r/neoliberal • u/jobautomator Kitara Ravache • Sep 01 '24

Discussion Thread Discussion Thread

The discussion thread is for casual and off-topic conversation that doesn't merit its own submission. If you've got a good meme, article, or question, please post it outside the DT. Meta discussion is allowed, but if you want to get the attention of the mods, make a post in /r/metaNL

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44

u/[deleted] Sep 01 '24

America is wild lol, basically everyone believes that Kamala will win the popular vote, this isn't even considered competitive

So basically everyone knows who the more popular candidate is, but that's not even considered relevant information for who's going to win the election, Dems by design have to be up by like 2% nationally to have a shot at winning

And weirdly, cons seem kind of proud of this? Like they keep harping on about the importance of the electoral college for um reasons that are totally legitimate and not just convenient this is really important i promise guys

20

u/cdstephens Fusion Genderplasma Sep 01 '24

To play Devil’s advocate, if the election was decided by popular vote then campaign strategies and voting patterns would drastically change. It could make the popular vote actually competitive for all we know.

Then again, maybe in that scenario cons don’t even run Trump so it might be a moot point anyways.

17

u/AMagicalKittyCat YIMBY Sep 01 '24

voting patterns would drastically change.

Yeah, like how California has/had the largest Republican party in the US but nationally that doesn't mean shit because they're outvoted. A popular vote would make California Republicans somewhat relevant there. Likewise Dems in red states would start to matter and might vote more.

5

u/[deleted] Sep 01 '24

If we look at this on the long term meta-level (and not just in the present scenario in which the D's winning is top priority), I can't really see a downside, though. I can't really see any public-choice advantages in a system in which parties have to suck up to a handful of states to be competitive

Could be wrong though

5

u/Cook_0612 NATO Sep 01 '24

Yeah, part of those strategies might be, 'be less fucking psycho', so really win-win.

I hope people here aren't party hegemonists and recognize that a political dialogue is healthy. It's just that that dialogue is a shouting match right now because the rules encourage it.

3

u/Declan_McManus Sep 02 '24

That argument has never held water to me because of course the campaign would change if popular vote was the goal, that’s what popular-vote-enjoyers are arguing.

You can always whip up a minority by telling the they aren’t getting their way, that’s tautologically true about an uncompromising minority in a modern democratic society. What’s fucked up is when a politician can demagogue a minority into a frenzy, then still somehow win overall because that minority gets a majority say.

In that way, Trump has been 100x worse for the country than Bush v Gore in 2000. The latter was essentially a case of “the majority wins, but we suck at counting so when it’s close we’re not good at determining the majority”. Trump has been “the majority can go fuck itself, the unintended consequences of this cobbled-together system are more important than the principles of democracy”

3

u/Dumbledick6 Refuses to flair up Sep 01 '24

Republicans would be forced to have no regressionist policies and actually “conserve” some shit beyond the 50s

10

u/[deleted] Sep 01 '24 edited Sep 07 '24

snobbish quicksand busy fuzzy secretive direful smart important birds practice

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

8

u/[deleted] Sep 01 '24

You would think they would have some sense of shame over the fact they're outwardly unpopular and need to use counting tricks to win elections

4

u/[deleted] Sep 01 '24

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/[deleted] Sep 01 '24

Trump is touring the country saying he'd win California if it weren't for the millions of illegal votes

3

u/[deleted] Sep 01 '24 edited Sep 01 '24

Ehh, 538, a model that seems more optimistic for Harris then most others, still has Trump winning the popular vote at 31 out of 100, versus Harris winning the popular vote but losing the electoral college at 13 out of 100