President Trump has Covid19

[Ratman_tf]

Body language is no way to determine the veracity of a person's claims. I'm attacking the argument, not the arguer. All I'll admit to is being snarky about it.

Even so, still irrelevant to the argument.

Then why did you bring it up?

My claim is that Trump never said to inject or drink bleach. Which his political opponents said he did.

Overly literal to the point absurdity. Analogous to, "I didn't say my opponent didn't kill the guy, I said he manslaughtered the guy." AND still doesn't acknowledge the UV injection claim you made, so still shifting the goalpost.

You lost me. What claim are you referring to?

[jhkim]

I think the biggest argument is: If two candidates are neck and neck, does it really matter which one wins? From a practical, immediate standpoint, yes. The results for the country may be very different, depending on who runs the country for the next four years. That's why it's such a partisan issue, because people are looking at the immediate reward of their candidate winning. But from the standpoint of a constitutional republic? No, it doesn't matter whether the 51% or the 49% candidate wins. They both were chosen by almost exactly the same number of people, so either represents the people about equally. If the ground rules were known beforehand, and the election was fair, then the mechanism for choosing the top candidate in a close race isn't the existential threat to democracy that people who really really want their candidate to win this time think it is.

I agree with this. In general, if there is a true will of the people, any election is going to have a margin of error of at least 2-3% percent in determining it. Gerrymandering and other legal influences will shift the election by at least that much. In the interests of fairness and the rule of law, we should solve voting problems and prosecute wrongdoing - but it likely won't shift the election.

That said, I disagree with an earlier point:

And the more general principle still stands. With a close national popular vote, you might need to recount 130 million ballots. If only Florida is in dispute, that's reduced to 9 million ballots, and from a practical standpoint could be much less (cf. the 4 counties). There's a real practical advantage to blocking votes, though statewide groupings are a grosser than ideal division.

In general, higher statistics counting means that there is *less* likelihood of an unclear win. The only reason why the 2000 election was so tight was because of the high-swing effect of the Electoral College which brought it down to a big swing on relatively few votes. Historically, the popular vote hasn't had a margin of less than 100,000 in over a century. It's effectively impossible for it to be a strict tie.

So whoever wins the vote, wins the vote. If problems are reported in certain counties, we would recount the counties where problems are reported - not all counties.

[Steven Mitchell]

In general, higher statistics counting means that there is *less* likelihood of an unclear win. The only reason why the 2000 election was so tight was because of the high-swing effect of the Electoral College which brought it down to a big swing on relatively few votes. Historically, the popular vote hasn't had a margin of less than 100,000 in over a century. It's effectively impossible for it to be a strict tie.

So whoever wins the vote, wins the vote. If problems are reported in certain counties, we would recount the counties where problems are reported - not all counties.

That reasoning ignores the incentives to cheat built into a popular vote election--never mind the other bad effects of concentrating on only certain urban areas.  Chicago and Philadelphia are two of the obvious places that have strong statistical and circumstantial evidence of widespread cheating in the modern era in an attempt to influence the outcome of their respective states elections, starting with Chicago at least by 1960.  In a popular vote election, everything else changes--how the candidates campaign, what will win, etc.  The incentive to cheat goes nationwide--and for practical reasons involving how cheating can occur, the only way cheat in enough volume to change a national election is in the very urban areas that will be the focus. 

It essentially moves all of rural America from having any say in the national elections.  I know that's the life-long dreams of many on the left.  If that's where you want to go, you'd better get ready for the National Divorce.

[Delete_me]

OK, so at this point this thread has devolved into just shifting arguments to win a point, rather than focusing on what claims have been made and refuted. So anyone else who wants the last word, go for it. 

Then why did you bring it up?

I didn't bring up body language as a point of veracity of medical advice. I brought it up to point out it clearly indicated that the DOCTOR was confused, not President Trump. His body language showed he was taken aback by the disinfectant request and wasn't quite sure how to respond.

You lost me. What claim are you referring to?

