Oddly enough, this map makes me think Trump is more intelligent than I thought. Educated urbanites made fun of the GOP for having a Duck Dynasty cast member as a convention speaker. In reality, that speaker probably had more appeal to the average Trump voter than any of the parade of elites that the Dems brought out for their convention.
To me, something also worth noting is that prior to the Duck Dynasty show, none of the people behind the company had their well known "bearded outdoorsman" looks. There's a widely circulated photo where they look like your average upper middle class suburbanite.
The point on the Democrats celebrity endorsement is true, but I'd argue that the GOP celebrities, including the Duck Dynasty people, are of the same vein and aren't the rural everyman they portray on the show.
I would actually argue that the opposite is true - that their previous personas were an act put on to meet social norms. They are certainly something of a caricature of themselves today, but is likely a lot closer to how they see themselves.
I would never argue that Trump wasn't intelligent when it came to showmanship. Not just because he just won the presidency, but because it doesn't seem like he was a stellar businessman. That is, he wasn't exceptional enough to have turned his starting position (there are plenty of other sons of real estate barons who we never hear about) into what it is now based on financial intellect alone, at least not in the same way that I perceive Warren Buffett to have achieved his fortune.
At said, a case can be made that just as there is more than one "IQ", we don't know for certain if the kind of intelligence Trump exceeds at is the kind that will help or hurt in the role of the presidency.
You're right, but only because the E.C. gives disproportionate voting power to acreage. You can win the E.C. with only ~23% of the votes if you distribute them optimally.
Things like that get pretty important when it comes to national policy covering all that acreage. $15 minimum wage for example - sounds reasonable in high cost of living, densely populated areas. In rural areas it would be economically devastating.
It's one of the biggest reasons why acreage needs to matter for the Presidency. City, County and State laws can handle everything for the densely populated areas just fine without imposing the desire for those policies on areas with entirely different economic conditions. One of the biggest dangers to the country is counting a high concentration of people in an area who have completely different life experiences and conditions, more than areas that are heavily spread out. Policy does not have equal effects in all places.
It's not much different than saying if India became a US State for some reason that suddenly the 1.3 billion people there should be dictating policy that effected every other US state. It's also why federal policy for just about everything outside of common defense tends to be misguided.
Your argument is fine and dandy until you realize that the same thing you set out to prevent now happens to majority.
$15 is devastating in rural area so you don't implement it, now it is economically devastating in urban areas and affecting the majority. Which would you prefer?
Democracy in most countries works this way. Majority of the people affecting the decisions, even if it hurts a minority. Democracy is not always getting what you want, it is sometimes not getting what you want because most of the people want something else.
I'd prefer policy that's desired and potentially harmful to be isolated, where it can fail in isolation or succeed there. That way other areas can observe and decide to either copy it if it works or avoid it if it's harmful.
It's not devastating to the majority if it happens in one or two cities or counties because it's just affecting those cities and counties. If EVERY major city decided to implement it then it would actually be affecting the majority...but as a bonus since every major city would have chosen it they could also just as easily get rid of it if they found it wasn't working in their area.
At the Federal level where it's blanket implemented across the board all the places that don't want it are essentially just screwed since they're too small to have a say in the matter.
Exactly my thoughts. Let states implement the policy that affects the state and let the country as a whole elect the federal government.
There is no need for some votes to have more power than some other votes based on the states when electing the President.
That would make sense if there were strict limitations on what the federal government had the power to do (aka - the Constitution). The problem is that federal powers have increased due to overly broad interpretations of the commerce clause.
If we fully embrace the 10th amendment and give states the comfortable and regular power to reject federal policy, then this becomes a self correcting problem. Legalization laws in Colorado and Washington for example could be totally trumped by the federal government at any point right now. The fed's lack of prosecution is the only thing stopping it.
Currently the only thing stopping big states from mob-ruling smaller states IS the electoral college. In order to change that, you've got to give states the power to essentially reject the federal government at their discretion...which would be great and would largely reduce the demand for change to the EC by virtue of turning the Fed toothless for any policy that people rejected...which again would be ideal long term so that federal elections weren't some constant struggle to see which half of the country got to impose itself on the other half.
> Currently the only thing stopping big states from mob-ruling smaller states IS the electoral college.
Although the President has a lot of power to carry out immediate action using the agencies under his control, his powers over the long term are extremely limited relative to the legislature and courts. The founding fathers intended that the Senate and Supreme Court be the firewall against the mob rule, not the president or electoral college.
Hamilton's argument for the electoral college in Federalist No 68 was that the electors would be people qualified to be the last firewall against choosing an authoritarian, demagogue, or someone otherwise "not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications" to hold the single most powerful position in the nation. AFAICT he and the other founding fathers considered maintaining a balance of power between large and small states to be a very secondary consideration because that was the purpose of the courts and upper chamber.
> If we fully embrace the 10th amendment and give states the comfortable and regular power to reject federal policy, then this becomes a self correcting problem.
The states have always had the power to do that. From refusing to help federal agencies enforce prohibition to sanctuary cities outright interfering with immigration enforcement to lower courts that routinely ignore higher courts. Even if states could do more to reject federal policy, the Federal government is the only sugar daddy in town that can support their healthcare, social security, defense, and infrastructure habits. The National Minimum Drinking Age Act, for example, didn't set the minimum age to 18 but penalized any state with a drinking age below 21 by stripping them of 10% of their annual federal highway contribution. Now the minimum drinking age is 21 nationwide, despite the fact that any state could have easily ignored the directive at the cost of billions a year in infrastructure spending. As long as the federal government has the money, it has the power to make the states do almost anything it wants.
I see what you're saying but I would also like to point out that it works both way.
States can and will revoke reproductive rights, same sex marriage and other rights. IMHO, Anything that impacts one state directly while not affecting the larger population should be controlled by state, everything else should be federal. This includes marijuana legalization, reproductive rights, same sex marriage, gun control etc. because they are not state specific and majority/minority status of a state has nothing to do with it.
Let's not get hung up on the $15/hr rate issue; the larger assertion is that people concentrated in cities shouldn't have a say in the management of the land that's (mostly) upstream from them, and that's why a Wyoming voter should have 4x the voting power for President than a California voter.
My point still stands. The Wyoming voter now has 4X more say in things that affect a vast majority of people In CA.
States should govern things that affect the land management in this case and federal government should not deal with that.
It seems like moving to Wyoming to have your vote count 4x as much would be powerful thing then. Then again, your priorities might change if you live in Wyoming.
As it turns out, you probably have Democracy in your city, county and state...unless you're electing representatives that will be making the decisions on your behalf for the next few years. Then you just have democratic voting for representatives...assuming those representatives are perfectly evenly distributed across the population.
> assuming those representatives are perfectly evenly distributed across the population.
Which they are not; and because E.C. votes (at least in the 50 states) are allocated according to Congressional representation, the E.C. reflects the undemocratic nature of the Senate.
Exactly. He's said something to this effect as well - that he campaigned to win the EC, not the popular vote. If he had campaigned to win the popular vote he would have done so.
So what did Sarah Silverman have to say about policy? Or any other celebrity endorsing a candidate? Looking for policy directives from celebrities is akin to taking medical advice from a barista.
Unfortunately, the Presidency is won by the most electoral college votes, not by the best policy. Optimizing a campaign for the best policy only wins to the extent that those gains translate to EC gains.
