Hillary Clinton is now 1.5 MILLION ahead of Donald Trump in the popular vote count

[Elegiac]

You are so very wrong. The name of the country is the United States of America. Statehood is a rather essential part of American culture.

It hasn't been 'essential' since the 1860s, when the question was pretty much settled in favor of -the- United States, versus -these- United States.

The constitution enumerates what powers the federal government has. Anything not granted to the federal government, the states are free to decide for themselves. That's the entire basis on how this country is setup. It's trending toward the federal becoming more powerful than the states, which is why things like the electoral college is important.

In order to better understand it, you should regard the states as their own sovereign countries. The job of the federal government is to essentially keep the interests of all the states in mind instead of letting one state grow too powerful and dictate to all the others. And that's why the Electoral College is also important - it keeps one state or a collection of large states from putting into power the chief executive, bypassing what all the other states may think.

Or, in reality, allows a collection of four to five random states decide who gets to be President regardless of whether or not said individual has a popular mandate.

And for all of you that think the popular vote is a big deal, keep this in mind -

The House of Representatives is where the publics direct popular votes count the most. Control of the House is important, as the Republicans demonstrated during both of Obama's terms.

Here's why the popular vote is a big deal.

In a democratic system, the concept of popular mandate is pretty important owing to the fundamental assumption that the government derives its authority from the general will; by implication, a government that is put into place lacking a popular mandate has no grounds for its authority. Moreover, as the stability of the social order is contingent on people being invested in its wellbeing then an order in which people think they have no stake is fundamentally anemic.

Despite Hilary Clinton winning the popular vote, the Republicans still retain control of the House. How is this possible?

Gerrymandering. This has been known for some time.

Well, it's simple - it means the majority of Clinton voters were concentrated. That usually means major population centers, which means that anyone saying the popular vote means Clinton should be president, means that they're in favor of a small number of population centers largely directing the fate of the entire nation.

It's yet to be established as to why this is a bad thing since the 'small number of population centers' contain -most- of the entire nation.

This is exactly what the founding fathers did not want.

Why do we care?

If we ever devolve to the point where important decisions are made only by a select few areas of the country as a de facto standard of government, the road to a second civil war will begin.

You mean like how elections are currently decided by a select few states that don't lean very heavily towards either party? Or how the present government is in effect a minority government?

[Gray_Matter]

The problem is that folks have an issue disconnecting Trump winning, with his win being the result of establishment in electoral vote. Trump won, but the victory is purely political, because losing the popular vote is not a way to show your ideology is prevailing... but, just that you won the presidency...

Trump said the same thing about electoral college just 4 years ago, when Romney didn't even win it. This has been an issue for at least 17 years, because it's pretty unusual. Before Gore lost, this has only happened 3 times in the history of US. We are now at 2 in just 17... the issue doesn't pointing at RNC or DNC, but the way the census generating the electoral split being the issue. This isn't a conspiracy or about rigged elections...

I don't think there is any conspiracy at all. I also understand how the system works. I just think the system is outdated. It was put together way back when people had to ride through on horses with the counts. It was designed for the time and with modern day communications it makes no sense.

There is a reason why it has started happening more often. The country is far more polarized than it used to be with people vote along party lines more often. Right now, the splits will almost always benefit the GOP. Down the line, when Texas switches to dem (and it will) then the tables will be turned and the GOP will be the ones who will be on the receiving end of an EC/pop split.

The other thing that irks me is that the system favors small states and often lags the populations by quite a margin. Places like Iowa have about 3 times as many EC delegates as they should based on population but other places such as Texas and California have only about 80% of what they should be getting. Then a candidate can win a state like Florida which sits on a knife edge and loose a number of smaller states by very large margins and still come out better off.

[Stormdash]

Why do we care?

Rule of law? Governments are instituted to secure individual liberty, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed?

There is no "in effect a minority government". Perhaps if the entirety of this trivial popular vote margin couldn't be attributed, twice over, to a single state in a union of fifty of them, you could characterize it so, but it is, so you can't, not credibly.