Already answered to Brad, but the thread is moving fast, so to repeat exactly what I am objecting to (which is not the claim that Trump said "inject bleach" and not the claim that Trump gave bad medical advice, I am refuting neither of those claims because they're not the issue we're discussing):

    Hell, if someone told me that doctors were using UV light and some kind of disinfectant interally, to treat an infection, I'd have just gone, "Well, neat!"
    As usual, the media spin against Trump is built on a rickety scaffold of misinterpretations.

That this is not what Mr. Trump's conversation was about, in person. To take Mr. Trump's words to mean that the President believed the disinfectants were UV light is as disingenuous as saying that Trump literally said, "inject bleach." Neither is true. The President's own explanation afterwords refutes the claim.

Anything else about whether or not UV light works is irrelevant to what he said then and what he meant then as demonstrated in the actual video and the President's explanation afterwords. The simple fact is that's not what that conversation was about. UV light was mentioned. Disinfectants were mentioned. It is clear from context that these were not the same thing. (EDIT: This line is parenthesis is not in my original response, but your overly literal he didn't use the exact words "inject bleach" ignores the fact that drinking most commercial disinfectants will cause bad things, and it is crystal clear he did not mean UV light treatment. It is as easy as he made an off the cuff statement and when someone asked him to clarify, he decided to double down. It's his standard operating procedure, for good or ill.)

The President, when asked about it, even said, ". . . if the sun is out or they use a disinfectant . . ." He did not mean UV light treatment and that much is obvious. These were two, separate, and distinct things in the flow of the conversation.

[Brad]

OK, so at this point this thread has devolved into just shifting arguments to win a point, rather than focusing on what claims have been made and refuted. So anyone else who wants the last word, go for it. 

Then why did you bring it up?

I didn't bring up body language as a point of veracity of medical advice. I brought it up to point out it clearly indicated that the DOCTOR was confused, not President Trump. His body language showed he was taken aback by the disinfectant request and wasn't quite sure how to respond.

You lost me. What claim are you referring to?

Already answered to Brad, but the thread is moving fast, so to repeat exactly what I am objecting to (which is not the claim that Trump said "inject bleach" and not the claim that Trump gave bad medical advice, I am refuting neither of those claims because they're not the issue we're discussing):

    Hell, if someone told me that doctors were using UV light and some kind of disinfectant interally, to treat an infection, I'd have just gone, "Well, neat!"
    As usual, the media spin against Trump is built on a rickety scaffold of misinterpretations.

That this is not what Mr. Trump's conversation was about, in person. To take Mr. Trump's words to mean that the President believed the disinfectants were UV light is as disingenuous as saying that Trump literally said, "inject bleach." Neither is true. The President's own explanation afterwords refutes the claim.

Anything else about whether or not UV light works is irrelevant to what he said then and what he meant then as demonstrated in the actual video and the President's explanation afterwords. The simple fact is that's not what that conversation was about. UV light was mentioned. Disinfectants were mentioned. It is clear from context that these were not the same thing. (EDIT: This line is parenthesis is not in my original response, but your overly literal he didn't use the exact words "inject bleach" ignores the fact that drinking most commercial disinfectants will cause bad things, and it is crystal clear he did not mean UV light treatment. It is as easy as he made an off the cuff statement and when someone asked him to clarify, he decided to double down. It's his standard operating procedure, for good or ill.)

The President, when asked about it, even said, ". . . if the sun is out or they use a disinfectant . . ." He did not mean UV light treatment and that much is obvious. These were two, separate, and distinct things in the flow of the conversation.

No one cares. Literally no one.

[Ratman_tf]

OK, so at this point this thread has devolved into just shifting arguments to win a point, rather than focusing on what claims have been made and refuted. So anyone else who wants the last word, go for it. 

I'll take it! The last word is "Sasquatch"!

[jhkim]

In general, higher statistics counting means that there is *less* likelihood of an unclear win. The only reason why the 2000 election was so tight was because of the high-swing effect of the Electoral College which brought it down to a big swing on relatively few votes. Historically, the popular vote hasn't had a margin of less than 100,000 in over a century. It's effectively impossible for it to be a strict tie.

