President Donald Trump: The Thread

[StrangeSox]

They will pay dearly for their mistake. Politicians before Trump was elected, were savvy and subtle in their ways to screw over people. They are trying to do it now too by saying bs like you will save 4k on your taxes which is false. With Trump, they are openly saying things like this tax plan benefits the rich, the estate tax repeal only benefits the rich, and if you didn't drink booze and buy hookers, you could be rich too.

 

These politicians have never tasted what it means to be poor and they will absolutely get people out of their homes to vote in the upcoming elections. Generally, people are happy with some crumbs but when you take those crumbs away, they will become desperate.

 

Let me tell you about gerrymandering and voter suppression, my friend.

 

Hell, Roy Moore was getting his supporters all riled up last week because Jones' campaign was REGISTERING FELONS!!....which was made legal after the Republican Governor in Alabama restored voting rights for some felons earlier this year. The President of the United States still maintains that millions of fraudulent votes were cast for his opponent last year.

[Big Hurtin]

They will pay dearly for their mistake. Politicians before Trump was elected, were savvy and subtle in their ways to screw over people. They are trying to do it now too by saying bs like you will save 4k on your taxes which is false. With Trump, they are openly saying things like this tax plan benefits the rich, the estate tax repeal only benefits the rich, and if you didn't drink booze and buy hookers, you could be rich too.

 

These politicians have never tasted what it means to be poor and they will absolutely get people out of their homes to vote in the upcoming elections. Generally, people are happy with some crumbs but when you take those crumbs away, they will become desperate.

Yeah, but what would be the point of it

 

 

[StrangeSox]

US to recognize Jerusalem as Israeli capital and relocate embassy.

 

This is going to cause a s***storm in the ME. Turkey has already said it will cut off diplomatic ties.

[pettie4sox]

Let me tell you about gerrymandering and voter suppression, my friend.

 

Hell, Roy Moore was getting his supporters all riled up last week because Jones' campaign was REGISTERING FELONS!!....which was made legal after the Republican Governor in Alabama restored voting rights for some felons earlier this year. The President of the United States still maintains that millions of fraudulent votes were cast for his opponent last year.

 

Let's face it, Alabama will always be a red and backward ass state. I am sure there are states that with people getting off their butts and going to vote could make the difference. That's the ones I am talking about.

[StrangeSox]

Trump's financial records subpoenaed

 

https://twitter.com/guardian/status/9380046...src=twsrc%5Etfw

 

Adam Schiff, ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence panel, revealed that the House R's running the "investigation" into Trump refused to subpoena these records despite subpoenaing bank records for Fusion GPS, the company that produced the Steele dossier.

[pettie4sox]

US to recognize Jerusalem as Israeli capital and relocate embassy.

 

This is going to cause a s***storm in the ME. Turkey has already said it will cut off diplomatic ties.

 

What a lunatic. Seriously, he's just doing things to stir things up and potentially putting the state workers at risk.

[Quin]

US to recognize Jerusalem as Israeli capital and relocate embassy.

 

This is going to cause a s***storm in the ME. Turkey has already said it will cut off diplomatic ties.

 

f***.

[StrangeSox]

Let's face it, Alabama will always be a red and backward ass state. I am sure there are states that with people getting off their butts and going to vote could make the difference. That's the ones I am talking about.

 

Look to Wisconsin. 60% control of the state house with only 48% of the vote and likely enough voter suppression to have swung the Presidential vote in that state last year. Pennsylvania, a fairly purple state, has 12 Republican and 5 Democratic representatives in the US House despite Democrats getting 52% of the overall House vote in the state.

 

We're a "representative" democracy in name only. And some of that difference is inherent to the structure of our political system, as even with 100% neutral districting, voting coalitions that pack themselves into dense urban areas are going to be underrepresented compared to rural voters.

Edited December 5, 2017 by StrangeSox

[StrangeSox]

f***.

 

Maybe this means Jared has finally found peace in the Middle East?!

[southsider2k5]

Look to Wisconsin. 60% control of the state house with only 48% of the vote and likely enough voter suppression to have swung the Presidential vote in that state last year. Pennsylvania, a fairly purple state, has 12 Republican and 5 Democratic representatives in the US House despite Democrats getting 52% of the overall House vote in the state.

 

We're a "representative" democracy in name only.

 

It doesn't really work that way. Perfect example. The City Council in Chicago is 98% Democratic. Pretty sure Chicago is more than 2% Republican.

