The Next President is...

[Blue]

12 minutes ago, brawnie said:

My question is how do we ever get back to more efficient, less partisan politics when both sides are such babies?

How?  Get rid of the tremendous amounts of Dark Money that really drives what politicians do.  A worthy diatribe from Reddit just a couple hours ago below.  Awful long, but I felt like it was worth the read.

https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/ivlkl2/obama_calls_on_senate_not_to_fill_ginsburgs/g5t1vlj?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

Quote

 

No.

Once more for the road - McConnell is nothing more than a loathsome mercenary hired by corporate and foreign powers to achieve their ends at the cost of the American people, to shovel our tax dollars and our sovereign power into their hands, for the personal and petty profit of the soldiers in his employ - Republican politicians.

He's not an evil mastermind, he's not the grand architect or the wizard behind the curtain. He serves at the pleasure of Senate Republicans; if they didn't want him there, they would be rid of him in a heartbeat. The truth is, whatever they say, whatever they do, they like him there. He soaks up the anger and outrage and abuse. They can pretend to be "good guys" - like that spineless, worthless shit Mitt Romney - while wholeheartedly endorsing the entire corrupt campaign behind the scenes. Mitch McConnell is despised by everyone, even his own party. Majority Leader isn't a desirable position. Look at Nancy Pelosi - she immediately became the sole target of public ire for decisions like not impeaching Trump, despite the fact that she's almost certainly carrying out the wishes of the consensus of thousands of Democrat officials and politicians. This isn't her plan, just like this is not Mitch's plan.

Mitch McConnell is serving the designs and plans of a few massive corporations and other huge donors. That's it. The religious zealots, the industrial titans and long-time Republican donors - he passes bills like the 2018 Tax Theft bill that pleases them and delivers profits to them, while safeguarding Republican power.

I say this because articles like this blaming him for the entire debacle help him fulfill exactly his purpose: establish a single focal point of blame without addressing the systemic issues and network of corrupt and criminal actors that actually pull the strings. "Mitch McConnell is Really Destroying America" as a headline (which is all that most people read anyway) makes the natural implication that removing Mitch McConnell fixes the problem. But there's always another Mitch McConnell. Articles like this give him far too much credit and cement a perception that without him, the whole machine falls apart.

But this is factually bankrupt. The system, the real agent of America's destruction, is made up of thousands of Republican megadonors donors like the Mercers and Sheldon Addleson, corporate conglomerates like the Oil industry and Telecomm, foreign powers like Putin's Russia and Mr. Bonesaw's Saudi Arabia, and religious organizations like the Mormon Church. They funnel billions of dollars and precise, exact instructions into the Republican party, which is nothing more than a mercenary force to carry out the donors wishes. The donors pay money, the Republicans fight the war. McConnell is just another in a long line of generals. There are endless candidates. Ted Cruz could be a McConnell. So could Marco Rubio or Mitt Romney.

Speaker of the House and Senate Majority Leader are not enviable positions. Look at Paul Ryan. They don't really wield power. It isn't like a President, who is publicly elected. They're appointed by the party, and they're just the hate sponges for the party, the ones who will take all the blame while more "likable" candidates play bridgemaker in hopes of vying for President. It doesn't matter who serves in that capacity. Dark money is the rot, because it stacks the government with people acting directly against the public interest.

All of the emotion, the partisan bickering, the sentiment and loathing, that's all a smokescreen. These people, Republicans, they are not politicians. Not in the slightest. The only thing they have in common with politicians is many of them are lawyers and they wear suits. They don't govern. The Republican party has done literally nothing even remotely resembling governance in a long time. When was the last time they passed a bill meant to improve some part of public or private life for the average American citizen?

Do not delude yourselves. This is not about Trump, not about McConnell, not even about the Republican party. Eliminate one mercenary group, and another takes its place. The Democrats are on the side of the angels currently, but only by default, only because Republicans have devolved so far into criminality and corruption (mostly out of desperation) that it would be impossible not to be the good guys in comparison.

If we do not do something about dark money in politics, any party, no matter how conservative or liberal, can easily be infiltrated and eventually overrun with people acting in the interest of dark money over public interest.

If McConnell were following his own comprehensive grand plan, you wouldn't see this ridiculous flip-flopping of stances and interests nearly overnight. That's why Republicans are such demonstrable and laughable hypocrites. Their hypocrisy is almost absurdist - their actions frequently contradict their words because they have no real guiding ideology. They're just working for the highest bidder. Much like a mercenary might fight for one side on one day, and then the opposing side the next day, Republicans do whatever they're told by their masters, while doing preposterous verbal gymnastics on TV. Just look at what we've witnessed in a short period of time:

• Republicans outspoken against Russia pre-2016; immediately turn into vocal and ardent Russia supporters (because Russia started paying them and helping them win).

