You mean when it comes to access to healthcare and jobs and food and a clean environment and things like that? Don't we all assume these things are in everyone's best interests?
Of course not.
You or I don't get to assume what any adult's "best interests" are.
You're being ludicrous again. Those are the major issues of many campaigns, not my assumptions. I'm not going to argue the obvious with you. I'm reading through the rest of your post now and will reply to any reasonable argument or position...
Just because you think healthcare, jobs, food, safety and a clean environment need to be everyone else's top priorities?
I didn't call them "top priorities". I said that they were in everyone's best interests. These aren't a list of interests I made up myself. This is pretty much what everyone thinks.
I do agree with one thing I think you were trying to say, which is that oftentimes it is necessary to trade off one interest against another. For example, Trump believes we should be trading a clean environment for jobs. That's why polluting streams and rivers with slag in coal country is now legal again.
It's starting to sound like we agree again, you were just confused over some of my phrasing.
Given the discussion's history, I remain extremely skeptical that we agree or could ever agree.
You didn't mean "best interests" along the lines of "top priorities..." you just meant "best interests" along the lines of ... "interests."
No, I think in a political context that "best interests" communicates my meaning fairly precisely.
I was arguing against this:
Percy writes:
I think you may be confusing my declaration that some people cast votes that were contrary to their best interests with telling people how they must vote. I'm doing the former, not the latter.
I've already agreed that "some people" cast votes that were contrary to their best interests. I'm sure some voted for Jill Stein and were tricked.
I never argued that Jill Stein voters were tricked, and I don't think that. That just happened to be in the message subtitle when I joined the conversation. I'm glad we're discussing under a different message subtitle now.
My point is that not all 3rd party votes were duped or tricked.
Okay, good point, but why are you making that point to me. That "all 3rd party voters were duped or tricked" is not an argument I ever made, nor something I believe.
What I'm saying is that some people did vote 3rd party, and they did not cast a vote that was contrary to their best interests.
By "some people" do you mean anyone, Democratic or Republican or Green Party or independents and so forth? If so then I have no objection to what you're saying, since it doesn't directly bear on my point.
But if by "some people" you do mean someone in the general political vicinity of the Democrats, which are the people I've been talking about, then you're wrong. To the extent that they cast (or didn't cast) their vote in a way that contributed to a Trump victory they obtained a result contrary to their own best interests. This is self evidently true. A Trump presidency is not something that anyone desiring a presidency somewhere in the neighborhood of the Democrats could ever consider in their best interests.
But since you agree that others can have top priorities or "best interests" different than yours,...
To me it does not seem appropriate to lump "top priorities" and "best interests" together. They are not synonyms. No, I of course do not agree.
...then I suppose you also now agree that:
It certainly can be rational, reasonable, valid, and in someone's best interests to vote 3rd party in the 2016 election.
You often say the same thing several different times in the same post, and you've done it yet again. My response is no different than what I said just above querying you about which people voting 3rd party you're talking about.
Here, I mean "best interests" to mean their most highest of priorities.
I think it might work better if we first agreed on what "best interests" means, which to me is not the same as "top priorities." Modulous is a good example of where this difference comes into play. Obviously jobs and healthcare and environment are in the best interests of Modulous, but for him LGBT issues are top priority.
Not just "something that is of interest to them, and is also a very high priority for most people."
At heart what you're doing is rewriting and redefining what I've said to mean something different than what I originally intended, and then you're asking me to agree with it. Ain't gonna happen.
Today Jeff Flake, Republican Senator from Arizona, announced that he would be retiring from the Senate after his current term. In his retirement speech he was deeply critical of the Trump administration. It is well worth reading. It is good to hear another Republican stand on principle - there seem so few.
If you have trouble accessing the Washington Post website, here's a link to a copy of the speech at the New York Times.
You're asking me to define Democrat (which should be capitalized)? Why?
Someone who agrees with all democratic policies/directions/actions? That would be a self-fulfilling statement you've made, then.
Not something I ever said.
Someone who always votes democratic? Again, self-fulfilling.
Also not something I ever said
I was able to make sense of very little of the rest of what you wrote, not enough to compose a response, plus there's no hint of progress toward a better understanding of each other.
A) I was responding to you saying something about I was wishing for a candidate closer to my views. My response was that I was talking about the electorates views - not my own.
You're using the electorate's views as a proxy for your own. It's really your own views you're talking about.
The radar should be optimised to finding a candidate capable of winning the most votes in the election. Whether or not that happens to be a candidate more in line with my views is immaterial to this point.