[StrangeSox]

It doesn't really work that way. Perfect example. The City Council in Chicago is 98% Democratic. Pretty sure Chicago is more than 2% Republican.

 

Partisan gerrymandering is bad regardless of who does it and I hope Kennedy finds a way to significantly tamp it down in Gill v. Whitford. Democrats just have a heck of a lot less of an opportunity to do it at the state level given the Republican wave in 2010, but they do engage in it.

 

Voter suppression is still heavily a Republican project, though. We don't really seem to see the same sorts of efforts--instituting voter ID schemes that conveniently allow all sorts of dem-likely ID's while not allowing rep-likely ID's, closing down R polling places, restricting early voting in R areas, not providing nearly enough voting machines on election days for R areas, purging voter roles of likely R voters, and more--coming from Democrats as we do from Republicans across the country.

[ptatc]

Oh man, Trump really thinks he is a god or something?

Was this ever in question?

[southsider2k5]

Partisan gerrymandering is bad regardless of who does it and I hope Kennedy finds a way to significantly tamp it down in Gill v. Whitford. Democrats just have a heck of a lot less of an opportunity to do it at the state level given the Republican wave in 2010, but they do engage in it.

 

Voter suppression is still heavily a Republican project, though. We don't really seem to see the same sorts of efforts--instituting voter ID schemes that conveniently allow all sorts of dem-likely ID's while not allowing rep-likely ID's, closing down R polling places, restricting early voting in R areas, not providing nearly enough voting machines on election days for R areas, purging voter roles of likely R voters, and more--coming from Democrats as we do from Republicans across the country.

 

You missed the point. Population distribution isn't even, and neither is the distribution of votes within those areas. Chicago is a great example of that. The population of democrats in the city is so evenly highly and distributed that in previous elections there were literally zero Republicans in office, despite there being significantly more Republicans in the city. Democratic votes tend to be concentrated in much higher levels within urban areas, while Republican votes tend to be much more sparsely concentrated, but more widely spread. That is how you see the heatmap from the last election where despite having a much lower percentage of votes, a much higher portion of the physical area of the country voted republican. Short of the creating the long and drawn out ear muff type district like we see in Chicago that extends for long mileages to encompass both urban and rural areas, there is only so much that can be done with a population distribution problem.

[ptatc]

He was absolutely right when he said he could shoot someone on 5th Ave and get away with it.

 

I don't have a whole lot of hope of Congress doing anything to protect the integrity of Mueller's investigation, either. They'll say they're doing their own "investigations" which have largely been fruitless shams to this point and that's good enough. We'll know we're in a full-blown authoritarian state at that point.

This isn't really true. For all of his talk he really hasn't been able to do 25% of the stuff he's tried to accomplish. congress is really serving as the check and balance to him.

[ptatc]

I felt when Trump was elected that Congress even the Republicans would be a nice check and balance. The partisanism of government has now ended the system of checks and balances and we get what we had in the tax bill where there really is little governing any longer. It is just taking what you want.

 

I know I guess i was naive and a hopeless romantic.

 

I understand it has been like this for a while but I felt there were some republicans that had a spine, I guess not.

Again not really true while the tax bill progressed really nothing else has. They are doing a good job of the checks and balance.

[ptatc]

They will pay dearly for their mistake. Politicians before Trump was elected, were savvy and subtle in their ways to screw over people. They are trying to do it now too by saying bs like you will save 4k on your taxes which is false. With Trump, they are openly saying things like this tax plan benefits the rich, the estate tax repeal only benefits the rich, and if you didn't drink booze and buy hookers, you could be rich too.

 

These politicians have never tasted what it means to be poor and they will absolutely get people out of their homes to vote in the upcoming elections. Generally, people are happy with some crumbs but when you take those crumbs away, they will become desperate.

That's the whole idea of elections, if you don't like it, change it. The last election showed that. The dislike of the Clintons was more than the dislike of Trump. Unfortunately, I'm pessimistic there will be better options for the next election. As you said none of these poiliticians are in touch with people.