More people need to accept that the state is actually the apex of the American system of government. The federal government's supremacy is limited only to those very few finite powers it was granted (by the states), and the composition of its offices are indexed and bounded by the legal sovereign equality of the states. And it is the states, in point of fact, that have totally legitimate constitutional authority to completely redesign or even dissolve the federal goverment via constitutional amendment if they so choose without that federal government having any say in the matter.

If you are into the whole "rule of law" thing, than you know that these facts can only be changed legitimately by amendment. To change them otherwise would be to do so by conquest, and... yeah, Noam and the rest of the faculty lounge don't want to ride that train.

[NED funded]

Victory margins of Trump

[Elegiac]

Rule of law?

No, why do we give a shit what a bunch of dead white bourgeois happen to think?

Governments are instituted to secure individual liberty, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed?

Governments are instituted to secure people's -welfare-. This liberty crap is an invention of the Enlightenment.

There is no "in effect a minority government". Perhaps if the entirety of this trivial popular vote margin couldn't be attributed, twice over, to a single state in a union of fifty of them, you could characterize it so, but it is, so you can't, not credibly.

I know that you're only familiar with the American system of government (and one that hasn't really been extant since the New Deal at the very latest), but bear with me. Minority government in the sense that they are not governing with a popular mandate.

More people need to accept that the state is actually the apex of the American system of government. The federal government's supremacy is limited only to those very few finite powers it was granted (by the states), and the composition of its offices are indexed and bounded by the legal sovereign equality of the states. And it is the states, in point of fact, that have totally legitimate constitutional authority to completely redesign or even dissolve the federal goverment via constitutional amendment if they so choose without that federal government having any say in the matter.

We're aware that the American system is full of anachronisms. That aside, the Federal government does not have 'very few finite powers'; the enumerated powers are exceedingly broad, and more than sufficient to cow the states which have become dependent on the survival of that system.

Saying 'but they could do XYZ' is moralistic appeal, it doesn't reflect the reality that the United States (versus these United States) underwent exactly the same process of nationalisation and the development of a national identity which transcends that of the local one. That the labouring beast of the Constitutional government has yet to catch up with it is a function more of an overly conservative political system.

If you are into the whole "rule of law" thing, than you know that these facts can only be changed legitimately by amendment. To change them otherwise would be to do so by conquest, and... yeah, Noam and the rest of the faculty lounge don't want to ride that train.

Which, again, really doesn't address the question of why we give a shit what the Founders thought.

[Stormdash]

No, why do we give a shit what a bunch of dead white bourgeois happen to think?

Again, you are either about the rule of law, or you are about the rule of men and therefore pro-tyranny, pro-totalitarianism. There is no middle lane. I know what you stand for, and it's against everything this country has ever been or will ever be unless you are prepared to (try and) kill a lot of people.

Governments are instituted to secure people's -welfare-. This liberty crap is an invention of the Enlightenment.

Yes, still the peak of all secular philosophical movements. People are responsible for the quality and course of their own lives, a government is only legitimate to the end of ensuring people can get about it without threat from others.

I know that you're only familiar with the American system of government (and one that hasn't really been extant since the New Deal at the very latest), but bear with me. Minority government in the sense that they are not governing with a popular mandate.

I know what you meant, it's just that your point is facile and meaningless -- the Clinton "mandate" isn't like some grand cross-section of this country, it's confined to very narrow and ideologically homogeneous cloisters. I could say "California" and "New York" but honestly that's giving them too much credit. "LA County" and "Manhattan" might as well be it if you really drill down. Hell, I'm actually willing to take the position that Texas v. White was wrongly decided (always have really) and support "Calexit" for those that insist.

We're aware that the American system is full of anachronisms. That aside, the Federal government does not have 'very few finite powers'; the enumerated powers are exceedingly broad, and more than sufficient to cow the states which have become dependent on the survival of that system.

They are few and defined in the words of those who wrote them, but hell, what do a bunch of dead white bourgeois know about their own words? Oh, wait... everything. They know all the things about their own words.

As for what you find anachronistic, the genius of the Constitution is that it's all open to amendment. It's not anyone else's fault that your objectives are marginal and fringe enough to not meet that threshold.

Which, again, really doesn't address the question of why we give a shit what the Founders thought.