But you think such a radar must exist only because you're hoping for candidates closer to your views. And Clinton did win the most votes in the election. It was in the electoral college that she lost.
B) I am not saying that Clinton's loss indicates the system is flawed. I am saying the system is flawed, and this might have contributed to Clinton's loss.
Well, you sure sounded for a long time like you were saying that Clinton's loss indicates the system is flawed, especially with all your talk about the proper radar identifying candidates who would have received more votes.
Also, you keep talking about Clinton as if she were the only one with negatives. Sanders had negatives, too.
I think you already covered them.
Okay, let's remember that I already covered Sander's negatives when we examine what you say next:
Well you making up the results is not an endorsement obviously.
So as I already described, Sander's received less votes in the Democratic primaries than Clinton, and he carried the additional baggage of being a democratic socialist, but you think I'm just making up what would have happened had he been the Democratic candidate.
And your result is possible, of course.
Not only possible, but given what we know by far the most likely.
However, it would mean that, despite Sanders getting more people who say they would vote for him in the Primaries, less people voted for him.
Your own link said that such polls often don't hold up.
This would not be impossible, but it would be unusual if Sanders had the support to win using Approval voting but did much worse in primary election.
Well, you're not alone in arguing that Sanders would have defeated Trump, but it remains a hypothetical. What we know is how near a thing was Clinton's loss.
But the number of people who vote does not go up all the time.
It goes up all the time. Not every time.
It goes up all the time but not every time - you say such strange things sometimes that it makes me wonder if there isn't some difference between British and American English that is causing a communication problem. We don't seem to be getting anywhere.
Let me explain again. Fixating on just the electoral college results while refusing to consider what happened to cause those results ignores important causative factors.
I'm doing neither.
You're doing both. Over and over again you've stated that it was the electoral college Clinton lost and that that's all that matters, not the popular vote.
I have been talking about how systemic issues may be behind the loss and various ways one might tweak the system to minimize these causes going forwards.
You've been doing that, too, but there's no point denying something you've said repeatedly. For instance, in your Message 1416 you said:
Modulous in Message 1416 writes:
The popular vote number has no bearing on the Presidency. She 'won' the popular vote - but there's no tangible prize for that contest. She lost election which is held by the electoral college.
Rrhain is arguing she won the election when in fact she won the popular vote and lost the election. That's what I was arguing against. Rrhain's position, as he stated it, would suggest the popular vote is the election. He doubled down on this position when I challenged it.
Again, your disagreement stems from differing terminology, not the facts on the ground. Is that what you want to argue about, how his terms interpreted with your definitions yield different conclusions? You both know what you mean, why not argue about that?
The part that is different is that I'm not expressing some wish that more people felt more positive about Clinton as a candidate.
This particular subthread is about the people that disliked Clinton and their possible role in her loss.
Yes, so? You stated what you thought my views were, and I noted one part where you had characterized them incorrectly ("I'm not expressing some wish that more people felt more positive about Clinton as a candidate."), then went on to explain why that difference was significant, that it wasn't the number of people who disliked Clinton that I'm focused on, but on the irony of casting a vote to send a message to the Democrats that contributes to the election of the opposite of a Democrat, indeed, the opposite of anyone deserving of such office.
I'm not suggesting there's some clear message. The only point is that there was some small number of people that didn't vote for Clinton because they explicitly did not want to vote for her, but would have voted Democrat for some other candidate. Since the margin was small, that small number of people may have been sufficient to cause the loss. There were not insignificant numbers saying they would not vote for her on the lead up and this was a warning sign that there was a problem afoot.
Yes, I understand all that, but that doesn't change the fact that 2016 was not the right election to register a protest vote. There was too much at stake. Very, very few in the general political neighborhood of the Democrats would have wanted to show their dislike of Clinton by registering a protest vote that got Trump elected. They wanted to show their dislike of Clinton by withholding their vote from her because they thought that a safe thing to do because Trump was so far behind in the polls and not a threat.
It's flaws stand alone. They are there regardless of the results of any given election.
Well, it seemed that you were arguing earlier that Clinton's loss was evidence that the Democratic primary process was flawed, that that was why you thought it was flawed, but if you think it's flawed regardless I don't see any value in arguing the point, though I will say again that the Republicans use a nearly identical process. Since you like hypotheticals it's worth noting that if both parties used the process you prefer then both parties may have had different candidates and the Democrats may still have lost.
