Off Topic Politics Thread

Heh. I've been waiting for someone to do something along those lines.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-20239694

Don't Panic! RIP

 

I have no problem with people demonstrating. People demonstrated when Obama won as well. IMO, if our political system were healthy there would be MORE (peaceful) demonstrations after elections.

 

That isn't how the electoral system works in the US. You get points for each state you take. Clinton actually had more votes.

 

Perhaps they should have a vote on Brexit and we should for their President....

 

I realize that Trump is exceedingly terrible. But you could say this about any politician in any country, tbf.

It's really rather hard to truly understand who to vote for. Are you an expert in the environment, economy, healthcare AND foreign policy? If not, how do you decide on someone who will influence all those thing? Even if you were somehow an expert on all those things, you'd need to read very long, detailed policy papers and spend hours doing analysis to have a decent guess at the impacts of anyone's policy.

That is why it is so easy to go "low information." You respond to the person who "talks like a leader" or "is for change."

I have no evidence of this, but one of the things I believe that helped Trump was that he was very open in his lies. Many of his supporters didn't really believe that he could build a wall and have Mexico pay for it, and they probably still don't. But it got the point across that he was strong against illegal immigration in 30 seconds.

Whereas the stuff that Clinton got caught up in was seen as more sneaky. If she said she deleted 29,763 emails off her server and it turns out there were 29,764 then that was a lie. But then what's in that 1 email?!? It must be the smoking gun! If Clinton had said "I deleted 1 billion emails off my server, and then sent the server on a rocket to the moon, and the emails were all about how crooked Trump was, SAD!" then there's no expectation of truth.

I liked Obama. I thought he was a good President. But the voters weren't any smarter when they voted for him. I think that quite likely the margin of his win was because people voted for him simply because he was black.

 

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Congrats on out doing us again US.

 

The slight irony about the anti-Trump protests is that many of those protesting (or at least many of those on the #notmypresident bandwagon) were condemning him a few days ago for refusing to confirm he would accept the result of the election.

 

Theoretically that could happen over here too. Just look at the UKIP who had far more of the popular vote over SNP and others yet only got 1 seat

 

Yes our system is certainly not perfect. What I thought was unfair with the USA vote was that if a state voted 51% to 49% then all the votes went to the 51% party and not a split. With our system it's one MP one seat but in the US it's one state and numerous votes to one party, except for 2 states which do it as a proportion.

 

So basically, it's different because certain states are given greater weighting due to size. To be honest it's not much difference to ours except we have split it more evenly. Not saying either system is perfect but your argument initially about the popular vote vs their electoral voting system could apply directly to us and that when you say you wouldn't want it as it's flawed, ours is exactly the same.

 

States are given greater weighting by size, but starting with a base of three. It's an old compromise going back to the founding of the country and -- you guessed it! -- America's original sin, slavery. The rural Southern states were concerned that they would be run over by the more populous north and lose their precious source of industry, and thus a system was devised where senators were equally apportioned by state as a check, and the electoral college votes were based on the number of senators and members of the House each state received. Further, the electoral college itself, where presidents are not directly elected, was created to prevent mob rule and the choosing of dangerous demagogues...oops.

Today, this manifests itself most clearly in the West, where Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, North Dakota and South Dakota account for 16 electoral college votes, the same number as Georgia. But Georgia has a population of 10m, whereas the five above states have half that.

 

don't worry folks! Donald couldn't remember the date of the election let alone the nuclear codes! but if you see him checking the inside of his shirt sleeve start panicking!

 

I live in the states, I have health care and I am not rich.

 

That is my point. Trump is going to change that.

 

Nah, it's completely different.

"Not my President" is admittedly rather obnoxious, as were the "Don't Blame Me, I voted for Bush" bumper stickers back in '89. But those are simply political statements about how you did not vote for the President and do not feel he represents your interests.

There are also the same number of people who are happy that Trump won and crowing it up on twitter and going to rallies. And many of them are being equally obnoxious. Both sets of supporters are equally within their rights to express their happiness, sadness, anger, disdain, or even being sore losers or ungracious winners. That's all part of the system, and it's guaranteed by Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Assembly.

A Presidential candidate who refuses to accept a result and therefore creates a constitutional crisis and/or power vacuum because he accuses the voting of being rigged (with no evidence, or worse with strong evidence that the vote is indeed rigged for his side) is a whole different ballgame. That's NOT part of the system.

 

No point going from one flawed system to another was my point.

 

Of course people are entitled to protest, that goes without saying. You can protest against anything you like.

Thing is, they're protesting against the result of the election when they recently criticised Trump for not saying he would accept the result (because he didn't ever say he wouldn't accept the result). That just looks silly. If things we happening the other way round these people would be all over Trump supporters saying it was ridiculous etc. You're right that Trump supporters are probably just as bad. The polarisation of opinion is really quite worrying.