I'd say anybody that doesn't mean to water the tree at some point ought to at least care, because by the Founders' means alone, that's the only way those kinds of big changes will ever be permitted to take place in this country without a whole lot of shooting.

[Gray_Matter]

The popular vote is the score to a game nobody was playing. No Presidential campaign in history ever has been run with an actual strategic gameplan of maximizing its total, aggregate popular vote totals. You're completely misunderstanding the system of government if you think that those outcomes are even... of interest.

I agree that the whole campaign would have been different if it was based on a popular vote. Coal probably wouldn't even have been brought up. That doesn't make the system any more fair.

The United States is not a national democracy. There are no subjects in which the entire voting population of the nation votes as one in the same question, not for any office, not on any referendum. It's either myth or just mistake for those hung up on that.

When it comes to offices in the federal government, voters in the US are voting for only these three things --

a) a district-wide vote of their member of the House of Representatives
b) a state-wide vote for a member of the Senate
c) a state-wide vote to determine which slate of electors will be sworn in and sent to the electoral college.

Worth noting that it's only because of the 17th Amendment that voters must get a say on (b), and right now it would be perfectly constitutional for any or all states to simply exclude voters from (c) and have their state legislatures choose the electors.

Again, just because it's so, doesn't make it right. I would agree with it in principle if people were voting for a party to run the country or if the leaders of each state got together and elected a president themselves. That would make sense. But people across the country think they are voting for a president when in reality they are voting for their states choice for president.

[MonsieuRoberts]

Does it matter?

[Gray_Matter]

In order to better understand it, you should regard the states as their own sovereign countries. The job of the federal government is to essentially keep the interests of all the states in mind instead of letting one state grow too powerful and dictate to all the others. And that's why the Electoral College is also important - it keeps one state or a collection of large states from putting into power the chief executive, bypassing what all the other states may think.

Ironically, that's exactly what's happening with the 11 or so swing states. They get to decide the president.

It would be a bit better if the EC correctly reflected the populations but it doesn't. For example, California should have 66 based on it's population and not 55. If anything, the system should be modified to be out of 10001 with each state getting their population percentage multiplied by 100.01. At least that way, you wouldn't find states who are vastly underrepresented at 2 seats and overrepresented at 3.

[Elegiac]

Again, you are either about the rule of law, or you are about the rule of men and therefore pro-tyranny, pro-totalitarianism. There is no middle lane. I know what you stand for, and it's against everything this country has ever been or will ever be unless you are prepared to (try and) kill a lot of people.

Cool. "Rule of Law" isn't a justification for poorly designed or anachronistic political systems, nor is it really relevant.

Yes, still the peak of all secular philosophical movements. People are responsible for the quality and course of their own lives, a government is only legitimate to the end of ensuring people can get about it without threat from others.

Which is the opinion of people who have the means to direct the course of their own lives; i.e. propertied men of social standing. It isn't reflect of how human society actually operates or what humans in general find valuable in their public lives.

I know what you meant, it's just that your point is facile and meaningless -- the Clinton "mandate" isn't like some grand cross-section of this country, it's confined to very narrow and ideologically homogeneous cloisters. I could say "California" and "New York" but honestly that's giving them too much credit. "LA County" and "Manhattan" might as well be it if you really drill down. Hell, I'm actually willing to take the position that Texas v. White was wrongly decided (always have really) and support "Calexit" for those that insist.

'Very narrow and ideologically homogenous cloisters' which, again, happen to contain the majority of the population and by and far the majority of the country's economic muscle.

They are few and defined in the words of those who wrote them, but hell, what do a bunch of dead white bourgeois know about their own words? Oh, wait... everything. They know all the things about their own words.

Ignoring the fact that their opinions were not at all in agreement with each other and that the Constitution is a fundamental admission that state-centric government is unworkable.

As for what you find anachronistic, the genius of the Constitution is that it's all open to amendment. It's not anyone else's fault that your objectives are marginal and fringe enough to not meet that threshold.

The way the amendment process is structured it is in fact a 'fringe' which directs that process. Eighty percent of the country could live in five states and the system would reward the entirety of federal political power to the remaining twenty percent.

