Of course not. Hillary won the popular vote. But that's not how the system works. And in fact her team pursued an idiotic strategy of running up the popular vote in states she was already going to win; and ignoring the states that were close. That was simply dumb politics.
toucana » August 7th, 2017, 6:38 pm wrote:Hillary Clinton won the plebiscite. In practically any other democracy in the world (leaving aside Russia and Venezuela for the moment), a candidate who wins either a majority or a plurality of the popular vote is generally judged to have won an election.
Yes but Hillary wasn't running for president of Germany or France. Every US politician and political operative knows that you need to win the electoral vote.
In any event, I don't recall hearing Democrats complain about the electoral college in 1992 when Bill Clinton was elected with only 43% of the popular vote. He did have a plurality. But now you're saying well, plurality counts and not majority. People who argue against the electoral college often don't think through all the details.
Under the US Constitution, the states are essentially independent of the federal government. [In practice the Feds exert control by withholding money. But in principle the states are independent, and the electoral vote is one manifestation of that fact]. It's not like other countries where the states are subordinate to the central government. In any event, whether one likes the system or not, you can't say the Democratic party wasn't aware of how it works. You're making an is/ought error. You're arguing about how things SHOULD be (in your opinion) while ignoring how they are. Which seems to be exactly what Hillary's incompetent campaign team did.
As far as being unpredictable, the same electoral system has been in effect for some 230 years or so. It's only the Democratic partisans who suddenly pretend to be shocked at how presidential elections work.
toucana » August 7th, 2017, 6:38 pm wrote:The president is not appointed by the popular vote, but by a whimsical electoral college whose members can in theory appoint whoever they like, irrespective of how the plebiscite went.
Yes, that is the system. This may be unknown or murky to people outside the US, but it's well known to politicians in the US and it's been this way for 230 years. I'm not debating whether things SHOULD be one way or another. But the system is what it is, it's been this way since 1787 I believe, and everyone involved in US politics knows how the game is played.
Why didn't Hillary set foot in Wisconsin during the general election? Was she ignorant of how the president is elected? Apparently so, since as I mentioned earlier, Bill Clinton BEGGED her staff to campaign in the rust belt states and was ignored.
toucana » August 7th, 2017, 6:38 pm wrote:I'm not American, and I don't live in the USA, so I don't have the partisan sympathies you keep trying to attribute to me. I dislike Trump not because he is a Republican (he was actually a Democrat for many years) but because he appears to be a liar, a fraudster, and a vile example of a demagogue.
But in this post I have not disagreed with you. I will STIPULATE for sake of discussion that Trump is a vile demagogue etc. But can you see that the Democrats ran a disastrous campaign and lost an election they should have won? Why is it you aren't willing to engage with this point?
toucana » August 7th, 2017, 6:38 pm wrote:On current form Trump is almost certain to be impeached and removed from office within a year. His own VP and other figures within the GOP are already positioning themselves for leadership bids in 2020 now matter what they chose to say or deny atm.
This is a different topic.
When your sports team loses, do you just blame the refs? Or do you say, "Well, we need more offense, or more defense, or better coaching, etc."
Are you capable at all of stepping back and seeing the mistakes the Dems made? When a candidate calls her opponent's SUPPORTERS a basket of deplorables, she may well be speaking the truth. But at the same time she's making a simply awful political mistake.
Are you simply not capable of seeing that the Dems made mistakes that contributed to their losing an election to the second most unpopular candidate in history?