• Republicans outspoken against and opposed to executive power pre-2106; immediately and vocally support the extreme tryannical overreach of Donald Trump (because he's a Republican).

• Conservative think-tank The Heritage Foundation creates outline of Affordable Care Act & Republican Mitt Romney puts it into place as governor of Massachusetts - immediately and vocally condemn it as soon as Obama makes it the foundation of his healthcare policy

• Republicans bemoan and condemn the increase of the federal deficit - until Trump creates one of the largest federal deficits in recent memory to give tax dollars to corporations. Then they vocally and proudly support it.

• Republicans stoke xenophobia and drone on and on and one about the threat of "Radical Islam" - until Trump wants to sell billions of dollars of weaponry to Saudi Arabia, the most powerful, hardcore "islamic extremists" in the Middle East. Then, Saudi Arabia is a wonderful beacon of freedom (because they're paying them).

This is why they wouldn't be successful without a propaganda wing like Fox News. All politicians do a form of doublespeak, but there is nothing comparable to the hypocrisy of modern-day Republicans. Nothing. No 20th century absurdist novelist could ever dream up these clowns. They need to cut off their voters from reality and isolate them in a sterile alternate universe where they bury certain hypocrisies or explain them away and build a narrative utterly incomparable to the real world, because whatever you want to say about Republican voters, they have all the same mental capacities as your average Joe. They could easily see how badly they, personally, are being ed over by the very people they choose to represent them - if they weren't living in the alternate universe that is Conservative Media.

All this to say that none of this is part of McConnell's grand design. Nor Trump's, nor even the entire Republican party. There's no teleology to any of this, no method to the madness, no overarching evil scheme. That's the fiction junkies in us, always envisioning the evil wizard plotting brilliant and infinitely complex schemes to redesign the world.

Poll Republican voters about what they think they're getting - the world they think their votes are buying - and you'll get a hundred different answers and illustrations of a hundred different worlds, none of which remotely resemble what Republicans are actually building.

The world Republicans are building is nothing more than a grotesque collage of the wants and needs of some of the richest and most morally and ethically bankrupt people and organizations on the planet, disparate in scope but almost all entirely to the detriment of the American people, because the only thing Republicans can trade for their donors' cash is federal tax dollars and the power and sovereignty of the American citizens they represent. It is ever-shifting, ever-changing, but always shitty. Either a perpetual war or economic cycles of boom-and-bust or rampant xenophobia - it doesn't matter. Republicans are a black box that donors put a handful of small bills into and get back trillions of our tax dollars and untold powers over public land or contractual rights or legal rights.

This is why the actions of Republicans need to be firmly divorced from the personalities of single individuals like Trump and McConnell and also from the veil of "conservatism" or political ideology in general. They don't care. They're mercenaries. Start acting like it. Stop talking and yelling to them and start yelling over them, to their masters, because these are the people and organizations destroying America, and we need to identify them, call them out, and recognize Republicans for the flunkies they are.

Everything begins and ends with the money. To begin with Citizens United must be overturned, but we need to keep going. Money and all forms of perverse incentives need to be dealt with, or we will always be governed by the mercenary armies of despots and multinational conglomerates. I don't care which party you vote for, truly I don't. The only thing that matters is to vote for people comitted to removing dark money from politics and most importantly watching over them with intense scrutiny every single day they're in office to make sure they follow up on that promise.

 

 

Edited September 19, 2020 by Blue

[Seadogs]

17 minutes ago, Blue said:

How?  Get rid of the tremendous amounts of Dark Money that really drives what politicians do.  A worthy diatribe from Reddit just a couple hours ago below.  Awful long, but I felt like it was worth the read.

https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/ivlkl2/obama_calls_on_senate_not_to_fill_ginsburgs/g5t1vlj?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

 

"The democrats are on the side of angels" 

 

🤣

 

"A worthy diatribe from Reddit"

"I felt like it was worth the read"

 🤣 🤣 🤣

Edited September 19, 2020 by Seadogs

[brickhistory]

18 hours ago, kaputt said:

Ginsburg died. 

And somewhere, a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court just earned his permanent liberal wings.

 

Thanks, dubya!

