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I agree the electoral college is not as good as a general public vote, however one counterargument to "side A won more votes than side B!" is that, both sides k

I agree the electoral college is not as good as a general public vote, however one counterargument to "side A won more votes than side B!" is that, both sides knew the rules ahead of time so if the rules were a general vote, then the campaigns would have been different so side B may still have won in that case. We will never know.

makomk 7y ago
This is a particularly important counterargument when talking about the 2016 presidential election, since Clinton seems to have been the only candidate who was actually trying to win the popular vote. She put a bunch of campaigning resources into places like California which would increase her popular vote share but wouldn't affect the result. Trump's campaign, on the other hand, was by all accounts focused on simply getting enough electoral college votes to actually win. This was pretty obvious from their respective postmortems in the press. The idea that a particular candidate was cheated because they won a symbolic but politically irrelevant victory that the competition wasn't even trying for is not a particularly good argument. In fact, it's positively Trumpian; he famously used the "popular vote" argument to discredit Obama's victory.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > Clinton seems to have been the only candidate who was actually trying to win the popular vote. She put a bunch of campaigning resources into places like California which would increase her popular vote share but wouldn't affect the result. What Clinton was trying to do was not so much “win the popular vote” but “maximize down-ballot coattails associated with an expected electoral victory” (and, thereby, assure that members of Congress of her party felt thet owed her.) It's perhaps worth remembering that inability to marshal support from Congressional reps of his own party, particularly it's liberal wing, is what handed her husband two stinging early embarrassments (one of which was defeat on an issue she was the face of): the lesser being NAFTA passing with strong Republican support but widespread and strong Democratic opposition, and the greater being the humiliating defeat of Clinton's signature campaign initiative, health care reform.
  - jandrese 7y ago
    Bill Clinton did pave the way for HMOs. They were a punt, but it was progress in reducing healthcare costs.
    - dragonwriter 7y ago
      > Bill Clinton did pave the way for HMOs. How? I rather thought that Nixon (or Ted Kennedy, the principal sponsor of the bill) did that with the Health Maintenance Organization Act of 1973, the federal law that required employers with 25 or more employers to offer them if they offered traditional insurance plans, almost 20 years before Clinton took office. What Bill Clinton did do after he big health reform failed was HIPAA.
Zigurd 7y ago
It's an argument. But not a counter-argument. If anything, since the election, it has become more clear, and in more detail, that support for Trump comes from a systematically over-represented ageing, declining, rural white population. In other words, the problem isn't that the Democrats didn't grasp the rules. They were defeated by those rules. The rules, and a system that over-represents old white people, greatly enhanced the effectiveness of outfits like Cambridge Analytica. We do know.
- chillacy 7y ago
  That’s a known (unfortunate) side effect of the electoral college, but both players went in knowing these rules, why didn’t Clinton campaign more in the Midwest? Obama did fine there.
- shadowgovt 7y ago
  One assumes if the Democrats were defeated by those rules, they failed to grasp them, given the parties raison d'etre is to win elections.

makomk 7y ago

This is a particularly important counterargument when talking about the 2016 presidential election, since Clinton seems to have been the only candidate who was actually trying to win the popular vote. She put a bunch of campaigning resources into places like California which would increase her popular vote share but wouldn't affect the result. Trump's campaign, on the other hand, was by all accounts focused on simply getting enough electoral college votes to actually win. This was pretty obvious from their respective postmortems in the press. The idea that a particular candidate was cheated because they won a symbolic but politically irrelevant victory that the competition wasn't even trying for is not a particularly good argument. In fact, it's positively Trumpian; he famously used the "popular vote" argument to discredit Obama's victory.

dragonwriter 7y ago
> Clinton seems to have been the only candidate who was actually trying to win the popular vote. She put a bunch of campaigning resources into places like California which would increase her popular vote share but wouldn't affect the result. What Clinton was trying to do was not so much “win the popular vote” but “maximize down-ballot coattails associated with an expected electoral victory” (and, thereby, assure that members of Congress of her party felt thet owed her.) It's perhaps worth remembering that inability to marshal support from Congressional reps of his own party, particularly it's liberal wing, is what handed her husband two stinging early embarrassments (one of which was defeat on an issue she was the face of): the lesser being NAFTA passing with strong Republican support but widespread and strong Democratic opposition, and the greater being the humiliating defeat of Clinton's signature campaign initiative, health care reform.
- jandrese 7y ago
  Bill Clinton did pave the way for HMOs. They were a punt, but it was progress in reducing healthcare costs.
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    > Bill Clinton did pave the way for HMOs. How? I rather thought that Nixon (or Ted Kennedy, the principal sponsor of the bill) did that with the Health Maintenance Organization Act of 1973, the federal law that required employers with 25 or more employers to offer them if they offered traditional insurance plans, almost 20 years before Clinton took office. What Bill Clinton did do after he big health reform failed was HIPAA.

Zigurd 7y ago

It's an argument. But not a counter-argument. If anything, since the election, it has become more clear, and in more detail, that support for Trump comes from a systematically over-represented ageing, declining, rural white population. In other words, the problem isn't that the Democrats didn't grasp the rules. They were defeated by those rules. The rules, and a system that over-represents old white people, greatly enhanced the effectiveness of outfits like Cambridge Analytica. We do know.

chillacy 7y ago
That’s a known (unfortunate) side effect of the electoral college, but both players went in knowing these rules, why didn’t Clinton campaign more in the Midwest? Obama did fine there.
shadowgovt 7y ago
One assumes if the Democrats were defeated by those rules, they failed to grasp them, given the parties raison d'etre is to win elections.