Summations Only

Can we agree that the statement 'Clinton won the election' is false and move on, then? As you like. Just don't criticize me for not addressing causes if you demur from discussing them when I explicitly do, please. 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. 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 don't feel they are opposing. Do you really see them as opposing? Let me condense themThe election is determined by the electoral college. Trump won this.Clinton winning the popular vote but losing the election is as banal a point as saying 'the electoral college exists'.However, give her popular advantage only a small number of extra votes may have shifted the electoral college results.In order to be assured of victory you need a good margin. 2% is not sufficient. 3% is not sufficient - though historically it has worked it comes with some very narrow results in key States. 5% is probably enough to have a confident win, though not guaranteed, given the correlation between winning the Presidency and popular votes.A different candidate may have earned more votes in the Presidential election, achieving that approximately 5% margin.That possibility suggests a different selection method is something to considerOr perhaps a change in the distribution of a State's electoral votes - this won't eradicate the bumpiness, but it reduces the the importance of swing states which seems a good idea.I don't vote against candidates, I vote for them.However, I will consider voting for candidates of lefter major parties if they are left of the prior candidate to encourage this trend.Otherwise I will vote in such a way as to make clear that votes were dropped and approximately where so as to make visible to Party analysts where votes might be picked up next time. No, I said it the way I meant it. Are you saying you disagree with the area of agreement I attempted to find? But yes, that's seems ironic too. I read it. It's a good speech. I disagree with Moose regarding the running from a fight type characterisation. Though there is merit in staying and fighting - there is also a power in saying 'I shall not be in a government that has that man Presiding'. 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. 5 maybe - which is what I did earlier. She beat both of Dubya's, and came behind both of Obamas. In this light - it looks quite a bit less impressive. Going back to Bill Clinton and the US population was 270 million - some 50 million less than today. So it definitely breaks down by this point. The population was still under 300million for the Dubya elections. Indeed. One also wonders then if many of Clinton's votes were a function of her opponent - from those that were voting against Trump.As generally unpopular the word 'social' is in US discourse, I expect Sanders may have also done much better than normal expectations due merely to the opponent in question. Against a more reasonable Republican I'd predict Sanders would have done worse.That 10% of Sanders is nearly 1.5 million votes to subtract from Trump and give to Sanders - which is certainly significant. That said - the States Sanders won in the primaries {where most of those supporters were obviously} are quite well correlated with the States Clinton won in the Presidential election so it may have turned into a bigger popular vote but still a loss of the electoral college! Pennsylvania and Ohio are exceptions to this - notably, so that's something to consider in the analysis.

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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.

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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.It kind of ruins the irony if they voted against her, expected her to win, but didn't want her to win. 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. The original issue is, of all the protest voters how does this number compare to the number that thought a protest vote was 'safe'?The point being - were there enough 'principled' protest voters to have made a difference?

I am explicitly talking about the electorate. I've said so many times. My opinion does not decide the election. 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. My opinion is actually that this is a possibility in this particular election. And only a possibility. A possibility that an alternate selection system might have provided us with illumination on. A better selection process might not have selected Sanders. There's plenty of reason to suppose it wouldn't. It might have, but it might not. 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.If by 'right' you mean, heh, 'left'. And by 'wrong' you mean, ahem 'right' then I would still push this process, yes. Sure there are problems. I am assuming that the Primary Voters have the goal of selecting the candidate who will garner the most votes in the Presidential Election, but this is not an entirely safe assumption. There are likely many who will try game the system to select the candidate they believe will get the most votes, or at least, be most aligned to them.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. I also don't think it 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. I think I already agreed with this. It's not like anything in my view relies on the leftward trend continuing. I just expect it will. Feel free to explain your reasoning. 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. The pledged delegates follow this result - so if the Primary results been different, the pledged delegate results would also likely be different. Superdelegates complicate this, although new DNC rules turn many of those effectively into pledged delegates anyway.

So you say. And I say otherwise. I mean obviously anything that happens can influence opinions. The point I raise here is because of the 2016 particulars, because that's what we're talking about. I am saying the selection process may be one of the reasons for the Democrats not winning this election. That opinion wouldn't exist had they won, for obvious reasons. But I'd still agree that the selection process is flawed. No. It's quite possible it wouldn't have. If it would have, however, one can argue he would have been a better pick. 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. OK. I said no such thing. I haven't mentioned the delegates in any detail until you brought up the fact that the delegate split was wider than the vote split. I brought up the primary voters vote split to show that its closeness indicates 2016 is an interesting example case to discuss for alternate selection processes to detect protest voters, and to take their existence into account.But yes, by all means let's add the delegate system to the list of systemic issues that might be possible issues. 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?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. It might not happen for 15 years (for instance the Conservatives nominated Thatcher for leader in 1975 and another one didn't happen until 1989), or it might happen once a year (there was another Conservative leadership election 1990 - Thatcher won all three).It used to be a sort of electoral college system. The voters were split: 1/3 of the power were parliamentary members, 1/3 to Labour members {like Registered Democrats or what have you} and 1/3 to trade unions.This system was recently changed so that it is one member one vote so an MP had the same vote power as any other member. This system gave Corbyn the leadership - both times it was triggered. In the General Election he did better than anticipated by the MPs, suggestive of it being a better system - but not conclusive. He got 40% of the popular vote compared with May's 42%. Compared with the previous Labour's showing of 30% to 37%There are many differences with the UK, but I don't see how a change to the delegate system would ultimately be a problem to put into practice.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