[drewpey]

29 minutes ago, brickhistory said:

And somewhere, a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court just earned his permanent liberal wings.

 

Thanks, dubya!

Roberts has always been more centrist than the other conservative judges, don't act all shocked like when you suddenly started paying attention you didn't like what you saw.  People either have the idea that it should be a balanced court, or it should be full-tilt in their political party.  I think Roberts is in the former camp, and you may see him shift even more left to preserve his legacy as chief justice and not seen as the guy who oversaw the hard right turn that will inevitably happen.

An olive branch was extended with Garland, but it failed quite spectacularly.  I think the gloves should come off and do away with any pretense that the parties can work together. DC and PR statehood, expand the house, expand the supreme court, dissolve the electoral college, ranked choice/instant runoff voting across the board.  Fuck em. 🍺

[Seadogs]

3 minutes ago, drewpey said:

Roberts has always been more centrist than the other conservative judges, don't act all shocked like when you suddenly started paying attention you didn't like what you saw.  People either have the idea that it should be a balanced court, or it should be full-tilt in their political party.  I think Roberts is in the former camp, and you may see him shift even more left to preserve his legacy as chief justice and not seen as the guy who oversaw the hard right turn that will inevitably happen.

An olive branch was extended with Garland, but it failed quite spectacularly.  I think the gloves should come off and do away with any pretense that the parties can work together. DC and PR statehood, expand the house, expand the supreme court, dissolve the electoral college, ranked choice/instant runoff voting across the board.  em. 🍺

Yeah! Mob rule!!

[drewpey]

1 hour ago, Seadogs said:

Yeah! Mob rule!!

The difference between democracy and mob rule is the legality of their actions.  Everything I mentioned has a legal and fair process and precedent for doing so.

Having a government thats representative of the populace has always been a terrifying thought for the right, but you'll survive.  You always do.

[SurelySerious]

Just now, drewpey said:

The difference between democracy and mob rule is the legality of their actions.  Everything I mentioned has a legal and fair process and precedent for doing so.

Having a government thats representative of the populace has always been a terrifying thought for the right, but you'll survive.  You always do.

So you don’t think our government is representative of the populous? Interesting, go with data. 

[drewpey]

16 minutes ago, SurelySerious said:

So you don’t think our government is representative of the populous? Interesting, go with data. 

If you live in DC or PR, you don't have representation at all.  Extensive gerrymandering on both sides undermines proper representation and without an independent body doing districting it will continue to be a problem for everyone. We haven't added house seats since 1911 despite the country growing exponentially.  How does one representative actually represent a million people?  At what point does this become ridiculous?  We have elected multiple presidents who the majority of the populace voted against....aaaaaaand FPTP voting discourages people choosing their preferred representation because they are generally afraid to vote for who they really want and funnels folks into the "republican" or "democrat" buckets for fear of their "team" losing.

[Homestar]

8 hours ago, brickhistory said:

I fully expect Pierre Delecto to join them. 

I would be surprised if Romney abstains. He's interested in making the Court more conservative.

[FLEA]

1 hour ago, drewpey said:

The difference between democracy and mob rule is the legality of their actions.  Everything I mentioned has a legal and fair process and precedent for doing so.

Having a government thats representative of the populace has always been a terrifying thought for the right, but you'll survive.  You always do.

You mean like when the majority whites in the country legally decided it was ok to make people of a certain skin color slaves? No thanks. I want as many obstacles to that kind of abuse as possible. 

The way the government is designed is intentional. It prevents a massive swing in one direction from happening too quickly. This prevents a single party from stacking the plays to their advantage. 

Even with a surpreme court nomination and all young conservative judges, it's hardly the end of the world for Democrats. 

They will eventually win house and Senate again and can pass legislation to expand surpreme court size and appoint more judges of their own. 

Edited September 19, 2020 by FLEA

[Breckey]

I may be misremembering history but slavery was integral to the forming of the country. The legality of chattel slavery wasn't decided by any democratically elected representatives because members of the Constitutional Convention we're decided by the states, not of the people.

[FLEA]

30 minutes ago, Breckey said:

I may be misremembering history but slavery was integral to the forming of the country. The legality of chattel slavery wasn't decided by any democratically elected representatives because members of the Constitutional Convention we're decided by the states, not of the people.

The point was the majority didn't have a vested interest in upturning it which likely led to it's aboltion occuring decades later than it could have. 

I'll give you another example, Hitler was democratically elected by a Christian majority that really didn't have a problem with his regard toward Jews. 