Indeed -- about 28% of them get a margin lower than 5%. I'm not focussing on the unusualness of the situation, just pointing out that her absolute number of votes is not important - it's the margin that has more meaning. In this case, it puts her in the bottom 15 of 58 had she won.
I disagree that "her absolute number of votes is not important" and that "the margin had more meaning" in 2016. I think both are significant factors.
What I was actually suggesting was that repeating the argument that Clinton "did not resonate with enough people" or that she "anti-resonated with too many people" does not overcome how many times this has been shown false.
Except it hasn't. By only resonating with the number she did, that put her at real risk of falling afoul of the electoral college bumpiness.
Except that it has been shown false. You conclude that "too many" people (however many that is) didn't like her when the reality is that it is just where 0.05% of the total votes were cast that made the difference. Conclusions like yours from such tiny numbers can't be justified. Had those votes fallen differently and Clinton won would you really have concluded that "enough" people liked Clinton? No, of course not. That conclusion isn't justified, either.
It also speaks poorly of your position that you feel forced to make claims of fine distinction that saying "she did not resonate with 'people'" communicates significantly different information than saying "she did not resonate with *enough* people".
Blame the opponent who couldn't see the distinction between these two positions that forced me into having to explain it, not me.
Yes, of course, I should have realized that you're never vague or claim distinctions without a difference or are nuanced to the point of oblivion.
Or someone else. The point I was making was that the people that voted for Clinton wasn't sufficient to overcome a) Those that wanted Trump b) Those that preferred Trump to Clinton c) Those that voted for neither, particularly those who would have voted Democrat had it not been Clinton standing.
Yeah, c) is a good part of my main point, the irony of those who wanted a Democrat, just not Clinton, and voted in such a way as to end up with Trump.
We've gone over how picking a single preferred nominee may produce results other than the one who would accrue the most votes.
You're basing this on polls during the primaries that are notorious for not holding up in the main election.
Just Googling around I ran into this random fact: 10% of Sanders supporters voted for Trump. Talk about voting against your own best interests! Our discussion is not taking into account that there's a perverse or at least random element among the voters.
As far as the election - the electoral college is all that matters. Analysis of the results takes into account all sorts of numbers, and that's fine and I've employed both State popular vote and nationwide popular vote in my doing this. I have indeed discussed said popular vote and I have indeed considered causes.
I think it's when you say things like, "The popular vote number has no bearing on the Presidency," (Message 1416) that leads people to think you believe the electoral college outcome is somehow not connected to the popular vote in any important way. So they follow a train of argument based on that, but that's not what you meant, so of course confusion results.
That's why I suggested that you and Rrhain don't need to argue over nomenclature (Message 1428). You both know the difference between the electoral college and the popular vote, and you both know that one is a direct function of the other.
I was also trying to suggest that it seemed to Rrhain (and often to me, too) that you appeared to be placing all the importance on the electoral college and none on the popular vote. The way you phrase things often suggests this, so it's an interpretation that's hard to escape.
We all understand that the electoral college outcome determines who becomes president, but I think that each time you repeat something like (sic), "Only the electoral college determines the president," that it's not going to be interpreted the way you intend, that people are going to think you're ignoring the connection to the popular vote, and you're going to have to explain yet again that you're not ignoring that connection, and then we'll be back on the merry-go-round you allude to later in the message.
What causes do you think we should discuss?
Regarding how the popular vote maps onto the electoral college? The likelihood of further discussion on this topic resulting in progress seems small, so maybe we should just let it lie.
Interesting, but we already haven't agreed on much, so adding something new to the mix doesn't seem like a good idea.
You've been doing that, too
By your own words then, I cannot possibly be "Fixating on just the electoral college results while refusing to consider what happened to cause those results".
You *are* arguing both, just not at the same time. When you argue one it often seems that you do it to the exclusion of the other. It feels as if you're holding too opposite opinions at the same time.
Yes, we agree that voting for someone other than Clinton while wanting Clinton to win resulted in ironic consequences for those people who did this.
I think you were just trying to restate my position, but this actually misstates it. Were you maybe trying to say, "Yes, we agree that voting for someone other than Clinton while *expecting* Clinton would win *anyway* resulted in ironic consequences for those people who did this."?
It really boils down to you saying that the consequences of a Trump presidency today outweigh the benefits of the strategy of protest voting.
