6 ms·

It's funny how leftists think that democracy is "broken" because they favourite candidate has lost democratic elections :) The truth is exactly the opposite: th

by mamon 10y ago

It's funny how leftists think that democracy is "broken" because they favourite candidate has lost democratic elections :) The truth is exactly the opposite: the fact that candidate so despised by elites, media, lobbysts has won with votes of common people is a sign that the democracy is working better than ever.

plandis 10y ago
It sounds like you didn't read the article which was more about news bubbles rather than being upset about one candidate or the other. Why not give the article a shot before insulting "the left"?
- zzzcpan 10y ago
  Why do you assume that? The conclusion sounds correct, the bubbles favor candidates that have no chance otherwise, because the bubbles protect people from outside influence. Essentially making "democracy" more "democratic".
  - pohl 10y ago
    I believe, as many do, that the health of a democracy is a function of the degree to which the citizenry is informed. Votes were cast, yes, and a candidate was selected. Those are necessary conditions for a healthy democracy – but not sufficient. The candidate that was selected showed himself during the campaign to be entirely unmoored from factual reality or consistency, and somehow he paid no political consequences for that. This is important for reasons above & beyond whether one's own candidate won or lost.
    - AnimalMuppet 10y ago
      True. But don't forget how flawed Hillary was as a candidate. All the scandals. Too uncharismatic and un-empathetic to really resonate with voters. (It would not be a stretch to compare her to Kerry in this category.) She was completely an establishment candidate at a time of great anti-establishment sentiment. And the DNC put her on the express path to the nomination, which turned off a big chunk of her own party, and thereby (I strongly suspect) reduced turnout. With all those flaws, it's a measure of Trump's weakness that Hillary came as close as she did...
    - EdSharkey 10y ago
      The losing candidate had negatives too, both in terms of messaging (that whole 'basket of deplorables' fracas) and scandals (pay-for-play at State). Also she was in the pocket of the banksters and wall street. Also she was promising a 3rd Obama term. And on, and on ... I don't like all this recent talk about how Comey sunk Clinton's candidacy or some right wing FBI agent conspiracy did her in. She owns all her scandals, it's her job to defend and sell her brand. I took it she thought the presidency was a foregone conclusion and she felt should could let the email thing fester for months with evolving excuses without taking any serious damage. The unanswered drip-drip Wikileaks revelations with DNC bag ladies and Media shills dropping like flies all around her didn't help either. I didn't have a dog in the fight, I didn't vote for either Clinton nor Trump. Both the candidates were super negative. I believe if the Democrats put up someone with a modicum of positive energy (Bernie, perhaps?) Trump would not have been elected.
  - popra 10y ago
    You're assuming "outside influence" is the same thing as "different views". For example, in information ops you only have to use sensemaking on a target (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensemaking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensemaking) to feed little bits of info or ideas that favor your goal. The end result is that the target feels protected from outside influence but it's anything but.
    - zzzcpan 10y ago
      I didn't assume that. News bubbles give people a way to not be subjected to some external influence, which is not to say they are not subjected to any influence, it just makes a choice of which influence they are subjected to more random and different. Traditional media, on the other hand, being less bubbly and exposing everyone to their ideas favors money and gives unfair advantage to elites and not outsiders.
yolesaber 10y ago
More people voted for Hillary than Trump. This is the second time in 16 years that a candidate has received the popular vote but lost the election. It didn't happen once in the 20th century. The system is in fact broken at this point, thanks to voting rights suppression, gerrymandering, and the sheer madness that is the Electoral College. Even Trump himself in his 60 Minutes interview on Sunday said he would prefer a system in which the popular vote determined the winner, even after his victory.
- ewzimm 10y ago
  I agree that the system needs to change, but you should also take into consideration that the purpose of the electoral college is to prop up the power of smaller states that don't have large populations, as minority opinions are important too. How people vote is partially a reflection of who the campaigns addressed. Because it's the electoral college that counts, candidates campaign to win the electoral college, not the popular vote. If the popular vote won the presidency, campaigns would adjust their strategy to address the popular vote. This would mean less focus on swing states and more focus on addressing the population overall. Trump winning while losing the popular vote is the system working as intended, but we can definitely debate whether those intentions were good and if the reasons for the system still apply today. The political situation is very different now from when the electoral college was implemented. As it stands, it's entirely up to the states to change the laws binding their electors to the state popular vote. Eleven have already signed on to National Popular Vote Interstate Compact which would bind their electors to the national popular vote if enough states sign on.
  - hga 10y ago
    If the popular vote won the presidency, campaigns would adjust their strategy to address the popular vote. Exactly, these complaints are based on an unknowable counterfactual, that if the rules of the game were total votes, a Trump campaign based on them wouldn't have won. All we know is that if you change the rules of the game after it's been played, Hillary "won". Plus states generally don't count absentee ballots unless they could change election results (which wouldn't necessarily be for the presidential race), so we're only talking about votes counted, not votes cast. And absentee ballots strongly break Republican, like 2/3rds to 1/3rd from one source I just read.
partisan3883 10y ago
Personally I find this tone to be a part of the problem. "Leftists" aren't saying anything proponents of the other party haven't said when their candidate loses. The discussion at hand is about the imbalance in our election system as a whole. NOT this election. There is ample data to suggest control of our government is not decided by the people put the parties. Gerrymandering and voter suppression are very real things. Both sides engage in it, but IMO the evidence suggests one party is "winning" more than the other because of it. Candidates from outside these parties hardly have a voice thanks to these parties designing the rules around who is included. That is a serious issue that's not being discussed on the whole. Your comment is simply perpetuating the notion that things are fine and the other side is butt hurt. I somehow doubt in a world as complex as ours that's the easy answer. Especially when both sides are implicated by data that they're rigging the system. It's not about a particular candidate for me. It's about a two party duopoly on our politics. If anyone wants to shake up the establishment, breaking that strangle hold is target. Not simply passing a baton to the candidate that appears more anti-establishment only for them to load up on pundits from an established party after the fact. IMO the news media is only a system. The bigger issue has been here for years. It's our short term mentality when it comes to making decisions. Next quarter versus next year. Next election versus next generation. This isn't a problem created by Twitter and 24/7 news. This has been going on since well before either existed. They've exacerbated it, but IMO the underlying issues are our deifying our economics. We don't talk about how to help each other directly. We just believe that growing our economy will magically make the world better. No matter which side a player is on our system at the core right now is against the people. Not just us but our descendants. It's this short term vision of how to solve our problems (which usually means get the stock price up or some similar cold economic metric) and not about what's beneficial outside the bubble that is recent past and recent future.