But hey, the US was founded on preserving the privileges of a minority, why stop now.

I'd say anybody that doesn't mean to water the tree at some point ought to at least care, because by the Founders' means alone, that's the only way those kinds of big changes will ever be permitted to take place in this country without a whole lot of shooting.

I forgot that the quality of a policy was determined not by its own merit but by what a mythologised group of men 'would' have thought of it.

Really, you claim I'm bad for being more authoritarian in my leanings, but you romanticise people who would have been equally if not more opposed to democratic government.

[Stormdash]

I'd welcome state legislatures just choosing the electors themselves -- force people to make participating in state government the focus of their civic participation.

Right now, making these numbers up for demonstration, probably 90% of people know who the President is but only 20% know who their member of the House is. If we could build a social norm that reverses those figures, turns the occupant of the White House into someone that folk may have heard of the way they may recognize the chair of the Federal Reserve or the CEO of Starbucks or Apple, then I think our body politic would be a much healthier thing.

[Gray_Matter]

If we ever devolve to the point where important decisions are made only by a select few areas of the country as a de facto standard of government, the road to a second civil war will begin.

A few areas but a lot more people. One could easily switch that around and say that having a few people decide what direction the country should go is a recipe for civil war.

[Elegiac]

I'd welcome state legislatures just choosing the electors themselves -- force people to make participating in state government the focus of their civic participation.

Right now, making these numbers up for demonstration, probably 90% of people know who the President is but only 20% know who their member of the House is. If we could build a social norm that reverses those figures, turns the occupant of the White House into someone that folk may have heard of the way they may recognize the chair of the Federal Reserve or the CEO of Starbucks or Apple, then I think our body politic would be a much healthier thing.

If you believe disintegration of the union is 'healthier', sure.

[Stormdash]

Really, you claim I'm bad for being more authoritarian in my leanings, but you romanticise people who would have been equally if not more opposed to democratic government.

You say that as though it was a secret. "Democrat" was mostly an epithet reserved for favor of mob rule, which is why our republic was designed to be centered around the law itself as the organizing principle, not the will of the majority in really any context. And that wasn't novel to the Enlightenment, either - Aristotle used "democracy" to describe the deviant form of 'rule by many', contrasting it from "polity".

A pack of wolves and a lamb voting on dinner is a democracy. A lynch mob is a democracy with one dissenting vote on capital punishment.

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If you believe disintegration of the union is 'healthier', sure.

The union does not depend on a massive quadrennial horse race between cults of personality bent on greater and greater autocracy. Indeed, that's actually the very very worst thing that can even happen to our union. The less important the President gets to the day to day life of all Americans, the healthier that union would be.

[Elegiac]

You say that as though it was a secret. "Democrat" was mostly an epithet reserved for favor of mob rule, which is why our republic was designed to be centered around the law itself as the organizing principle, not the will of the majority in really any context. And that wasn't novel to the Enlightenment, either - Aristotle used "democracy" to describe the deviant form of 'rule by many', contrasting it from "polity".

Oh my god, it's almost as though political thought and political paradigms haven't shifted since 1789. *gasp*

A pack of wolves and a lamb voting on dinner is a democracy. A lynch mob is a democracy with one dissenting vote on capital punishment.

So you're admitting that you're an authoritarian, then?

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The union does not depend on a massive quadrennial horse race between cults of personality bent on greater and greater autocracy. Indeed, that's actually the very very worst thing that can even happen to our union. The less important the President gets to the day to day life of all Americans, the healthier that union would be.

The union, and indeed the integrity of any polity is dependent on the focus of civic participation being at the national level; if not, then there is no investment in the retention of that level of politics.

And the 'cult of personality' is a function of humans identifying more with individuals rather than with amorphous bodies like 'Congress'. Nothing would actually change regarding that process save that the leader of said cults would be local potentates.

[Wells]

You say that as though it was a secret. "Democrat" was mostly an epithet reserved for favor of mob rule, which is why our republic was designed to be centered around the law itself as the organizing principle, not the will of the majority in really any context. And that wasn't novel to the Enlightenment, either - Aristotle used "democracy" to describe the deviant form of 'rule by many', contrasting it from "polity".