Yeah, I guess you could say that, and I think it's a strong position. Certainly every day brings more "consequences of a Trump presidency." He's not just worse than we imagined, he's worse than we could ever have imagined. It does not appear that there's a corner in Trump's future that he will turn and begin to become more rational, more constructive, more compassionate, less vindictive, and less vengeful. The trend is in the opposite direction. He's clearly becoming a worse and worse danger in many realms of the nation and the world. If you haven't yet read Jeff Flake's speech to the Senate I still recommend it. I link to it in a message above.
Very, very few in the general political neighborhood of the Democrats would have wanted to show their dislike of Clinton by registering a protest vote that got Trump elected.
I've asked before; you seem certain of this point. You might well be right, but do you have anything to back it up with?
It's just simple logic. I agree that there are confounding factors, like irrational voters and voters whose main issues don't break down along the familiar Democrat/Republican lines. I used to feel that factors like these were small enough to be safely ignored, but after learning that 10% of Sanders supporters voted for Trump I'm no longer so sure.
Then I will reply again that wouldn't it be great if the DNC used a better one than the Republicans?
We've covered this ground before, and my answer hasn't changed. I'm not a Democrat (neither are you in your role as a hypothetical American, and neither is Sanders). I hope both parties bring the best possible candidates forward.
I disagree that "her absolute number of votes is not important" and that "the margin had more meaning" in 2016. I think both are significant factors.
By 'important' I was referring to the context of comparing her to historical elections. That she got more votes than Reagan isn't meaningful. If she had gotten less votes than Reagan - that'd be an meaningful point in a historical comparison.
True, but I thought I was clear about this earlier. This time explaining using your example, you don't want to go back as far as Reagan, that was over a quarter century ago, but you can probably go back the last 5 or 6 elections without population increases overwhelming the comparison.
We can also raise the point that Trump's popular vote margin as a percent was very small relative to history, which is also meaningful - in the context of Trump's mandate of the people etc. His electoral college percent was also pretty small compared historically, which also speaks to his mandate regarding the States.
True.
Except that it has been shown false. You conclude that "too many" people (however many that is) didn't like her when the reality is that it is just where 0.05% of the total votes were cast that made the difference. Conclusions like yours from such tiny numbers can't be justified.
Well, given that her Supporters lived where they live, and we're not imagining a hypothetical scenario of voters that could have just moved around -if 0.1% more had liked her enough to vote, either globally or locally in those right places - her victory would have been assured. So again, I don't see how it is false.
It's false because the number of voters vary randomly by far greater percentages than 0.05%. It's false because it was only the week before the election that Comey reopened the email server investigation. It's false because it was Clinton who was targeted by Russian generated fake news.
Speaking of fake news, you're probably not even aware of the extent to which it influenced your opinions about Clinton. I know my own opinions were affected. It wasn't that I believed any specific story or stories, and in fact I was probably unaware of many of them since I'm not a social media user, but I do remember being aware of so much negative Clinton news that it felt like one of those "where there's smoke there's fire" situations. I don't think anyone was immune to the flood of fake news.
My point has been that had she had more support she could have lessened the impact that luck would have had.
This is true.
I've argued that in order to get over the bumpiness of the electoral college, or generally of luck, she needed more.
Yes, more would definitely have helped.
The question one is left wondering then is, what percent of Clinton's primary supporters would have voted for Trump had Sanders won the nomination?
On a rational level I know that some Clinton voters would have switched to Trump were Sanders the Democratic nominee, but I can't ignore the insanity that is Trump and so can't see how anyone in the political vicinity of the Democrats and in their right mind could ever vote for Trump.
It's really the electorates. Your opinion is erroneous.
This subdiscussion began when you said in Message 1404 in reference to the Democrats selecting a better candidate in 2020:
Modulous in Message 1404 writes:
So conceivably whoever that is, may well have been a strong enough pick to do better than Clinton.
That's your opinion, not the electorate's. You hope there's a type of "radar" available in the form of an improved primary process that will identify this person. And you hope that because you want the Democrats to select a candidate that you can vote for. And that makes no sense because you're not really a Democrat - they're too far to the right for you. What you actually hope for is what Sander's (also not a Democrat) was trying to do, come in from the far left and win the Democratic nomination.
What you really want, and the opinion you have that we're really talking about, is a political party of national prominence that is a fair degree to the left of the Democrats.
The radar exists, I'm just arguing for making it more precise.
Well, maybe those are the words you're saying, but what you really want is a radar that's biased toward the left.
I'm hoping it will better detect if and when the Party swings leftwards but I accept willingly the opposite can and occasionally at least, will, happen.