You can name all kinds of examples in history where the majority citizens decided people outside their demographic were second class. It's the biggest flaw to democracy and one of the reasons out political system is designed as is. 

[drewpey]

1 hour ago, FLEA said:

The point was the majority didn't have a vested interest in upturning it which likely led to it's aboltion occuring decades later than it could have. 

I'll give you another example, Hitler  was democratically elected by a Christian majority that really didn't have a problem with his regard toward Jews. 

You can name all kinds of examples in history where the majority citizens decided people outside their demographic were second class. It's the biggest flaw to democracy and one of the reasons out political system is designed as is. 

Wait...I'm lost...are you arguing for or against me?  I'm trying to follow...so our current system was written to favor rich white dudes and was used to exploit disenfranchised populations, and we shouldn't change it because it could be used to exploit more disenfranchised people?   Your false equivalency doesn't even make sense.  None of what I suggested was in effect back then, yet somehow it's to blame and we shouldn't consider any changes?  The utopia you seek doesn't exist.

If you clutch your pearls at power being consolidated under a singular authoritarian power then keep your head in the sand.  Your government is currently cleansing any investigative or oversight bodies, keeping immigrants in cages and quite literally sterilizing them while none of the checks and balances are checking or balancing, yet you think everything is fine and we don't need to rock the boat...ok sure

 

[busdriver]

1 hour ago, drewpey said:

Wait...I'm lost...are you arguing for or against me?  I'm trying to follow...so our current system was written to favor rich white dudes and was used to exploit disenfranchised populations, and we shouldn't change it because it could be used to exploit more disenfranchised people?   Your false equivalency doesn't even make sense.  None of what I suggested was in effect back then, yet somehow it's to blame and we shouldn't consider any changes?  The utopia you seek doesn't exist.

If you clutch your pearls at power being consolidated under a singular authoritarian power then keep your head in the sand.  Your government is currently cleansing any investigative or oversight bodies, keeping immigrants in cages and quite literally sterilizing them while none of the checks and balances are checking or balancing, yet you think everything is fine and we don't need to rock the boat...ok sure

I started to write something, then I re-read your post, and Flea's.  I have no idea what either of your points are.

Also, you believe ICE is actually sterilizing immigrants in some grand eugenics conspiracy?  The CNN article I could find is a basket of non-specific anecdotes, confirmation bias, and creative framing.  The federal government has too much power, but it isn't a fascistic, all controlling Machiavellian new world order.  It's a giant incompetent bureaucracy lacking accountability.  So just like every other giant bureaucracy.

[Negatory]

8 hours ago, SurelySerious said:

So you don’t think our government is representative of the populous? Interesting, go with data. 

Actually pretty easy. 63M vs 66M, 63M wins.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidential_election

Also, non-voters are significantly less likely to have conservative viewpoints.

https://www.pewresearch.org/2010/10/29/the-party-of-nonvoters/

Say what you want, but it's pretty obvious how the government could not be representative of the viewpoint of the average American. I'm not talking about the American voter, I'm talking about the American. And that's who actually matters.

[busdriver]

28 minutes ago, brawnie said:

it's pretty obvious how the government could not be representative of the viewpoint of the average American. 

Yes.  And it was intentional.  If the popular vote mindset won out, every national political decision would be decided by major metropolitan urban voters.

 

[drewpey]

3 hours ago, busdriver said:

I started to write something, then I re-read your post, and Flea's.  I have no idea what either of your points are.

Also, you believe ICE is actually sterilizing immigrants in some grand eugenics conspiracy?  The CNN article I could find is a basket of non-specific anecdotes, confirmation bias, and creative framing.  The federal government has too much power, but it isn't a fascistic, all controlling Machiavellian new world order.  It's a giant incompetent bureaucracy lacking accountability.  So just like every other giant bureaucracy.

You read CNN for news?  Why bother when you can read the complaint yourself?

https://projectsouth.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/OIG-ICDC-Complaint-1.pdf

No I don't believe in grand conspiracies, but I do believe that administrations set the tone.  The overall lack of oversight and apathy towards detainees creates situations like this where the vulnerable are preyed upon, combined with an attitude of silencing whistleblowers and undermining inspectors keeps people silent who would otherwise come forward.

 

1 hour ago, busdriver said:

Yes.  And it was intentional.  If the popular vote mindset won out, every national political decision would be decided by major metropolitan urban voters.