by mamon 10y ago

plandis 10y ago

It sounds like you didn't read the article which was more about news bubbles rather than being upset about one candidate or the other. Why not give the article a shot before insulting "the left"?

zzzcpan 10y ago
Why do you assume that? The conclusion sounds correct, the bubbles favor candidates that have no chance otherwise, because the bubbles protect people from outside influence. Essentially making "democracy" more "democratic".
- pohl 10y ago
  I believe, as many do, that the health of a democracy is a function of the degree to which the citizenry is informed. Votes were cast, yes, and a candidate was selected. Those are necessary conditions for a healthy democracy – but not sufficient. The candidate that was selected showed himself during the campaign to be entirely unmoored from factual reality or consistency, and somehow he paid no political consequences for that. This is important for reasons above & beyond whether one's own candidate won or lost.
  - AnimalMuppet 10y ago
    True. But don't forget how flawed Hillary was as a candidate. All the scandals. Too uncharismatic and un-empathetic to really resonate with voters. (It would not be a stretch to compare her to Kerry in this category.) She was completely an establishment candidate at a time of great anti-establishment sentiment. And the DNC put her on the express path to the nomination, which turned off a big chunk of her own party, and thereby (I strongly suspect) reduced turnout. With all those flaws, it's a measure of Trump's weakness that Hillary came as close as she did...
  - EdSharkey 10y ago
    The losing candidate had negatives too, both in terms of messaging (that whole 'basket of deplorables' fracas) and scandals (pay-for-play at State). Also she was in the pocket of the banksters and wall street. Also she was promising a 3rd Obama term. And on, and on ... I don't like all this recent talk about how Comey sunk Clinton's candidacy or some right wing FBI agent conspiracy did her in. She owns all her scandals, it's her job to defend and sell her brand. I took it she thought the presidency was a foregone conclusion and she felt should could let the email thing fester for months with evolving excuses without taking any serious damage. The unanswered drip-drip Wikileaks revelations with DNC bag ladies and Media shills dropping like flies all around her didn't help either. I didn't have a dog in the fight, I didn't vote for either Clinton nor Trump. Both the candidates were super negative. I believe if the Democrats put up someone with a modicum of positive energy (Bernie, perhaps?) Trump would not have been elected.
- popra 10y ago
  You're assuming "outside influence" is the same thing as "different views". For example, in information ops you only have to use sensemaking on a target (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensemaking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensemaking) to feed little bits of info or ideas that favor your goal. The end result is that the target feels protected from outside influence but it's anything but.
  - zzzcpan 10y ago
    I didn't assume that. News bubbles give people a way to not be subjected to some external influence, which is not to say they are not subjected to any influence, it just makes a choice of which influence they are subjected to more random and different. Traditional media, on the other hand, being less bubbly and exposing everyone to their ideas favors money and gives unfair advantage to elites and not outsiders.