Yes, you consider a gradual leftward swing inevitable, with the occasional setback.
...it was recent and the second place candidate in the primaries did comparably well - 55:43...
60/40 by delegate count, which is analogous to the electoral college - and that's all that's important, right?
I doubt the phrase 'all the time' meaning 'often', 'regularly', 'routinely', 'frequently' is only a British thing.
D'oh! Sorry, my interpretation of how you were using the phrase must have gone astray somehow.
We don't seem to be getting anywhere.
Can we agree that the fact that vote numbers go up, by the degree that they do, with the regularity they do, means that absolute vote numbers are not a suitable tool of comparison with over a century of vote results?
When I said we don't seem to be getting anywhere I was referring to far more than just this numbers thing, but about this specifically, yes, of course, I said as much in my previous message.
That this means percentages are better tools for doing historical comparisons?
Yes, of course. The statement about Clinton receiving the 2nd most vote total in history was a response to the charge that "too many" disliked her, which was not a statement expressed as a percentage. Obviously many liked her plenty well enough to vote for her.
By doing better, I mean 'get more votes'. To get more votes you need the electorate to get behind you. It's very much the electorate to which I am referring.
The electorate produces the election result, but that's obvious and not what we're talking about. Your opinion, what we're really talking about, is that Clinton was a weaker candidate than Sanders and that a better primary process would have selected Sanders who you believe had a better chance of beating Trump.
But the radar I am talking about is one which better assesses, not my view, but where the votes will fall.
Well, sure, we all want that, but your criticism of the current process and the way you assess evidence is rooted in the fact that you think you know a process that would have selected the "right" candidate. Would you be pushing this same process if you believe it would have selected the "wrong" candidate? You mentioned IRV voting earlier, which has strengths that approval voting does not, since approval voting can be gamed by the voters (for example, by knowing that making a second choice may weaken the chances of their first choice) and the possibility that the majority's top choice could lose. For reasons like these I just can't escape the notion that you're pushing approval voting because you think it would have yielded the results you wanted.
No. I want the electorate to be biased towards the left and for a radar to pick that up. But if it is biased to the right, the radar should equally pick that up. I'm not sure why you are taking my explicitly saying this repeatedly and deciding you know my position better, but please - here it is again:
I'm repeating this because your position seems driven more by your belief that approval voting would have yielded the "right" candidate for you rather than by your desire for a more accurate primary system. It's not that I don't understand what you're saying. It's that I think your opinions are influenced by what you believe the "right" outcome should have been.
Yes, you consider a gradual leftward swing inevitable, with the occasional setback.
That's right...and?
It's not inevitable, especially if leftward swings are wealth driven.
60/40 by delegate count, which is analogous to the electoral college - and that's all that's important, right?
For victory in the present DNC system, yes it is.
But that's not really relevant to what I was talking about, which is using the Primary voters' approval to approximate the electorate's approval.
How is it not relevant? Don't you want an accurate reflection of voter desire at the convention level, too? Not that changes are possible in even the remotely near future, but you want to be consistent.
Can we agree that the statement 'Clinton won the election' is false and move on, then?
Sure.
Regarding how the popular vote maps onto the electoral college? The likelihood of further discussion on this topic resulting in progress seems small, so maybe we should just let it lie.
As you like. Just don't criticize me for not addressing causes if you demur from discussing them when I explicitly do, please.
You asked me, "What causes do you think we should discuss?" in my response to me saying how often "you've stated that it was the electoral college Clinton lost and that that's all that matters, not the popular vote." That wasn't a criticism of you "for not addressing causes." I truly doubt that a further investment in time discussing that subtopic would be fruitful. That's all I was saying.
I'm not trying to unilaterally shut down discussion of that subtopic. If you feel differently then say something that hints at an avenue of progress.
Again, as you like. I thought we had some area of agreement in this area, but if you don't want to discuss new things, and you want to avoid going over the same things again, it does rather limit us.
Uh, okay. But haven't we both already made our points pretty clear? Isn't this already a pretty long digression from the main topic? I mean, I'm game for further discussion of the subtopic if there's more to discuss, but getting even more into the details of the electoral college seems pretty distant from that subtopic.
I think this may be an artefact of you taking my arguments one at a time in exclusion to others - and not attempting to bind my positions together into an overarching position.
I see the opposite, and likely the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
I don't vote against candidates, I vote for them.
2016 was the wrong election for protest votes.