 

Why should someone in rural wyoming have their vote be worth more than someone in california?  I think going to popular vote would not be as dramatic as everyone thinks.  Republicans still vote more reliably than any other demographic, and suddenly all the (R)s in blue states can have their vote actually count for something.  In the end I think it would still be fairly even and democrats would still be fighting to get people to show up. 

Ranked choice will ultimately cut out the extreme party nominations and you will have better candidates across the board.  People will be free to vote for the most far-fetched candidates and not feel like they are throwing their votes away...and at the end of the day the candidate who wins will have been voted into power by the majority of constituents.  

 

[Kiloalpha]

1 hour ago, drewpey said:

Why should someone in rural wyoming have their vote be worth more than someone in california?  I think going to popular vote would not be as dramatic as everyone thinks.  Republicans still vote more reliably than any other demographic, and suddenly all the (R)s in blue states can have their vote actually count for something.  In the end I think it would still be fairly even and democrats would still be fighting to get people to show up. 

Ranked choice will ultimately cut out the extreme party nominations and you will have better candidates across the board.  People will be free to vote for the most far-fetched candidates and not feel like they are throwing their votes away...and at the end of the day the candidate who wins will have been voted into power by the majority of constituents.  

Because we aren’t a nation of people. We’re a nation of states. Quick primer on the past:

In 1777 we created the Articles of Confederation, during which the states largely acted as their own countries, with a small federal government for the purpose of war and certain aspects of trade. They actually used the term “League of Friendship,” to describe it.

Didn’t last long for people to see issues with it, and by 1789 we replaced it with the Constitution, which still is a union of states (United States, after all), but with a stronger federal government. So the states, in their sovereignty, gave a little more (but not all) of their power to the federal government. Check enumerated vs reserved powers if you want info on that.

Back to the point, that history is why each state has to elect a candidate for President via the electoral college, not a simple plurality of the population. Because the states allowed for the government to exist. Not the people.

A worthy compromise is taking away winner-take-all states in the Electoral College. But a direct vote is a dissolution of federalism. “But it’s not democratic!?” Is the typical response. We aren’t a direct democracy. There hasn’t been a pure one since Greece (and look at how that one worked out). We have a Constitutional republic.

[Homestar]

3 hours ago, Kiloalpha said:

We have a Constitutional republic.

If we can keep it.

[jrizzell]

Fair enough, I see your side of it. My question is how do we ever get back to more efficient, less partisan politics when both sides are such babies?

Term limits. You have people that have been in DC politics for 30-45 years. They’re are crooks, D’s and R’s. After 20 years, you’re done.

[Scooter14]

Term limits. You have people that have been in DC politics for 30-45 years. They’re are crooks, D’s and R’s. After 20 years, you’re done.

20? I’d say more like 10.

[brabus]

Dissolving the electoral college is naive and will not solve problems, it’ll create more. We don’t need to do all of these significant system altering ideas, we simply need term limits. Don’t even give the Pelosis or the McConnells a chance to become “political rulers,” make sure the AOCs are just an insignificant stain on the political map for a few years, etc. This one change would absolutely crush the level of partisan politics we see nowadays. We’d also see candidates who are in line with the framer’s intent...rep the people for 6-9 years, then GTFO and go back to being whatever you were previously. Policy making and voting would be based on what’s best, not on how to get re-elected for the 10th time. Kickbacks, etc. would likely be less because nobody has enough time to make it “high” and stay there in politics...the return on kickbacks/bribes/back door deals would be substantially less, and so goes the incentive to do them. 

[N730]

Dissolving the electoral college is naive and will not solve problems, it’ll create more. We don’t need to do all of these significant system altering ideas, we simply need term limits. Don’t even give the Pelosis or the McConnells a chance to become “political rulers,” make sure the AOCs are just an insignificant stain on the political map for a few years, etc. This one change would absolutely crush the level of partisan politics we see nowadays. We’d also see candidates who are in line with the framer’s intent...rep the people for 6-9 years, then GTFO and go back to being whatever you were previously. Policy making and voting would be based on what’s best, not on how to get re-elected for the 10th time. Kickbacks, etc. would likely be less because nobody has enough time to make it “high” and stay there in politics...the return on kickbacks/bribes/back door deals would be substantially less, and so goes the incentive to do them. 

It just sucks we are reliant on the crooks up there to write and pass a law or Amendment that would take away their jobs.

Major changes that benefit the people are sadly a thing of the past. We don't have enough (if any) high level politicians that view their jobs as service to the country. They are not willing to do something that will make their lives a good bit worse to greatly improve the country.

