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Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of October 14
This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant US political content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate topic, but almost all should be posted in here.
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More and More People Are Saying It: Scrap the Constitution
"Land doesn't vote, people do"
And in case anyone hasn't heard of it before: National Popular Vote Interstate Compact
While I love the idea of the NaPoVoCo, I fully expect it to be struck down if it ever attempts to go into effect.
I am not a lawyer and do not have sufficient legal knowledge to say whether it "deserves" to be struck down, but there's simply no way the Supreme Court will let it stand.
Article 2 section 1:
Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors....
I think the constitution is pretty clear that as long as the state legislature passes a law (and it doesn't get blocked through some other means within the state), then this will be constitutional. I'm actually more concerned about states going the other way where they ingnore popular vote and install their party electors.
Clearly, any state could choose to unconditionally give all of its electors to whomever wins the national popular vote. The question will be over the "interstate compact" part. The problem is Article I, Section 10, Clause 3 of the Constitution: "No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay."
It's debated, and I don't know that I trust the current US supreme court to make any rulings that could benefit Democrats.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutionality_of_the_National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact
Thanks for finding that (also to u/heraplem) I didn't know about it. I wonder how the Supreme court court would rule if the pact isn't explicitly mentioned in the state law that's passed, but everyone knows why the law is there.
I have always found the arguments for this at best poorly thought out and at worst outright deceitful and willfully ignorant.
Just to stick to their key issue of "well it's dumb that they only focus their time on a couple of swing states", I don't see how it's going to be any better when they only focus their time on a couple of cities.
Because the reason will be that the majority of the population lives in those cities? That’s kinda an important metric for democratic systems.
Whereas the allocations for the electoral college are ultimately arbitrary and due to history.
You can't win an election with only "a couple of cities". Using this BBC article as an estimate [1], the seven swing states set to decide the US election amount to approximately 55.5 million people. On the other hand, in order to get to 55.5 million city dwellers, you'd have to add about the first ~100 or so most populous cities in the US [2]. But at that point you're arguing that swing states are good because the alternative is that Huntsville (population 225K) would play an outsized role as a voting bloc, which I frankly do not find convincing.
The current system means that the majority of citizens have essentially no voting power in Presidential elections since the outcome in their state is nearly preordained. How is that better?
[1] "Seven swing states set to decide the 2024 US election." BBC.
[2] "List of United States cities by population". Wikipedia.
And you can’t win the election with only a couple of states.
Except yea you can because you know you don’t need to campaign in x or y state because they’re already locked in. While there might be 100 cities the VAST majority of them will be treated exactly the same as they are now.
Except no you can’t, because Democrats would doomed without California and Republicans would be doomed without Texas.
The reason elections are so close is because both sides are roughly evenly matched. Yes, the Republicans get a small advantage from the electoral college, but that doesn’t change the overall picture very much.
It would be good (from our perspective) if they didn’t have that advantage, but doesn’t fundamentally change the situation; the country would be still be roughly evenly divided without it.
The situation in swing states isn’t all that different from other states, from an individual voter’s perspective. Sure, your vote is counted, but what determines the election is mostly what millions of other people do, except if it’s nearly a tie, when it’s basically random. (The randomness coming from things like the weather and other events that affect voter turnout.)
It’s a rather disappointing decision-making process for choosing a leader, but it still beats what goes on in some other countries. I think even a much better process couldn’t fundamentally change the situation. When you’re one of hundreds of millions, it’s pretty alienating. When roughly half the country is captured by a weird ideology, no system is going to work very well.
Hopefully we can muddle through.
But that explicitly is not it would work. Nothing is “locked in” in the popular vote. Does it matter if LA is 80% D 20% R vs 70% 30%? Yeah, because that’s like 5m more votes for republicans. You’d absolutely spend money and resources for that. Why wouldn’t you? Whereas it’s pointless today, because it’s winner take all and CA isn’t sending republican delegates anytime soon.
The EC causes aberrations because it’s a winner take all with arbitrary allocations for arbitrary boundaries.
No you don’t send republicans to California because if someone has been Republican in California they’re not about to switch.
You do exactly what you do now and identify swing cities where your dollar spend per person converted is higher because campaigning in California is either preaching to the choir or to people who will never vote for you
That’s not how California works. There’s a lot of republicans in California and a lot of people who would be swayed even in LA. The republican house majority leader was from California. Democrats only won 65% of the vote in California in 2020, and that’s even when it’s considered pointless for Republicans to campaign there nationally. The vote is never that bifurcated.
And moreover, everyone’s vote matters. A voter in a more “neutral” city’s vote counts just as much as a voter in NYC.
Trump Breaks Down Onstage (The Atlantic)
The Daily Show did a segment about this. I almost feel sorry for governor Noem, who looks extremely uncomfortable, but she has only herself to blame.
She killed a dog (for no reason) she gets no sympathy from me on this. (I know you only almost felt bad)
The medical emergencies start at like 1:42:00 and the music session starts at 1:53:00 or so.
https://www.youtube.com/live/c-FhvhdVSZE
Ave Maria
Ave Maria by Pavarotti
It's a Man's Man's Man's World duet with James Brown and Pavarotti
YMCA
Hallelujah by Rufus Wainwright (the Shrek version)
Nothing Compares 2 U by Sinéad O'Connor (but I guess a live version?)
An American Trilogy by Elvis (it's half variations on Dixie and half variations on the Battle Hymn of the Republic and half Bahamian lullaby)
Rich Men North of Richmond
Heh
(That's an astroturfed song from (this year?) full of dogwhistles, I guess they wanted to get their money's worth)
Crypto has quietly become one of the biggest electoral players. You wouldn’t know it from their ads.
I saw a post from Kamala the other day that talks about supportive policy for black men and crypto was shoehorned in as one of the 5 points. I found it so odd. I thought maybe more black men are unbanked due to a well earned distrust of financial institutions in the US, but it feels like a weird leap to make. Finding out they are pouring money into campaigns makes much more sense. I'm really disheartened to hear the grift of crypto is going mainstream.
Part of the problem is many politicians (especially older ones), don't really understand crypto. They're easy marks.
This has always been partially bullshit.
Yes, politicians are tech inept. But they're also inept at just about everything else they talk about as well. If they need to know, they hire someone who knows or can easily get access to the experts they need.
The "oops i'm just old and don't get tech" scam has been around for most of my life now, and been used to hide behind just about every stupid tech decision this country has made, and will now be used because they don't give a shit that crypto scams millions, it lines their warchest.
Considering the number of people I've known who've made stupid decisions even on topics they're supposedly educated on, I have no trouble believing that many politicians are simply misinformed or perhaps wilfully ignorant of the problems with cryptocurrencies.
To be charitable, it's difficult to hire seasoned industry folk to do policy analysis when public sector and nonprofit salaries are generally much worse. Though you're also right that crypto scams are so bold faced that politicians should really know better. Part of the problem is bitcoin is now being purchased even by huge funds as a part of asset diversification...
I would be more likely to believe any of this if crypto hadn't been funneling money to campaigns left right and sideways. They literally dropped the part of the FTX investigation where a bunch of the embezzled money was just straight up donated to these campaigns. If we're going to throw around quotes then sinclair has a very relevant:
I don't disagree. That's part of why I mentioned that some are probably willfully ignorant.
JD Vance says 'no,' he does not think Trump lost in 2020
That's not really a flat "no", but it is a a smidge more direct than his previous non-answers.
putting the gender gap numbers in historical perspective
Because I didn't know which Gender Gap was being referenced out of context
Watching the Tim Walz Magic Trick Up Close
I liked this profile on Walz