or no. They have relied on the way we've done elections for decades, and the backlash would be so immense that abolishing the electoral college would become the largest bipartisan issue of our time. They don't want that. 

11 minutes ago, eclipse said:

I didn't think the popular vote would be this close and here we are.

7% of the national vote has not been processed - at least ten million. Just because un-called swing states are mostly finished counting doesn't mean the rest were in equal hurry this whole time. Most are content to wait for mail in deadlines before continuing. I've seen one estimate go as high as an 8 million difference between candidates by the time we're done counting. 

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35 minutes ago, eclipse said:

Hate to be a killjoy, but it's not over until the EC casts their vote.  Some states don't have any penalties for faithless electors.

Electors are selected by party leadership from the party's dedicated supporters to rubber-stamp the party's nominees. State law requires that the state choose the slate of electors chosen by the party. What Democratic electors do you think are going to decide to vote for Trump?

Besides, there's been exactly one faithless elector in US history who may have thought his vote would sway the Electoral College's choice. If Biden gets the number of electors to win, it's done, and the EC's vote is a mere formality.

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26 minutes ago, Acacia Sgt said:

Yeah, not seeing it either.

So many faithless electors is an outright rejection of the will of the people. That's not even making things downhill, it's jumping off a cliff. Would they dare?

Don't rule out the possibility, the fact remains that faithless electors is an actual thing and if they did dare and try to give the Election over to Trump, the fact remains that it is still lawful and they would have the Trump mob protecting them and nothing would really undo such a thing. If they deem the sacrifice worthwhile, there's nothing to prevent Trump's win from such a thing.

Having said that, because the opposition to Trump is Biden and not Bernie Sanders, my expectation is that it is not going to happen but I will not rule out the possibility of this pandora's box being opened.

Edited by Dr. Tarrasque
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No doubt there'll be some, most likely. But the last time there was that high a number was in the 1800's. Even in the 2016 elections it was not even half of that amount.

Edited by Acacia Sgt
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Furthermore, all of those electors would have to give their vote to Trump, not any other candidate, to actually impact the winner. 2016 got out of control with its seven people (and three attempts that were squashed by their state). But absolutely none of those ten were aimed at the other presidential candidate. Even if Biden lost that many votes to faithless elector, it doesn't mean Trump just continues with a second term. Because he also failed to hit 270.

Edited by Glennstavos
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3 minutes ago, Glennstavos said:

Furthermore, all of those electors would have to give their vote to Trump, not any other candidate, to actually impact the winner. 2016 got out of control with its seven people (and three attempts that were squashed by their state). But absolutely none of those ten were aimed at the other presidential candidate. Even if Biden lost that many votes to faithless elector, it doesn't mean Trump just continues with a second term. Because he also failed to hit 270.

That isn't strictly speaking true. If no candidate gets a Majority (meaning 270 elector votes), even if they get the Plurality (the most of any candidate) of the votes, we have a Contingent Election, where the House of Representative slip into delegations by state, each state delegation gets 1 vote, and when a candidate manages to get a majority (so 26) of these state votes we get a new President. Meaning if 21 (or more likely 37) faithless electors, there is a chance of Trump getting his second term.

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24 minutes ago, Seafarer said:

Electors are selected by party leadership from the party's dedicated supporters to rubber-stamp the party's nominees. State law requires that the state choose the slate of electors chosen by the party.

Not all states.  Luckily, one of those is my state, and I'm positive that no one's gonna be dumb enough to pull that this election (even if we had one last election).  We're also looking at a party that's hardly what I call "law-abiding", which is why I have my doubts.

And that's the point that everyone's missing.  It's not over until it's formally done.  I'm 80% sure that things will go by the book and the worst is that Georgia has to endure another two months of campaign signs.  The other 20% isn't sure just what nonsense will be pulled This Time.

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1 hour ago, Dr. Tarrasque said:

Don't rule out the possibility, the fact remains that faithless electors is an actual thing and if they did dare and try to give the Election over to Trump, the fact remains that it is still lawful and they would have the Trump mob protecting them and nothing would really undo such a thing. If they deem the sacrifice worthwhile, there's nothing to prevent Trump's win from such a thing.

Having said that, because the opposition to Trump is Biden and not Bernie Sanders, my expectation is that it is not going to happen but I will not rule out the possibility of this pandora's box being opened.

Faithless electors seem like another aspect of the Electoral College gone awry from its original intentions, assuming those intentions were to prevent a tyrannical demagogue unsuited for political office. Instead of stopping that, not an entirely flawed argument on paper, it enables it.

Because the system worked this time, people probably aren't going to seriously consider electoral reform, and Republican control of the Senate and a lot of states prevents that from actually happening.🙁

*Sigh* There is a strong persuasiveness to the feeling that US President no. 46 will be but a blip of restoration between two periods of great democratic destruction. Whats worth celebrating today, will become a feeble moment, when an attempt to save a sinking ship amounted to nothing.😟

Call it Pascal's Demise, the positive thoughts of a short term of good, are outweighed by terrible thoughts of a real chance of a very long term of bad.

