8 ms·

Crisis? Oh you mean the change his voters elected him into office for.

dragonwriter 10y ago
If the minority wants a Constitutionally limited government founded on equality replaced with a racist, religiously-biased authoritarianism, and manages to elect a government with that intent over the wishes of the majority, that doesn't make that governments steps to implement it's authoritarianism any less of a crisis.
- sampo 10y ago
  > minority The Republicans have a majority in the House, in the Senate, and they have the President. Is the American voting system so defective that a minority can achieve all that?
  - stcredzero 10y ago
    Yes. By design.
  - qntty 10y ago
    I don't know if this is a rhetorical question, but if not, the answer is yes.
  - true_religion 10y ago
    The idea is that Republicans are a numeric minority, because all the densely populated cities are Democratic and thus the population majority of America is Democratic. However the US isn't a population based democracy, so Republicans hold all majority power in all the branches of government because they have the widest geographical coverage of any political party. Is this good or bad? Well.... hypothetical question. If we had a democratic world government, would it be good or bad that China and India combined would have majority power by virtue of population alone? Are the issues of a far away land more virtuous just for the sheer size of the population there? It can be argued yea or nay---but balancing geography over population is the way the US was designed, without that compromise the less populous colonies would never have agreed to join the union.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - paulddraper 10y ago
      > the US isn't a population based democracy Incorrect. Population corresponds to representation at national and state levels. This is enforced with a Constitutional base. "One person, one vote" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reynolds_v._Sims https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reynolds_v._Sims
      - jrockway 10y ago
        > "One person, one vote" So how come Trump's President? (It's because "one person" gets "one vote" for an elector. But some people get more electors than others, and electors vote for the President, not individual voters.)
        mwfunk 10y ago
        Yep. There are a lot of things in the US political system that give states with lower populations more representation per capita than states with greater populations, and the electoral college is one of them and perhaps the most egregious, given that we're long past the time when it made sense to fear that US presidents would prioritize their home state over the country, if that was ever a concern. The Senate is the most extreme example- every state gets two Senators. So Rhode Island and Wyoming have just as much representation in the Senate as California and Texas, despite having ~30x the population. Of course that's the whole point of the Senate, to counterbalance the representation-by-population of the House to avoid a tyranny by the majority. We may have worked ourselves into a tyranny by the minority at this point though. :( Even the more egalitarian House somewhat overrepresents the more sparsely populated states, although it probably doesn't make nearly as much of a difference in practice. States get a number of representatives based on population, but every state gets at least one representative, so you have the case of (for example) Wyoming having one representative for its 600,000 people, but Texas ends up having one representative per ~800,000 people. Of course, Wyoming has one rep total and Texas has 36 of them, so I don't think Wyoming will be outvoting Texas anytime soon, but still.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    The point made in GP is no less valid if you swap minority with majority. But, yes, the American electoral system is exactly that defective (the distortions in the thread institutions you name aren't independent of each other, as they are directly linked.)
  - jrockway 10y ago
    Gerrymandering has helped. Our democracy is not a simple matter of "candidate with the most votes wins".
  - mwfunk 10y ago
    Well yes, obviously, since that's what happened.

If the minority wants a Constitutionally limited government founded on equality replaced with a racist, religiously-biased authoritarianism, and manages to elect a government with that intent over the wishes of the majority, that doesn't make that governments steps to implement it's authoritarianism any less of a crisis.

sampo 10y ago
> minority The Republicans have a majority in the House, in the Senate, and they have the President. Is the American voting system so defective that a minority can achieve all that?
- stcredzero 10y ago
  Yes. By design.
- qntty 10y ago
  I don't know if this is a rhetorical question, but if not, the answer is yes.
- true_religion 10y ago
  The idea is that Republicans are a numeric minority, because all the densely populated cities are Democratic and thus the population majority of America is Democratic. However the US isn't a population based democracy, so Republicans hold all majority power in all the branches of government because they have the widest geographical coverage of any political party. Is this good or bad? Well.... hypothetical question. If we had a democratic world government, would it be good or bad that China and India combined would have majority power by virtue of population alone? Are the issues of a far away land more virtuous just for the sheer size of the population there? It can be argued yea or nay---but balancing geography over population is the way the US was designed, without that compromise the less populous colonies would never have agreed to join the union.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - paulddraper 10y ago
    > the US isn't a population based democracy Incorrect. Population corresponds to representation at national and state levels. This is enforced with a Constitutional base. "One person, one vote" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reynolds_v._Sims https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reynolds_v._Sims
    - jrockway 10y ago
      > "One person, one vote" So how come Trump's President? (It's because "one person" gets "one vote" for an elector. But some people get more electors than others, and electors vote for the President, not individual voters.)
      - mwfunk 10y ago
        Yep. There are a lot of things in the US political system that give states with lower populations more representation per capita than states with greater populations, and the electoral college is one of them and perhaps the most egregious, given that we're long past the time when it made sense to fear that US presidents would prioritize their home state over the country, if that was ever a concern. The Senate is the most extreme example- every state gets two Senators. So Rhode Island and Wyoming have just as much representation in the Senate as California and Texas, despite having ~30x the population. Of course that's the whole point of the Senate, to counterbalance the representation-by-population of the House to avoid a tyranny by the majority. We may have worked ourselves into a tyranny by the minority at this point though. :( Even the more egalitarian House somewhat overrepresents the more sparsely populated states, although it probably doesn't make nearly as much of a difference in practice. States get a number of representatives based on population, but every state gets at least one representative, so you have the case of (for example) Wyoming having one representative for its 600,000 people, but Texas ends up having one representative per ~800,000 people. Of course, Wyoming has one rep total and Texas has 36 of them, so I don't think Wyoming will be outvoting Texas anytime soon, but still.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  The point made in GP is no less valid if you swap minority with majority. But, yes, the American electoral system is exactly that defective (the distortions in the thread institutions you name aren't independent of each other, as they are directly linked.)
- jrockway 10y ago
  Gerrymandering has helped. Our democracy is not a simple matter of "candidate with the most votes wins".
- mwfunk 10y ago
  Well yes, obviously, since that's what happened.