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The really cool thing about Federalism is that California can make it's own laws about what happens in California. On a Federal level, California has to share

The really cool thing about Federalism is that California can make it's own laws about what happens in California. On a Federal level, California has to share power with the other 49 states. California should not be able to dictate federal policy for everyone else.

danaris 4y ago
And...they can't? Even with fully proportional representation, there is no state that would be able to do anything close to "dictat[ing] federal policy". California has, according to other people in this discussion, about 40 million people. The US as a whole has about 340 million people. You'd need 5 Californias, all voting in perfect unison, to "dictate federal policy" in a fully proportional system. And guess what? California does not, in fact, vote in perfect unison, and no one's proposing a system wherein the people of the state vote, and then assign their state's proportional votes entirely to whichever result in that statewide vote gets 50% + 1 votes. Oh, wait. There is a system that does that. The Electoral College. The one we're talking about getting rid of. In 2020's Presidential election, California cast more votes for Trump than Texas did. (And Texas cast more votes for Biden than New York did, for that matter.) In a fully proportional system, something like a third of California's representatives (based on those 2020 Presidential election results) would be voting for policies that the GOP favors. Once you stop looking at the Electoral College maps and thinking that they accurately depict the political leanings of the country, you start to realize that no state is homogeneous, and the idea that we need to treat them as such is, at best, a hopeless anachronism, and at worst active propaganda.
- skinnymuch 4y ago
  Thank you for saying two big things. (1) how relatively balanced the country is with Dem and Repub divide. I just looked and was blown away how often most states were within a 65/35 divide of voting for president. (2) bringing up a silly system that ends up being electoral college. But bringing up some “silly” alternative is an issue because doing away with 2 senators per state doesn’t automatically mean we just duplicate the house in the senate. Why is that the assumption. DC should be a state and PR should be a state if they majority vote for it too. These should be beyond obvious and agreeable if people really believe in the reasons America exists and democracy etc. When my initial comment went against the current senate set up, I didn’t say disband the senate. I’d be fine with a scaling system of Senators like 12 for California, 10 for Texas, 8 for Florida, New York, 6 for next eight states, and so on. This will lead to an amount of around 200 senators. Giving California 5-6% of the Senate instead of 2% isn’t going to suddenly destroy the farmer in Kansas from having any power.
  - danaris 4y ago
    Indeed. Most of the country is pretty purple. I tracked a discussion on exactly this topic on Tumblr quite recently; here's a fairly representative post: https://fandomsandfeminism.tumblr.com/post/691346737085956096 https://fandomsandfeminism.tumblr.com/post/69134673708595609... It includes two very helpful county-level maps from the 2016 election that drive home how politically non-homogenous our states are.
skinnymuch 4y ago
How would California be able to do that with a different Senator set up? No one has said what the alternative to current senators would be. So how can anything be assumed by what a change with senators would provide? Why would that necessarily change your last paragraph? And thus require keeping the current status quo?

danaris 4y ago

And...they can't? Even with fully proportional representation, there is no state that would be able to do anything close to "dictat[ing] federal policy". California has, according to other people in this discussion, about 40 million people. The US as a whole has about 340 million people. You'd need 5 Californias, all voting in perfect unison, to "dictate federal policy" in a fully proportional system. And guess what? California does not, in fact, vote in perfect unison, and no one's proposing a system wherein the people of the state vote, and then assign their state's proportional votes entirely to whichever result in that statewide vote gets 50% + 1 votes. Oh, wait. There is a system that does that. The Electoral College. The one we're talking about getting rid of. In 2020's Presidential election, California cast more votes for Trump than Texas did. (And Texas cast more votes for Biden than New York did, for that matter.) In a fully proportional system, something like a third of California's representatives (based on those 2020 Presidential election results) would be voting for policies that the GOP favors. Once you stop looking at the Electoral College maps and thinking that they accurately depict the political leanings of the country, you start to realize that no state is homogeneous, and the idea that we need to treat them as such is, at best, a hopeless anachronism, and at worst active propaganda.

skinnymuch 4y ago
Thank you for saying two big things. (1) how relatively balanced the country is with Dem and Repub divide. I just looked and was blown away how often most states were within a 65/35 divide of voting for president. (2) bringing up a silly system that ends up being electoral college. But bringing up some “silly” alternative is an issue because doing away with 2 senators per state doesn’t automatically mean we just duplicate the house in the senate. Why is that the assumption. DC should be a state and PR should be a state if they majority vote for it too. These should be beyond obvious and agreeable if people really believe in the reasons America exists and democracy etc. When my initial comment went against the current senate set up, I didn’t say disband the senate. I’d be fine with a scaling system of Senators like 12 for California, 10 for Texas, 8 for Florida, New York, 6 for next eight states, and so on. This will lead to an amount of around 200 senators. Giving California 5-6% of the Senate instead of 2% isn’t going to suddenly destroy the farmer in Kansas from having any power.
- danaris 4y ago
  Indeed. Most of the country is pretty purple. I tracked a discussion on exactly this topic on Tumblr quite recently; here's a fairly representative post: https://fandomsandfeminism.tumblr.com/post/691346737085956096 https://fandomsandfeminism.tumblr.com/post/69134673708595609... It includes two very helpful county-level maps from the 2016 election that drive home how politically non-homogenous our states are.

skinnymuch 4y ago

How would California be able to do that with a different Senator set up? No one has said what the alternative to current senators would be. So how can anything be assumed by what a change with senators would provide? Why would that necessarily change your last paragraph? And thus require keeping the current status quo?