The funny part about this bullshit every time it comes up is its predicated on the notion that government prior to democracy wasn't explicitly worse in this regard.

[Gray_Matter]

Rule of law? Governments are instituted to secure individual liberty, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed?

There is no "in effect a minority government". Perhaps if the entirety of this trivial popular vote margin couldn't be attributed, twice over, to a single state in a union of fifty of them, you could characterize it so, but it is, so you can't, not credibly.

More people need to accept that the state is actually the apex of the American system of government. The federal government's supremacy is limited only to those very few finite powers it was granted (by the states), and the composition of its offices are indexed and bounded by the legal sovereign equality of the states. And it is the states, in point of fact, that have totally legitimate constitutional authority to completely redesign or even dissolve the federal goverment via constitutional amendment if they so choose without that federal government having any say in the matter.

If you are into the whole "rule of law" thing, than you know that these facts can only be changed legitimately by amendment. To change them otherwise would be to do so by conquest, and... yeah, Noam and the rest of the faculty lounge don't want to ride that train.

Isn't this the very dilemma that the SCOTUS is going through? What is a fundamental right (federal) and what is up to the states. One could argue it both ways. Is the minimum wage a national or state question? The GOP lean towards the latter and the dems towards the former. One could make a similar argument for the vote for president.

You can't "blame" the lead on a single state. You have some states like California that voted overwhelmingly in favor of Clinton but other that voted overwhelmingly in favor of Trump. If you want to discount one states votes then you should do the same with all of them.

[Stormdash]

Oh my god, it's almost as though political thought and political paradigms haven't shifted since 1789. *gasp*

So has Venice, and in the same direction.

So you're admitting that you're an authoritarian, then?

Not only is this non sequitur, I have no idea what the fuck you are bibbling about. Demonstrating the inherent tyranny of pure majoritarian democracy (which I have never once spoken positively of nor is our system of government) makes me authoritarian?

[Elegiac]

So has Venice, and in the same direction.

And much like Venice, your opinion is supported by nothing.

Not only is this non sequitur, I have no idea what the fuck you are bibbling about. Demonstrating the inherent tyranny of pure majoritarian democracy (which I have never once spoken positively of nor is our system of government) makes me authoritarian?

Implying that there is no form of democracy which isn't purely majoritarian. I mean, the fact you think that 'popular vote' means simple FPTP plurality voting and not a more effective and generally representative one demonstrates that, and the fact your political knowledge seems to start at 1650 and end at 1800.

[Stormdash]

Isn't this the very dilemma that the SCOTUS is going through? What is a fundamental right (federal) and what is up to the states. One could argue it both ways. Is the minimum wage a national or state question? The GOP lean towards the latter and the dems towards the former. One could make a similar argument for the vote for president.

It's not that much of a dilemma, it's more a question of "how willing are jurists to pretend a passage of an amendment that has nothing whatsoever to do with 99% of all subjects it's used to address incorporates those things anyway and thereby places them beyond the reach of the ordinary state or federal political processes." To wit, "substantive due process" is mostly judicial fantasy, just a vehicle for normative statements about the way the world ought to be that can be made enforceable as constitutional law. Thankfully I don't think it's so far addled to get to the point where a minimum wage could be considered a fundamental right under the 14th Amendment, egad.

You can't "blame" the lead on a single state. You have some states like California that voted overwhelmingly in favor of Clinton but other that voted overwhelmingly in favor of Trump. If you want to discount one states votes then you should do the same with all of them.

It's the only state that can not only cover the entire national margin but with room to cover it again -- it's not some minor detail if the reason for flogging that national margin is prove that Clinton really won "the country".

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And much like Venice, your opinion is supported by nothing.



Implying that there is no form of democracy which isn't purely majoritarian. I mean, the fact you think that 'popular vote' means simple FPTP plurality voting and not a more effective and generally representative one demonstrates that, and the fact your political knowledge seems to start at 1650 and end at 1800.

Layers of process, checks and balances, and federalism are like resistors in an electrical circuit to these ends.

Aristotle is 1650, eh?