yolesaber 10y ago

More people voted for Hillary than Trump. This is the second time in 16 years that a candidate has received the popular vote but lost the election. It didn't happen once in the 20th century. The system is in fact broken at this point, thanks to voting rights suppression, gerrymandering, and the sheer madness that is the Electoral College. Even Trump himself in his 60 Minutes interview on Sunday said he would prefer a system in which the popular vote determined the winner, even after his victory.

ewzimm 10y ago
I agree that the system needs to change, but you should also take into consideration that the purpose of the electoral college is to prop up the power of smaller states that don't have large populations, as minority opinions are important too. How people vote is partially a reflection of who the campaigns addressed. Because it's the electoral college that counts, candidates campaign to win the electoral college, not the popular vote. If the popular vote won the presidency, campaigns would adjust their strategy to address the popular vote. This would mean less focus on swing states and more focus on addressing the population overall. Trump winning while losing the popular vote is the system working as intended, but we can definitely debate whether those intentions were good and if the reasons for the system still apply today. The political situation is very different now from when the electoral college was implemented. As it stands, it's entirely up to the states to change the laws binding their electors to the state popular vote. Eleven have already signed on to National Popular Vote Interstate Compact which would bind their electors to the national popular vote if enough states sign on.
- hga 10y ago
  If the popular vote won the presidency, campaigns would adjust their strategy to address the popular vote. Exactly, these complaints are based on an unknowable counterfactual, that if the rules of the game were total votes, a Trump campaign based on them wouldn't have won. All we know is that if you change the rules of the game after it's been played, Hillary "won". Plus states generally don't count absentee ballots unless they could change election results (which wouldn't necessarily be for the presidential race), so we're only talking about votes counted, not votes cast. And absentee ballots strongly break Republican, like 2/3rds to 1/3rd from one source I just read.

partisan3883 10y ago

Personally I find this tone to be a part of the problem. "Leftists" aren't saying anything proponents of the other party haven't said when their candidate loses. The discussion at hand is about the imbalance in our election system as a whole. NOT this election. There is ample data to suggest control of our government is not decided by the people put the parties. Gerrymandering and voter suppression are very real things. Both sides engage in it, but IMO the evidence suggests one party is "winning" more than the other because of it. Candidates from outside these parties hardly have a voice thanks to these parties designing the rules around who is included. That is a serious issue that's not being discussed on the whole. Your comment is simply perpetuating the notion that things are fine and the other side is butt hurt. I somehow doubt in a world as complex as ours that's the easy answer. Especially when both sides are implicated by data that they're rigging the system. It's not about a particular candidate for me. It's about a two party duopoly on our politics. If anyone wants to shake up the establishment, breaking that strangle hold is target. Not simply passing a baton to the candidate that appears more anti-establishment only for them to load up on pundits from an established party after the fact. IMO the news media is only a system. The bigger issue has been here for years. It's our short term mentality when it comes to making decisions. Next quarter versus next year. Next election versus next generation. This isn't a problem created by Twitter and 24/7 news. This has been going on since well before either existed. They've exacerbated it, but IMO the underlying issues are our deifying our economics. We don't talk about how to help each other directly. We just believe that growing our economy will magically make the world better. No matter which side a player is on our system at the core right now is against the people. Not just us but our descendants. It's this short term vision of how to solve our problems (which usually means get the stock price up or some similar cold economic metric) and not about what's beneficial outside the bubble that is recent past and recent future.