I think you were just trying to restate my position, but this actually misstates it. Were you maybe trying to say, "Yes, we agree that voting for someone other than Clinton while *expecting* Clinton would win *anyway* resulted in ironic consequences for those people who did this."?
No, I said it the way I meant it. Are you saying you disagree with the area of agreement I attempted to find?
Yes, of course I disagree with your attempt to outline an area of agreement, though I appreciate the effort. But it doesn't even make sense for someone to vote "for someone other than Clinton while wanting Clinton". My rewording of what you said accurately reflects my opinion.
It's just simple logic
Hrm. I'm not seeing the logic. It seems seated in assumptions or opinions about the electorate. Without an empirical backing, logic has the habit of being used to confirm what you believed, rather than discovering truth. That's why the rationalists ended up making way for the rational empiricists as the preferred philosophy.
I think you *do* see the logic, you're just raising a spurious complaint. I can firm up the phrasing a little bit: Very, very few in the general political neighborhood of the Democrats who were thinking rationally would have wanted to show their dislike of Clinton by registering a protest vote that helped contribute to Trump's election.
It doesn't? I thought your point was that there were a bunch of people that voted for someone other Clinton as a protest even though they wanted Clinton to win and thought that a protest vote was safe because they expected her to.
I'm surprised that this misunderstanding has persisted undetected for so long. The way you phrase it doesn't even make sense to me. If they were protesting by not voting for Clinton even though they wanted Clinton, why on earth would they vote against someone they wanted? And if it wasn't Clinton they were protesting, then what was it? How was it not obvious from all the discussion about "too many" disliking Clinton that it was Clinton as the Democratic nominee they were protesting? And I repeated my statement about the irony so many times that you even noted that I was overdoing it. So there's more irony for you - despite the number of times I said it, I apparently never said it well enough or often enough to be understood as I intended.
But I'll say it again, differently this time. There were those in the general political vicinity of the Democrats who wanted a Democrat elected, but not Clinton. That Clinton *would* be elected regardless of how they voted seemed a foregone conclusion because of all the polls showing Clinton with a healthy lead. Even though they would have liked a different Democratic candidate than Clinton, they preferred Clinton to Trump by an extreme degree for obvious reasons. Clinton was a Democrat, Trump was a Republican. Clinton had elected and appointed government experience, Trump didn't. Clinton was sane, Trump was not. A Clinton presidency would be "okay", a Trump presidency would be a disaster. Believing a Clinton election assured they felt safe in registering their objection to Clinton by voting for someone else like Stein or Johnson or Sanders, or by not voting at all. The irony is that their protest contributed (we don't know by how much) to the election of the candidate they detested and viewed as an apostasy against responsible government.
It kind of ruins the irony if they voted against her, expected her to win, but didn't want her to win.
There's a big difference between, on the one hand, settling for Clinton when the alternative is Trump, and on the other hand wanting Clinton over all others. That they didn't want Clinton is why they used their vote to protest Clinton. The irony, again, is that their protest contributed to the election of the candidate they loathed when they could have had a candidate who they weren't happy about but who would have been just fine because Clinton shared most of their political views, and wasn't deranged.
I mean, I suppose academically there's an irony to mine there - but this group includes a large percentage of Trump voters so they got what they intended in the immediate sense.
I think you're referring to a different group than I am. Those in the general political region of the Democrats did not vote for Trump in anything approaching "a large percentage".
The original issue is, of all the protest voters how does this number compare to the number that thought a protest vote was 'safe'?
About equal. The polls leading up the election gave everyone the impression that Clinton's election was assured. That Trump won came as a great surprise.
The point being - were there enough 'principled' protest voters to have made a difference?
Because of the misunderstanding I can't be sure how you're defining the group "'principled' protest voters", and so I can't respond meaningfully. But for the way I've defined this group of Clinton protest voters I will say that it would be difficult to ever know for sure. That's why I said these protest votes contributed to the election of Trump, not caused it. But that they may have swung the election was never my point. My point was merely highlighting the irony of registering an innocent protest vote to make a small point that in the end may have contributed to the election of a monstrosity.
The electorate produces the election result, but that's obvious and not what we're talking about
I am explicitly talking about the electorate. I've said so many times.
You are explicitly referencing the electorate in making your point. You're not talking about the electorate.
My opinion does not decide the election.
It contributes, not decides. I think we agree.
My point was that there may be other selection methods that find candidates that will get more votes - whether that be moving to the right or the left.