Sent from my SM-N975U using Baseops Network mobile app

[busdriver]

6 hours ago, drewpey said:

You read CNN for news?  Why bother when you can read the complaint yourself?

https://projectsouth.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/OIG-ICDC-Complaint-1.pdf

No I don't believe in grand conspiracies, but I do believe that administrations set the tone.  The overall lack of oversight and apathy towards detainees creates situations like this where the vulnerable are preyed upon, combined with an attitude of silencing whistleblowers and undermining inspectors keeps people silent who would otherwise come forward.

The complaint is gross of course, and CNN's "main" non opinion article on this one is actually pretty close, it's just harder to find.  But it's still an anecdote laundry list without/before an investigation made by people who are trying to find this kind of stuff.  Their sources are people who have been detained/in jail/in cages, which I assume is like every other situation like that that I've been in (deployments, SERE, etc) where some of the craziest shit is "known to be true."  There's almost always a chunk of truth in all of it, but there's also a crap load of missing information and straight up fiction.

But your comment makes it seem like you've already decided it's legitimate enough that you're willing to say that our government is currently, literally sterilizing detained illegal immigrants.  If a single instance of a hysterectomy would validate your thought, then ok I guess.

6 hours ago, drewpey said:

Why should someone in rural wyoming have their vote be worth more than someone in california? 

Ranked choice will ultimately cut out the extreme party nominations and you will have better candidates across the board.  People will be free to vote for the most far-fetched candidates and not feel like they are throwing their votes away...and at the end of the day the candidate who wins will have been voted into power by the majority of constituents.  

Put it this way: why is progressive taxation a thing?  Because the "burden" of a flat 15% rate across the board would be higher the lower down the income strata you go.  The policy is intended to consider the impact of it's implementation and "make it fair."  Is it more fair to have every single person's vote be worth the same, or to attempt to ensure that rich or poor, urban or rural, big state or small state, majority or minority, elites or the common man; that each portion of the population will have it's concerns and viewpoint represented?

The state of Wyoming is given a proportionally higher amount of electoral votes so that Wyoming isn't made irrelevant as compared to California.  This is and was a state representation issue.  Urban vs rural is just how the lines ends up shaking out as I think about it.

Historically, a straight up democracy wasn't not done for technical reasons, it was an intentional decision as a matter of checks and balances in the design of the constitution.  The founding fathers wrote hundreds of pages to advocate their positions.  Granted over the years, we've killed some of those checks and balances, and some things evolved in ways that neutered others.  I don't think any of them thought their original design would be stable forever.  But a true democracy was a discarded idea, not an oversight.

Ranked choice would certainly be interesting.  I have a suspicion that they would have a similar problem as term limits.  Namely that the people who know how to get things done in Washington would then become the career bureaucrats rather than the elected.  Term limits for SCOTUS appointments is another interesting idea.

I agree that something has to be done to break the control of the national parties, which I think is at the root of why our politics are driven by national level policy debates; and everything seems to get pushed to that level rather than allowing states to handle more things, which makes those policy decisions further further away from any real hope people have of influencing them.  There's more to it obviously (taxation, monetary authority, etc.), but people are hugely emotionally invested in who becomes the president, and I'd say that level of emotion is vastly disproportionate to the actual impact the president has on any one person's day to day life.

[Negatory]

45 minutes ago, busdriver said:

Put it this way: why is progressive taxation a thing?  Because the "burden" of a flat 15% rate across the board would be higher the lower down the income strata you go.  The policy is intended to consider the impact of it's implementation and "make it fair."  Is it more fair to have every single person's vote be worth the same, or to attempt to ensure that rich or poor, urban or rural, big state or small state, majority or minority, elites or the common man; that each portion of the population will have it's concerns and viewpoint represented?

That’s not what it does, though. It just ensures that Wyoming farmers votes count 3.6 times more than California farmers. It ensures that Wyoming millionaire votes count 3.6 times more than California millionaires.

Your vote should exactly equal every other Americans vote everywhere when it comes to electing the federal government. And good point that the founding fathers literally made this policy up based on how they felt, with no basis in fact. The federalist papers, by the way, were written primarily by two young people who were 21 and 25 at the time of revolution: Hamilton and Madison. They are not some form of higher truth - they are normal people subject to fallacies and the inability to predict future struggles. Idolizing them does nothing to help.

The policy is an experiment that has no philosophical basis in truth, and, while it’s existed for hundreds of years, could still easily be flawed.