[StrangeSox]

You missed the point. Population distribution isn't even, and neither is the distribution of votes within those areas. Chicago is a great example of that. The population of democrats in the city is so evenly highly and distributed that in previous elections there were literally zero Republicans in office, despite there being significantly more Republicans in the city. Democratic votes tend to be concentrated in much higher levels within urban areas, while Republican votes tend to be much more sparsely concentrated, but more widely spread. That is how you see the heatmap from the last election where despite having a much lower percentage of votes, a much higher portion of the physical area of the country voted republican. Short of the creating the long and drawn out ear muff type district like we see in Chicago that extends for long mileages to encompass both urban and rural areas, there is only so much that can be done with a population distribution problem.

 

I did edit that in to my original post because you're right, when one coalition packs itself into dense urban areas, that is going to put them at a disadvantage in our district-based system (versus a pure proportional representation-style system you see in some smaller parliamentary countries).

 

But that doesn't explain away the entirety of the effect of partisan gerrymandering. In a hypothetical completely neutral districting map, Democrats will need more than 50% of the vote to get a majority because of these geographical effects, but the partisan gerrymandering makes it even worse. You don't only see ear muff-style districts for Dem advantage, either. Look at how well Austin, TX gets carved up to reach in a grab a piece of the democratic-majority city and then extend far out into the rural areas in an effort to neutralize those democratic votes in Austin as much as possible. Look at how they handled the redistricting in Wisconsin that's currently under review by SCOTUS. They didn't go through all of that trouble because there's no benefit to partisan gerrymandering.

 

One way to help lessen the geographic effect and get back to a more proportionately representative system would be to abolish the hard cap on the number of House Reps imposed in the early 20th century and let the number grow so that we've always got approximately 1 rep per 100k or 200k people. As it is now, we all lose more and more power in our individual votes as our population grows.

Edited December 5, 2017 by StrangeSox

[StrangeSox]

This isn't really true. For all of his talk he really hasn't been able to do 25% of the stuff he's tried to accomplish. congress is really serving as the check and balance to him.

 

If the President can fire anyone who looks into allegations of collusion with a foreign government to aid in an election with zero consequences, we're in an authoritarian state.

[Soxbadger]

That's the whole idea of elections, if you don't like it, change it. The last election showed that. The dislike of the Clintons was more than the dislike of Trump. Unfortunately, I'm pessimistic there will be better options for the next election. As you said none of these poiliticians are in touch with people.

 

Technically more people voted for Clinton than Trump.

[ptatc]

Look to Wisconsin. 60% control of the state house with only 48% of the vote and likely enough voter suppression to have swung the Presidential vote in that state last year. Pennsylvania, a fairly purple state, has 12 Republican and 5 Democratic representatives in the US House despite Democrats getting 52% of the overall House vote in the state.

 

We're a "representative" democracy in name only. And some of that difference is inherent to the structure of our political system, as even with 100% neutral districting, voting coalitions that pack themselves into dense urban areas are going to be underrepresented compared to rural voters.

This is the definition of a representative democracy. The idea is to not let the dense urban areas control everything by pure numbers. Otherwise the rural areas would not have any representation.

[Dam8610]

This is the definition of a representative democracy. The idea is to not let the dense urban areas control everything by pure numbers. Otherwise the rural areas would not have any representation.

 

Sure they would. Minority representation. As it should be.

[ptatc]

Technically more people voted for Clinton than Trump.

Correct. but that's not how the voting works. More representative areas voted for Trump. Therefore the candidates need to concentrate their efforts in more areas other than urban, population centers to win.

[StrangeSox]

This is the definition of a representative democracy. The idea is to not let the dense urban areas control everything by pure numbers. Otherwise the rural areas would not have any representation.

 

Not really? You can have a proportional representative democracy wherein rural Americans, who comprise 15% of the population, get roughly 15% of the total representation. You'd still have the Senate as well, which massively favors rural voters. I see no reason why some voters should get more or less voting power based on their proximity to their neighbors.

 

People vote, not acreage.

Edited December 5, 2017 by StrangeSox

[pettie4sox]

Sure they would. Minority representation. As it should be.

 

This is not cool. Rural areas need to be heard as well. They have different problems than urban folks and they are often hand-waved by urbanites. I don't have any solutions regarding that atm but it should be looked into to see how they can be better represented.

[BigSqwert]

This is not cool. Rural areas need to be heard as well. They have different problems than urban folks and they are often hand-waved by urbanites. I don't have any solutions regarding that atm but it should be looked into to see how they can be better represented.

 

It's called the Senate.

 

Edit:

 

Population of California = 39M

Population of Wyoming = 582K

 

They both have 2 Senators

Edited December 5, 2017 by BigSqwert