It is this opinion that we're talking about and that I've referring to. I think your opinions may be influenced by the particulars of the 2016 election, and that your opinions may be different if 2016 election had come out differently.
The 'right' candidate is the one that gets the maximum number of votes possible in the Presidential election for that Party at that time. If it can be shown that the particular method I have highlighted does worse at doing this, I will recant.
No one's trying to produce evidence to force you to recant. I'm sure a high proportion of people are in favor of improved candidate selection methods were there solid evidence of their superiority. I just can't help but feel that your favoring of approval voting has more to do with your belief that it would have selected Sanders over Clinton than anything else.
IRV may also be good - but only if there are multiple nominees running. In a two person race it's not much different than the present system.
But it *is* different in a crucial way, which I get to next.
I also don't think it [IRV] detects the danger of protest voting {or non-voting for a disliked candidate} in the Presidential election either, which was the reason I raised Approval Voting.
Interesting. It seems obvious to me that the opposite is true, that ranking candidates provides better information about the potential for protest voting. Ranking candidate A 1 and candidate B 2 is a different message from ranking candidate A 1 and not ranking candidate B at all. In the first case you're saying that you prefer candidate A, but candidate B is okay, too. In the second case you're saying that you prefer candidate A and you reject candidate B.
It's not inevitable, especially if leftward swings are wealth driven.
I think I already agreed with this.
Yes, you did already agree with this, and I figured you'd remember that, so I didn't mention it. But in retrospect it seems unlikely that you would have realized that was what I was referring to, so when you replied, "That's right...and?" I filled in the blank just to remove the ambiguity.
How is it not relevant? Don't you want an accurate reflection of voter desire at the convention level, too? Not that changes are possible in even the remotely near future, but you want to be consistent.
Feel free to explain your reasoning.
It's not anything complicated. I was only making the point that having an election for delegates to a convention who then cast their votes for candidates, rather than a direct popular vote, is the same vulnerability as the electoral college. Even worse, after the first ballot the delegates are freed from their commitment to their candidate, further removing the connection to the popular vote.
My point was that there wasn't much in it regarding the primary voters which suggests a change in selection process has a reasonable chance of impacting the results of the Primaries.
So you see approval voting or IRV in the primaries as an improvement in the election of delegates to the convention, but bypassing the delegates altogether you don't see as an improvement.
The pledged delegates follow this result - so if the Primary results been different, the pledged delegate results would also likely be different.
This is self evidently true, but it doesn't address the issue of better reflecting at the convention level the will of the people. I just find it inconsistent that you want improvements in the election of delegates to the convention, but that's as far as your desire for improvements will go. You don't want to project those improvements forward into the convention.
Of course, there is the problem of how you hold a convention with no delegates. Certainly wouldn't make good television.
But I'd still agree that the selection process is flawed.
So you think. All psychological evidence says that people know their own minds much less well than they think. Important decisions are often influenced by the smallest things. We tend to work backwards from our current opinion toward rationalizations of them. Of course, we can never know the true inner workings of the human mind. Was your opinion about approval voting shaped by the outcome of the 2016 election, or would you truly hold it regardless? Who knows, including you. But your belief that approval voting would have resulted in your preferred candidate being nominated seems more than coincidence to me.
I just can't help but feel that your favoring of approval voting has more to do with your belief that it would have selected Sanders over Clinton than anything else.
No. It's quite possible it wouldn't have. If it would have, however, one can argue he would have been a better pick.
Say what? Doesn't this contradict your previous paragraph that you would have held the same opinion that "the selection process is flawed" regardless of election outcome?
Honestly, the more you explain your opinions, the more I despair of ever understanding them.
Maybe so, but it's weak. The second place votes are not considered if one candidate gets over 50% - in a two person race this is almost inevitable. This being the case, the fact that someone didn't pick a second preference might be explained as a function of it being futile to do so with regards to the results rather than a expression of them disliking them so much they wouldn't vote for them for President.
It's not weak if the results feed directly forward into the nominating conventions instead of resulting in delegates. And of course there's the additional advantages when there are more than two candidates.
Modulous writes:
Percy writes:
Modulous writes:
Percy writes:
How is it not relevant? Don't you want an accurate reflection of voter desire at the convention level, too? Not that changes are possible in even the remotely near future, but you want to be consistent.
My point was that there wasn't much in it regarding the primary voters which suggests a change in selection process has a reasonable chance of impacting the results of the Primaries.
