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Something that might take a little explaining: The US system is set up such that each state has a say in how we elect a President. The whole thing is specifie

Something that might take a little explaining: The US system is set up such that each state has a say in how we elect a President. The whole thing is specified by the Constitution. If you subtract out the votes of the people who live in ONLY the major cities like San Francisco and New York, the idea that a majority of people in the US wanted Trump to lose falls away. Another way to look at this is that the people in this country who were being left behind by policies that favored urban areas turned their back on HRC. And then you have the fact that African-Americans in large part didn't come out and vote to support HRC. When you voluntarily enter a race set up according to rules that have existed for a couple of hundred years and lose, you don't get to complain that the rules are unfair.

yardie 9y ago
I take offense to this often repeated lie that black america did not support HRC. The numbers were the same in 2012 as they were for 2016. And just slightly down from 2008. 93% Middle and upper middle class white women overwhelmingly favored Trump. Black voters are tired of being blamed for the HRC campaign cockup. I believe liberal media is uncomfortable with the fact that their sisters, wives, and mothers may have supported a racist troll for president.
- tfehring 9y ago
  I'm seeing a decline from 93% in 2012 [0] to 88% in 2016 [1], which isn't insignificant. And black voter turnout also fell by 7 percentage points from 2012 to 2016 [2]. Combining those figures, Obama got 620 votes per 1,000 eligible black voters in 2012, while HRC got 525 per 1,000 in 2016. Compare the margin of victory in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania to 9.5% of the black population of each of those states. To be clear, my point is that it's disingenuous to claim that black voters supported HRC in 2016 at the same rate that they supported Obama in 2012. I'm not trying to argue that black America is the reason Trump won, since I don't believe that to be the case for a number of reasons. For one, it's obviously stupid to attribute that much voting power to a demographic that makes up ~12% of the population. And that's made even stupider by the fact that black voters are probably the most Democrat-leaning demographic there is. Like, yeah, there's a chance the result would have been different if black America voted for HRC in 2016 at the same rate that they voted for Obama in 2012. But if white people voted for HRC in 2016 at the same rate that black people voted for Obama in 2012, she'd have won every state. Also, I'm not sure why you're calling out women in particular, when women favored Clinton by a 12-point margin while men favored Trump by a 12-point margin [3]. I've personally lost a great deal of respect for a lot of people since the beginning of 2016 because they supported a racist troll for president, but in my case those people have predominantly been men, and the numbers tell a similar story in general. [0] https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/polls/us-elections/how-groups-voted/how-groups-voted-2012/ https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/polls/us-elections/how-group... [1] https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/polls/us-elections/how-groups-voted/groups-voted-2016/ https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/polls/us-elections/how-group... [2] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/05/12/black-voter-turnout-fell-in-2016-even-as-a-record-number-of-americans-cast-ballots/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/05/12/black-voter-... [3] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/09/behind-trumps-victory-divisions-by-race-gender-education/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/09/behind-trump...
  - yardie 9y ago
    I called out white, middle-class women. A demographic that Hillary is a member of and probably assumed she had a sort of rapport with. Women, in general choose her by 12 points. Her own demographic chose Trump by a 10 point margin and it was even worse with non-college educated women. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/clinton-couldnt-win-over-white-women/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/clinton-couldnt-win-ove...
- PhaseBlue 9y ago
  The main problem here was the lack of turnout not that those who voted tended to vote for HRC. Black voter turnout dropped significantly from 2012 to 2016. "The black voter turnout rate declined for the first time in 20 years in a presidential election, falling to 59.6% in 2016 after reaching a record-high 66.6% in 2012." Source: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/05/12/black-voter-turnout-fell-in-2016-even-as-a-record-number-of-americans-cast-ballots/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/05/12/black-voter-...
IIAOPSW 9y ago
>If you subtract out the votes of the people who live in ONLY the major cities like San Francisco and New York So what you're saying is that your vote should matter more than mine because of where you were born v.s were I was born? Let's turn that around. IF you subtract out the votes of the people who live ONLY in flyover country like the part of Pennsylvania in between Pittsburgh and Philly and the part of Michigan which isn't Detroit etc HRC wins by an overwhelming margin. Actually lets take it a step further. New York and California pay the bills vis a vis the national budget. They subsidize the rest of the country. Therefore they're vote should count for more not less. I know what the electoral college is and I've read the constitution probably more times than you. Just because its codified in law doesn't invalidate my point, which is that you're ok with minority rule so long as you're the minority. With all due respect, fuck you.
- Consultant32452 9y ago
  I'm not the person you're originally responding to, nor am I supporting their position, but your bit about minority control is something that strikes me as odd. The big cities you named have all the money and control all the media. Big bankers from those cities control the fed. I think even with the rebalancing that comes from the electoral college system the big cities still have outsized power.
  - bradleyjg 9y ago
    This is litterally dehumanization. "Big cities" don't have money or control the media or have outsize power. They have none of those things. They aren't the type of entities capable of having those things. Some people within them might, but so what? Why should other people have their votes devalued because they happen to share a geographic area with the rich and influential? That entire notion is at odds with the fundamental precept of individualism. You can throw a lot of obscuring chaff up to try to avoid that, but the system we have is no different than if people got disproportionate political representation on the basis of the color of their skin or the profession they worked in. That's corporatism, not democracy. We have the system have. It's old. It was a great leap forward in a time when much of the world still had monarchies, but is no longer state of the art. It's not unpatriotic to acknowledge that. Love of one's country doesn't require being blind to its flaws.