They wanted Clinton over Trump, but they didn't like Clinton so they voted third party to protest the Clinton nomination because they thought it wouldn't impact the vote because Clinton was going to win anyway. I thought that was the type of people you were describing. They want Democrats to win, think they will win, want to protest Clinton and thus vote third party expecting Clinton to still win. It *is* obvious. They protest Clinton being nominated by voting third party..possibly even Trump. That's what we're talking about right? OK. Got it. They wanted a Democrat win but not a Clinton win. Right they expected Clinton would win. They expected the Democrats to win. OK, so, to use my quote, 'they wanted Clinton to win' - given the alternative. Using my quote again , 'there were a bunch of people that voted for someone other Clinton as a protest [though they wanted Clinton to win] and thought that a protest vote was safe because they expected her to' win.'I'm pretty sure what I said basically captures what you were saying doesn't it? 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 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.... Well I was referring to the time when that was your point, conditionally.

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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.

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Message 1355My response to this was basically 'maybe we could, but we could also blame the system for selecting Clinton as the Democrat candidate'. My point to you regarding the alternate selection processes has primarily been relying on this hypothetical situation where protest voters were significant.

Well yes, I'm aware of that. But I think I know my own mind better than you do. Feel free to believe what you want about what I'm thinking, but it doesn't get us anywhere. I championed changing the UK General Election for some time. I voted 'yes' when the issue came up for a referendum some years back. No, you don't explain what you think the contradiction is so it makes it difficult for me to help explain.I think the selection process is flawed.
If a different selection method selected Sanders, one could argue he was a better pick.Where's the contradiction? OK. For more than two candidates it does help overcome the spoiler effect, it does result in its own problems. I've spoken of them in a dedicated thread but one issue with IRV is its possible that voting your preferences lessens their chances compared with not voting at all.See Voting -- a better system for more on that. I really didn't. They didn't endorse funding space exploration either. It doesn't mean I'm against it. Yes, I was trying to explain my point in raising the numbers. That isn't me saying 'we shouldn't reform the delegate system' - sounds like a reasonable idea, as I've said. So the fact that I am all for discussing that possibility should lay this issue to rest. Because I didn't say it wouldn't be an improvement - when you said that was my position. I know it wasn't serious - I was honestly perplexed what the imagery was that would be missing. I understand a little more as to what you are referring. It'd look like UK elections instead I'd imagine. Less grand visually, perhaps, but still televised. The UK party leadership nominations themselves aren't televised at all over here. It's just people voting and a result. The result is discussed, the vote is discussed in the news beforehand - but people casting their votes? No, not really. A call of no-confidence would likely be televised, but not to a big audience. I don't doubt - it's more about the leader selection process rather than the election process. That's something many Brits don't follow so I'd be surprised if many folks over there know about how the trade unions until very recently, used to hold 1/3 of the vote for the Labour leadership

Your phrasing leaves out too much too. It includes many Trump supporters. The irony doesn't really apply to them. You know, if we're going to be pedantic about specific wordings of specific phrases. That's why its ironic. If they didn't want Clinton to win, the consequence of Clinton not winning would not be ironic would it? I thought that 'given the alternative' was kind of obvious. The voters did, after all, know who the alternative was when they voted. But I did explain that's my meaning. So if you want to say 'I explained the people I was referring to were Democrat leaning....' then we're basically even on this. If someone's desire was for Clinton to win the Presidential election over Trump, but they voted for someone other than Clinton in protest - believing it safe to do so as a Clinton win was believed to be assured, but the result was Clinton losing, an irony exists. Sometimes even agreeing with you can feel like pulling teeth! I think, given the context of the discussion, and the fact that they were protest voting, gives their conflicted feelings away doesn't it? No I'm not. That's why I said:

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Well I was referring to the time when that was your point, conditionally.

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and

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My point to you regarding the alternate selection processes has primarily been relying on this hypothetical situation where protest voters were significant.

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I've only argued that they could have been significant and IF they were, alternate selection methods may have detected this, and taken it into account...in response to your 'if they were significant we should blame the voters' argument. Perhaps instead of the voters being to blame, its the system that gave the voters the options that it did resulting in them behaving as they did.I mean, you said that 'blame' might not be an appropriate phrase for the reasons for the loss - hence the subtitle was changed and has remained 'the attribution'.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

No, there was a referendum to switch our General Election to AV or IRV, but the result was a 'No'.

If Donald Trump received something of value from the Russians (say, hacked emails) this could contravene campaign financing rules. Especially if a quid pro quo arrangement was struck (for instance, something surrounding sanctions). Naturally, but if Donald Trump had done the above with Putin then they have acted together through a secret understanding, especially with evil or harmful intent. That is to say, they have colluded. Collusion isn't the name of the crime, but the the two parties have colluded in doing something illegal. Collusion is just a short form umbrella term because the investigation is ongoing and the exact crime, if any, is not known (at least, publicly). What is known is that it centres around the possibility that Trump or his campaign came to a secret arrangement to act in partnership in the commission of some act which is ultimately illegal for Trump or his campaign to have done.As you can see 'collusion' is much easier to say.If Trump's campaign worked Russian nationals in the placing, wording etc., of adverts on social media platforms, this would be a campaign financing breach - if Trump so much as asked a Russian how he should spend some campaign money - even money raised in the US, this would be a breach. If there was agreement to launder money, this is obviously illegal and doesn't even require foreign agents to be so. In each case the English word collusion could be applied to describe the acts, although it would not be the legal term for them.