So you see approval voting or IRV in the primaries as an improvement in the election of delegates to the convention, but bypassing the delegates altogether you don't see as an improvement.
I said no such thing.
Sure you did. Not in the same words I did, but words that definitely did not endorse the idea of changing the process at the convention level. Read the part that starts with you saying, "My point was that there wasn't much in it..." I included it in the quote chain above.
But yes, by all means let's add the delegate system to the list of systemic issues that might be possible issues.
Okay, great. This leaves me puzzled over the "I said no such thing" objection that seemed to be expressing disagreement, but okay.
This is certainly an area where not living in the USA puts me at a disadvantage. What would be the actual problem with removing the delegates? In what way do they provide 'entertainment'? Is this down to the controversial nature where they change their views?
The smilie I included was to indicate that I wasn't raising a serious point, just noting that the thought brought a humorous image to mind. The people you see in the audience on televised coverage of the nominating conventions? They're the delegates and associated hangers on. Here's an image from the 2016 Republican National Convention:
Without delegates the convention halls would be mostly empty and the conventions could be held in large conference rooms.
To give a British perspective, one you will almost certainly be unaware of - the Labour Party leader nomination process. Unlike with Presidential elections, the Party leader is chosen whenever it is needed.
Over the years I've been able to divine the broad outlines of the British election process from news coverage. For example, this past summer there was a lot of coverage here in the US about whether the PM, May, might have made a tactical error when she called for elections earlier this year.
I'm pretty sure what I said basically captures what you were saying doesn't it?
No, and I'll take another swing at explaining why. Here's you're original phrasing from your Message 1454 of what you thought I was saying:
Modulous in Message 1454 writes:
Yes, we agree that voting for someone other than Clinton while wanting Clinton to win resulted in ironic consequences for those people who did this.
They're "voting for someone other than Clinton while wanting Clinton to win" makes no sense. It leaves out too much. I could only assent to agreement to that phrasing if the couple small changes I suggested are made: "Yes, we agree that voting for someone other than Clinton while *expecting* Clinton would win *anyway* resulted in ironic consequences for those people who did this."
Probably the part of your phrasing I disagree with most is where you describe these people as "wanting Clinton to win." It's highly misleading. It's not true that they wanted a Clinton win, else they would have voted for her. What is probably much more accurately descriptive of these people is that they were willing to settle for a Clinton win, given the alternative, but there's no hint of this in your phrasing. Or if you really insist on using the word "wanted" then you could say they wanted a Sanders or Stein or Johnson win over a Clinton win, but they wanted a Clinton win over a Trump win, but there's no hint of this either in your phrasing. Bottom line: to say they straight-out wanted Clinton to win leaves out a lot and communicates nothing about their conflicted feelings.
The original issue is, of all the protest voters how does this number compare to the number that thought a protest vote was 'safe'?
About equal.
OK, so the 'principled' protest voters (those that have voted for someone other than Clinton regardless of how 'safe' her election seemed to be or not be) were a significant factor, then. Right?
I don't see how your conclusion follows from the statements you quoted.
I mean, if you agree that those that voted against her just because they'd have preferred say, Sanders - but would overall prefer her to Trump were significant, and they are of about equal size....
If by "significant" you mean numbers great enough to swing the election, I don't know. I think I've said a couple times now that I don't know that those who preferred Sanders to Clinton but Clinton to Trump and who registered protest votes were a significant number, and I particularly don't know if they were a significant number in the key states. I can see that you're arguing we do have sufficient information to draw this conclusion, but I don't see it myself.
quote:If that's the reason Clinton lost, that she's responsible for the fact that too many voters, in effect, threw a tantrum, picked up their votes and went home, then I think we have to blame the voters.
You're ignoring the key word "if". I said "if that's the reason Clinton lost". And when I said that I was already in the middle of a hypothetical, because in that message I began by saying, "For the sake of discussion let's just accept all the criticisms you just laid out." And you know it was a hypothetical, one proposed not by me but by Diomedes, because you next say:
My point to you regarding the alternate selection processes has primarily been relying on this hypothetical situation where protest voters were significant.
Right. Basically I said if the protest votes were significant then I think we have to blame the voters. But that the protest votes were significant was a hypothetical. I never tried to argue they were significant. I can see that *you* are, or given the number of times I've misinterpreted what you've said maybe I should say that it feels to me like you are, but I remain unconvinced that it's been demonstrated. Note I'm not saying that it isn't possibly true, just that it hasn't been demonstrated, and was certainly never something I was arguing.
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