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posted by
martyb
on Tuesday February 19 2019, @05:14PM
from the how-many-candidates-are-there-now? dept.
from the how-many-candidates-are-there-now? dept.
"Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)........is launching a second run for the White House in 2020." breitbart.com/politics/2019/02/19/bernie-sanders-2020-bid
"Reaction to the news was split......with some supporting the 77-year-old and others upset with the move." foxnews.com/politics/trump-campaign-pokes-fun-at-bernie-sanders-2020-announcement-as-reaction-splits-on-candidacy
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Bernie Sanders Announces White House Bid
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Life is to you a dashing and bold adventure.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by sjames on Tuesday February 19 2019, @05:55PM (14 children)
I wouldn't be so sure. Trump didn't get the popular vote last time, and he's lost some friends after his whole shutdown debacle. Even a lot of the GOP wants Trump to go. He won because last time the DNC (apparent;y) asked itself "What's the dumbest credible thing we can do to lose the race?" and then they did it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 19 2019, @08:39PM
I'm hoping the Rs pick a different candidate and it becomes a 3-or-4 way (if Bernie runs independent). Then maybe we'll see some people actually voting third-party.
(Score: 2, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 19 2019, @09:17PM (1 child)
Trump isn't getting tossed. The GOP establishment may have their discomfort with Trump, but they've seen voters tossing out GOP candidates that fail to support Trump. The voters love Trump, and the GOP doesn't dare oppose that.
By our constitution, the popular vote doesn't exist. It is a non-concept. If it did matter though... there is at least a reasonable suspicion that it was stolen from Trump. California alone is enough to make the difference, and the vote harvesting over there is fraud running wild. Many leftist states automatically register people to vote, even when getting a driver's license that doesn't qualify as RealID.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Thursday February 21 2019, @08:46AM
It's getting sort of interesting. The democrat voters are also getting pissed off enough to toss out establishment cronies, eg AOC beating 10 term political insider Crowley.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 20 2019, @03:30AM (2 children)
When will you drooling idiots understand? The popular vote doesn't mean jack shit in a presidential election.
Get the fuck over it, your candidate/platform/platitude/promise sucked ass and your team lost.
Electoral votes matter, nothing else does.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday February 20 2019, @06:17AM
I'm pretty sure that was what the leaders of the old Soviet Union said.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 21 2019, @12:45AM
Straw man. They do understand that the popular vote does not by itself win elections, but it's still reasonable to point out that Trump lost the popular vote because so many idiots are talking about how people he is/was.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 20 2019, @07:36AM (1 child)
The citizens of the United States of America do not vote for President. On the ballots it sure looks like you do, but you don't.
What you vote for is a slate of electors to represent your state. Each Presidential candidate has, in each state in which he or she appears on the ballot, a specifically named group of people who have pledged to vote for that candidate should said group be selected to represent that state in the Electoral College. When selected to represent their state, it is these people who vote for President.
So each state (and the District of Columbia) is holding completely separate elections. Grouping together the votes of these completely separate elections for Electoral College representatives, and discussing them like a single election (i.e., the "popular vote") is like grouping together the votes across the country for each county's animal control officer -- in other words, you're doing it wrong.
This is part of the reason why it's called the United States of American, and not the United People of America.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday February 20 2019, @10:31PM
I am well aware of how the election works, I'm not nine years old.
The EC was set up as it is in a time when news traveled at the speed of horse and the average citizen was unlikely to have more than one or two interactions with the federal government in their lifetime. Then we invented telegraph and trains started running across the country. The Federal government became a more common presence in people's lives.
Rather than re-write the Constitution and re-engineer the whole electoral process the states decided that the popular vote would select the electors (rather than the state government). as a sort of hack to make the system conform to the results of the popular vote. For the entirety of the 20th century, it did. No elected president failed to also win the popular vote. IIRC there were only 3 cases in the 19th century where a president won the EC but not the popular vote.
We have seen 2 presidential terms like that here in the 21st century, W's first term and Trump.
TYhe upshot is, Trump only squeaked by for his first term, in spite of the DNC trying to coronate HRC over the objections of much of their rank and file. He hasn't done anything to expand his popularity so far, No big wins, the first single party shutdown in U.S. history, and some frankly embarrassing (and a bit worrying) comments praising oppressive world leaders.
Based on that, all the DNC needs to do is not screw the pooch again.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Wednesday February 20 2019, @04:54PM (5 children)
HRC also did not get the popular vote if by that term you mean more than 50% of the votes. Had she become president, it would have been on a plurality of the votes just as with Trump. You are correct though on HRC being the dumbest possible choice -- she was hated by all Republicans and significant portion of those left of center. Anyone who didn't know that was self-deluded.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 20 2019, @09:01PM (1 child)
But the DNC's gambit was to position HRC, because of her power in the organization, as candidate, and then dare their "audience" on the left to not vote for her. A la "Here's the candidate we're giving you. Vote for her, or you're voting for Trump. And needless to say a vote for Bernie or Stein is a vote for Trump."
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Wednesday February 20 2019, @11:46PM
As a Green voter in the last two presidential elections, one of my favorite memes from the last cycle was a picture of Jill Stein with the caption: Trumpers say a vote for Stein is a vote for Hillary; Democrats say a vote for Stein is a vote for Trump; Apparently voting Green counts three times.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday February 20 2019, @11:32PM (2 children)
Trump didn't get a plurality of the popular vote at all. His was one of the rare cases where the president wins in the EC but loses by popular vote.
That is, as bad as HRC was, slightly more people held their noses and voted for her than voted for Trump.
It's like a 50 yard dash where nobody finished so they hung the gold on the runner who collapsed closest to the finish line as seen from one viewpoint in the stands..
(Score: 3, Disagree) by hemocyanin on Wednesday February 20 2019, @11:51PM (1 child)
Let us remember that HRC did her level best to get a huge turnout in places like NY and CA (irrelevant b/c she would win those even if she ignored them) while ignoring the battleground states. In the end though, even HRC couldn't cross the 50% threshold and garnered only 48.2% of the vote. Is absolutely true to say that more people voted against HRC than for her (the same is true for Trump of course). This is why I'm ever annoyed about people claiming Clinton got the popular vote. She didn't. She didn't even get half the vote, let alone more than half.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidential_election [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday February 21 2019, @03:06AM
However, most voting systems award the win to whoever individually gets the most votes even where there are more than 2 candidates and nobody captures more than 50%. More people voted for HRC than Trump no matter how you want to spin it.
That they made it through the primaries is a poor reflection on their respective parties. Sadly, I can't say HRC in the White House would be much of a win either. The election felt a bit like being asked what brand of bullet would I like to be shot with.
If you're hinting that you'd like to see a method better than first past the post, I'm with you.