So whoever wins the vote, wins the vote. If problems are reported in certain counties, we would recount the counties where problems are reported - not all counties.

That reasoning ignores the incentives to cheat built into a popular vote election--never mind the other bad effects of concentrating on only certain urban areas.  Chicago and Philadelphia are two of the obvious places that have strong statistical and circumstantial evidence of widespread cheating in the modern era in an attempt to influence the outcome of their respective states elections, starting with Chicago at least by 1960.  In a popular vote election, everything else changes--how the candidates campaign, what will win, etc.  The incentive to cheat goes nationwide--and for practical reasons involving how cheating can occur, the only way cheat in enough volume to change a national election is in the very urban areas that will be the focus.

I'm not even against the Electoral College, but this is not a good reason. There already is incentive to cheat nationwide, because there are more offices than just the President in the government. Much of the cheating has been for local government, not national. Higher statistics and involving more voters means that cheating requires a much greater volume, which you seem to acknowledge. In 2000, only six hundred fraudulent votes could have swayed the outcome. But it would have taken over 500,000 fraudulent ballots to change the popular vote. That's nearly a thousand times more cheating required.

In a closely divided government, I don't see this. The Republicans have had years in control of the national government - during which they had ample opportunity to investigate and prosecute election fraud in the 2016 election. Nothing even close to this scale has come to light.

In general, a positive of the Electoral College is that it forces candidates to have support spread over a wide geographic area - which works against factionalism of pitting one part of the country against another. This reduces the chance of developing into civil war. To win elections, you need to have widespread support, not just hardened support in a few key areas. However, the difference in population between the states is really extreme now -- much moreso than when the republic was founded. There has been no clear and consistent philosophy on what qualifies as a state, nor does it inherently have any particular effect. Low population states can be urban and liberal like Connecticut or Delaware. It is a historical accident that there are more low-population rural states than low-population urban states.

I think there is solid reasoning behind the Electoral College in forcing widespread support, but I think the system would be more fair if states were more equal in population.

It essentially moves all of rural America from having any say in the national elections.  I know that's the life-long dreams of many on the left.  If that's where you want to go, you'd better get ready for the National Divorce.

People should have a say in elections based on how many of them there are. That's a fucking fundamental of democracy. If a group has a low population nationally, then they have a limited say in the elections. Asian-Americans are even more of a minority than rural Americans, for example. By your logic, Asian-Americans are prevented from having any say in national elections because of their small numbers. But they accept that they are a minority, and aren't whining that they need special extra representation or they will quit the country.

[Pat]

People should have a say in elections based on how many of them there are. That's a fucking fundamental of democracy. If a group has a low population nationally, then they have a limited say in the elections. Asian-Americans are even more of a minority than rural Americans, for example. By your logic, Asian-Americans are prevented from having any say in national elections because of their small numbers. But they accept that they are a minority, and aren't whining that they need special extra representation or they will quit the country.

Except that's not how it works. If you're a minority position, you have zero say in a winner-takes-all election, unless you happen to be a swing faction and manage to trade your votes for some scraps. That's why the US is not just a democracy, but a constitutional democracy based on a limited, decentralized government. That means there are some basic rights and privileges that can't be taken away, no matter how tiny a minority you belong to. And when the government was small and it's scope limited, that meant that 51% didn't have the power to institute totalitarian controls over the 49%. Decentralization meant even if you're a tiny a minority, you could go off and found your own community somewhere and live by the rules you prefer, without nosy nellies forcing you to live your life by their standards. These are all fundamental to American democracy, not the idea that the 51% in power can do anything.

[Steven Mitchell]

People should have a say in elections based on how many of them there are. That's a fucking fundamental of democracy. If a group has a low population nationally, then they have a limited say in the elections. Asian-Americans are even more of a minority than rural Americans, for example. By your logic, Asian-Americans are prevented from having any say in national elections because of their small numbers. But they accept that they are a minority, and aren't whining that they need special extra representation or they will quit the country.