yardie 9y ago

I take offense to this often repeated lie that black america did not support HRC. The numbers were the same in 2012 as they were for 2016. And just slightly down from 2008. 93% Middle and upper middle class white women overwhelmingly favored Trump. Black voters are tired of being blamed for the HRC campaign cockup. I believe liberal media is uncomfortable with the fact that their sisters, wives, and mothers may have supported a racist troll for president.

tfehring 9y ago
I'm seeing a decline from 93% in 2012 [0] to 88% in 2016 [1], which isn't insignificant. And black voter turnout also fell by 7 percentage points from 2012 to 2016 [2]. Combining those figures, Obama got 620 votes per 1,000 eligible black voters in 2012, while HRC got 525 per 1,000 in 2016. Compare the margin of victory in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania to 9.5% of the black population of each of those states. To be clear, my point is that it's disingenuous to claim that black voters supported HRC in 2016 at the same rate that they supported Obama in 2012. I'm not trying to argue that black America is the reason Trump won, since I don't believe that to be the case for a number of reasons. For one, it's obviously stupid to attribute that much voting power to a demographic that makes up ~12% of the population. And that's made even stupider by the fact that black voters are probably the most Democrat-leaning demographic there is. Like, yeah, there's a chance the result would have been different if black America voted for HRC in 2016 at the same rate that they voted for Obama in 2012. But if white people voted for HRC in 2016 at the same rate that black people voted for Obama in 2012, she'd have won every state. Also, I'm not sure why you're calling out women in particular, when women favored Clinton by a 12-point margin while men favored Trump by a 12-point margin [3]. I've personally lost a great deal of respect for a lot of people since the beginning of 2016 because they supported a racist troll for president, but in my case those people have predominantly been men, and the numbers tell a similar story in general. [0] https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/polls/us-elections/how-groups-voted/how-groups-voted-2012/ https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/polls/us-elections/how-group... [1] https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/polls/us-elections/how-groups-voted/groups-voted-2016/ https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/polls/us-elections/how-group... [2] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/05/12/black-voter-turnout-fell-in-2016-even-as-a-record-number-of-americans-cast-ballots/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/05/12/black-voter-... [3] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/09/behind-trumps-victory-divisions-by-race-gender-education/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/09/behind-trump...
- yardie 9y ago
  I called out white, middle-class women. A demographic that Hillary is a member of and probably assumed she had a sort of rapport with. Women, in general choose her by 12 points. Her own demographic chose Trump by a 10 point margin and it was even worse with non-college educated women. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/clinton-couldnt-win-over-white-women/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/clinton-couldnt-win-ove...
PhaseBlue 9y ago
The main problem here was the lack of turnout not that those who voted tended to vote for HRC. Black voter turnout dropped significantly from 2012 to 2016. "The black voter turnout rate declined for the first time in 20 years in a presidential election, falling to 59.6% in 2016 after reaching a record-high 66.6% in 2012." Source: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/05/12/black-voter-turnout-fell-in-2016-even-as-a-record-number-of-americans-cast-ballots/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/05/12/black-voter-...

IIAOPSW 9y ago

>If you subtract out the votes of the people who live in ONLY the major cities like San Francisco and New York So what you're saying is that your vote should matter more than mine because of where you were born v.s were I was born? Let's turn that around. IF you subtract out the votes of the people who live ONLY in flyover country like the part of Pennsylvania in between Pittsburgh and Philly and the part of Michigan which isn't Detroit etc HRC wins by an overwhelming margin. Actually lets take it a step further. New York and California pay the bills vis a vis the national budget. They subsidize the rest of the country. Therefore they're vote should count for more not less. I know what the electoral college is and I've read the constitution probably more times than you. Just because its codified in law doesn't invalidate my point, which is that you're ok with minority rule so long as you're the minority. With all due respect, fuck you.

Consultant32452 9y ago
I'm not the person you're originally responding to, nor am I supporting their position, but your bit about minority control is something that strikes me as odd. The big cities you named have all the money and control all the media. Big bankers from those cities control the fed. I think even with the rebalancing that comes from the electoral college system the big cities still have outsized power.
- bradleyjg 9y ago
  This is litterally dehumanization. "Big cities" don't have money or control the media or have outsize power. They have none of those things. They aren't the type of entities capable of having those things. Some people within them might, but so what? Why should other people have their votes devalued because they happen to share a geographic area with the rich and influential? That entire notion is at odds with the fundamental precept of individualism. You can throw a lot of obscuring chaff up to try to avoid that, but the system we have is no different than if people got disproportionate political representation on the basis of the color of their skin or the profession they worked in. That's corporatism, not democracy. We have the system have. It's old. It was a great leap forward in a time when much of the world still had monarchies, but is no longer state of the art. It's not unpatriotic to acknowledge that. Love of one's country doesn't require being blind to its flaws.