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The people who actually supported Trump are likely pleased with how things are going. He's doing exactly the sorts of things he said he would do. In the US, the

The people who actually supported Trump are likely pleased with how things are going. He's doing exactly the sorts of things he said he would do. In the US, the President does have a pretty crazy amount of power, and recent Presidents have all expanded that power, with Congress's and the Supreme Court's assent most of the time. So now we get a President with no respect for the office or anything, which is exactly how he campaigned, and he's going to abuse that power as much as he can. It's truly frightening. As for democracy, this election actually wasn't an example of it. Millions more voters voted against Trump. The US Presidential election system is obviously broken. It was obviously a ridiculous system before the elections of 2000 and 2016 proved that it was. Believe me, most Americans agree with you that our elections have become a joke. Congressional districts have been redesigned in the past 10 years to give Republicans a huge unnatural advantage in the House of Representatives. And the US Constitution itself gave us the undemocratic Senate and Electoral College. These things are by design. They were built to be safeguards against democracy run amok. But now the GOP has figured out how to make those safeguards work against the country. It's going to get ugly. It could happen really fast. I'm genuinely scared about the future of the US and the world.

denzil_correa 10y ago
> These things are by design. And this is why, I'm of the opinion that the design needs to be changed.
shard972 10y ago
> Believe me, most Americans agree with you that our elections have become a joke. Congressional districts have been redesigned in the past 10 years to give Republicans a huge unnatural advantage in the House of Representatives. And the US Constitution itself gave us the undemocratic Senate and Electoral College. How is the senate undemocratic? Isn't it the same as pretty much every other western democracy? I know it pretty much mirrors what we have in Australia except that we have a lot less states.
- dekhn 10y ago
  The Senate isn't inherently undemocratic, but it's not population-representative. It gives an effective psuedocount of 2 to each state, regardless of its population. For states with very little population (think Wyoming compared to California) it gives them a distinct additional voting strength that is not population proportional representative.
  - jhanschoo 10y ago
    Arguably, the additional representation made more sense before the federal government got as big as it was, and before mass communication and the Internet made large-scale cross-state collaboration and organization feasible.
    - dekhn 10y ago
      I don't really see why either of those would be reasons for or against having senatorial pseudocounts. The idea was always based on the density of urban states relative to sparsely populated states. Any large-scale cros-state collaboration would require a large number of small states to have any impact relative to a CA or an NY.
      - jhanschoo 10y ago
        It's not universally or obviously regarded to be true, but I work from the following premise— difficult and slow communication makes it harder for smaller actors to defend themselves against the tyranny of the majority, as plans get made without proper consultation with representatives of minority interests. With easy information, however, news travels faster, and more elaborate plans can be worked out in the same time, and hence it is easier to account for minority interests.
        shard972 10y ago
        > With easy information, however, news travels faster, and more elaborate plans can be worked out in the same time, and hence it is easier to account for minority interests. I don't see how this at all explains the fundamental ideological differences between states and how less densely populated area's wouldn't be screwed if the system was changed to just be a popular vote or something similar. Sure I can hear about how people in the middle states are dying because they have no jobs and are using record levels of hard drugs, but that doesn't mean people in the cities have to vote with them in mind.

denzil_correa 10y ago

> These things are by design. And this is why, I'm of the opinion that the design needs to be changed.

shard972 10y ago

> Believe me, most Americans agree with you that our elections have become a joke. Congressional districts have been redesigned in the past 10 years to give Republicans a huge unnatural advantage in the House of Representatives. And the US Constitution itself gave us the undemocratic Senate and Electoral College. How is the senate undemocratic? Isn't it the same as pretty much every other western democracy? I know it pretty much mirrors what we have in Australia except that we have a lot less states.

dekhn 10y ago
The Senate isn't inherently undemocratic, but it's not population-representative. It gives an effective psuedocount of 2 to each state, regardless of its population. For states with very little population (think Wyoming compared to California) it gives them a distinct additional voting strength that is not population proportional representative.
- jhanschoo 10y ago
  Arguably, the additional representation made more sense before the federal government got as big as it was, and before mass communication and the Internet made large-scale cross-state collaboration and organization feasible.
  - dekhn 10y ago
    I don't really see why either of those would be reasons for or against having senatorial pseudocounts. The idea was always based on the density of urban states relative to sparsely populated states. Any large-scale cros-state collaboration would require a large number of small states to have any impact relative to a CA or an NY.
    - jhanschoo 10y ago
      It's not universally or obviously regarded to be true, but I work from the following premise— difficult and slow communication makes it harder for smaller actors to defend themselves against the tyranny of the majority, as plans get made without proper consultation with representatives of minority interests. With easy information, however, news travels faster, and more elaborate plans can be worked out in the same time, and hence it is easier to account for minority interests.
      - shard972 10y ago
        > With easy information, however, news travels faster, and more elaborate plans can be worked out in the same time, and hence it is easier to account for minority interests. I don't see how this at all explains the fundamental ideological differences between states and how less densely populated area's wouldn't be screwed if the system was changed to just be a popular vote or something similar. Sure I can hear about how people in the middle states are dying because they have no jobs and are using record levels of hard drugs, but that doesn't mean people in the cities have to vote with them in mind.