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fuck that noise

 

we're constantly on the up-and-up despite setbacks

 

even though 45 built a complete fucking cult of personality around himself and forced a mussolini grade turnout he still lost, and while i'm under no illusions about 'oh the young people are So Woke' or anything the lion's portion of his fanbase is both dying and devoted to him, specifically, not the ideals of any party, even the republicans.

 

there is no reason to believe 47 is going to be some return to the creamsicle caligula fascism eras at this moment and i won't stand for it

 

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The people have short memories.

I think my main concern is that a significant number of people are going to just "forget" all the shit that Senate and House Republicans have pulled off during the 4 years of Trump. Or they'll be all "oh, I don't like either side, but the Democrats are somehow worse in what they're doing" level of shit that gives Republicans a pass. I've seen it where I live, and I am just not the most optimistic that there will be enough people who forget how bad Trump and elected Republicans were and decide that they think the Republican will do better than the Democrat next time we have an election.

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i live in ohio we've gone, what, in the last sixty years, blue blue blue blue red red blue blue red red red blue blue red red blue blue red red fuck i don't even know if this is right

 

yeah, i've seen the mindset that leads to the swap from party to party all the time, the major difference recently is that it's been much more contentious and not reactionary for reaction's sake, since bush 2-2, ohio's gone increasingly blue minus a massive swing for Specifically Trump, the kind of turnout that never would have happened for john mccain or anyone else in the republican party, and then they turned out red again against the national electoral average to finally break their winning streak because it was Specifically Trump.

 

on top of that, when things are uncertain the country almost always banks incumbent, at least since roosevelt -> roosevelt -> roosevelt -> roosevelt and arguably even before back to lincoln. bush 2.2 only swung his win because the world was scary and things were mostly okay under this guy. trump didn't manage to do that, even though world is scary.

 

the cities are also growing in population while the rural zones aren't. without trump, and with four more years of people consolidating, things continue to shift. the trend is there, and removing the fascist demagogue from the equation does change things significantly. if hitler had died and goering had taken over, god willing, nazi germany would have absolutely collapsed.

 

i'm not saying to be complacent and that the future only heralds good things, mind. all i'm saying is that biden's election doesn't represent a random blip in the 'america isn't a genuine classical fascist state' trend that cheeto benito tried very hard to enforce

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There's a lot of "Biden didn't win enough" takes out there, and while I agree when we're talking about Senate elections, the presidential election went excellently. It's very uncommon for a president to seek re-election and not win it. And the pandemic threatened to ruin voter turnout which the D Party successfully worked around with initiatives to send ballots directly to registered voters in many states and create enough safe spaces to vote in person. The GOP fought them every step of the way. Biden and 2020!Trump are the most popular presidential candidates in the history of their parties, and I think if you said Trump would secure 10 million more votes than the previous election it would have scared the shit out of us in October - if anybody would believe such a ridiculous claim. So much was working against this election and we still won it. I understand not wanting to get complacent, but the people who showed up this week aren't going to spontaneously combust.

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I agree with you in general, I'm just not exactly an optimist. I keep on feeling like there's the real possibility that people will forgot really fast (like, before-the-next-election fast) just how bad select Republican representatives were in regards to letting Trump get away with all his shit and start equating things they don't like about Democrats to genuinely problematic things Republicans did in the past 4 years.

And, like ... the fact that certain really, really unpopular Republican congressmen got reelected easily is part of the reason why I'm pessimistic. Not that I thought it'd be easy or all that realistic for a Democrat to take Kentucky or anything like that, but shit, they can't even give a different Republican a shot instead of the guy whom they apparently don't approve of?

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We have no small amount of work ahead of us to make sure the progressive message sinks in like it didn't in this election. That is absolutely a failure on our part.

But I'm gonna feel good, because this is genuinely good and that fact should not diminish our victory here.

 

Edited by Crysta
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9 minutes ago, Sunwoo said:

I agree with you in general, I'm just not exactly an optimist. I keep on feeling like there's the real possibility that people will forgot really fast (like, before-the-next-election fast) just how bad select Republican representatives were in regards to letting Trump get away with all his shit and start equating things they don't like about Democrats to genuinely problematic things Republicans did in the past 4 years.

And, like ... the fact that certain really, really unpopular Republican congressmen got reelected easily is part of the reason why I'm pessimistic. Not that I thought it'd be easy or all that realistic for a Democrat to take Kentucky or anything like that, but shit, they can't even give a different Republican a shot instead of the guy whom they apparently don't approve of?

The problem is, some of the people who were running in the primaries against the unpopular candidates were arguably much worse than they were. While it didn't hold true for Jeff Sessions, I can believe it was true for Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell. The devil you know, etc.

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