That would be true if being an Asian versus not Asian was as important as being rural versus urban (and the gradients in between).  I disagree quite strongly that the two things are even comparable.  They certainly weren't to the founders--not even with their agonizing about slavery and the "compromise" that didn't fulfill the promise of their broader thought until after 1 million American died fighting about it. 

While this is often express as rural versus urban it is more than that.  "Non-urban" populations are the real divider here, and they are not a small  proportion of population.  What they are is dispersed in ways that makes it inefficient to reach them.  The interests of a few cities should not dominate the affairs of the nation--more than they already do due to a concentration of population and the influence this provides.  A concept straight out of the Federalists Papers.

In any case, I state again that going to the Maine/Nebraska solution solves the issue you have raised as it pertains to the constitution.  You don't like that, suggest your own fucking amendment to the fundamental document related to our republic and try to sell it. 

[Brad]

I can see several posters on this board are still unaware that the United States is a coalition of independent entities and not some sort of monolith. Almost like they don't understand federalism, or what a constitutional republic is...

[Hawkwing7423]

I can see several posters on this board are still unaware that the United States is a coalition of independent entities and not some sort of monolith. Almost like they don't understand federalism, or what a constitutional republic is...

They've been taught otherwise in school for several generations now.
Though liberals do love federalism sometimes, i.e. marijuana, sanctuary states.

[VisionStorm]

I can see several posters on this board are still unaware that the United States is a coalition of independent entities and not some sort of monolith. Almost like they don't understand federalism, or what a constitutional republic is...

I mostly blame the school system, since this sort nuances and civic issues aren't really taught IME. Plus there's also an element of maturity and perspective to this. I didn't fully know about this stuff till I picked it up from the internet. And then I started looking at voting and population density maps, and it suddenly dawned on me how just a few cities could totally swing an entire election on a direct democratic system and screw over entire swaths of land consisting of hundreds (thousands?) miles of territory who couldn't possibly share their same needs or concerns given their different geographic realities and circumstances. And if that was the case, then WTF would be the point for them to remain in the union? And that's when I realized why the electoral college was necessary.

[Pat]

I'd say a bigger problem is the zeitgeist. When there's a problem, whether a novel disease, an economic downturn, or any of the social justice issues, how many people think it's the government's job to fix it? Almost all of them. And while it's stronger on the left, no politicians on the right have seriously tried to shrink the federal octopus. We're more than a century into the growth of central government power, so it's the default mode of thinking.

It's also the source of many of our problems. The solution to an increasingly polarized society isn't to increase the power and control of the majority over everyone else. It's to decentralize, to stop trying to solve every problem at the federal level, and to let states and local municipalities decide what's best for them.

[jhkim]

While this is often express as rural versus urban it is more than that.  "Non-urban" populations are the real divider here, and they are not a small  proportion of population.  What they are is dispersed in ways that makes it inefficient to reach them.  The interests of a few cities should not dominate the affairs of the nation--more than they already do due to a concentration of population and the influence this provides.  A concept straight out of the Federalists Papers.

But again, there's nothing in the Electoral College *system* that inherently favors non-urban over urban. In the modern-day U.S., that is the current balance because there happen to be more states like Idaho than there are like Connecticut, but that's an accident of history - not a feature of the system. It wasn't clear that would be the division at the time of the Federalist Papers, since the big rural states hadn't been established. In a different country - or in our own at different times, it's just as likely that the state division could favor the *urban* population, by having a bunch of small urban states like Connecticut. It's just a question of where the state lines fall.

For what it's worth, I have the same problem with the United Nations, where the issue is even more extreme. Does it really make sense that Tuvalu (population 11k) has the same vote as the U.S. (population 300M)? I don't think that is a good approach for a democracy.

So here would be my question: Suppose a newly-established country wanted to reform and institute a new constitution, and they looked to the United States. However, their states were divided so that there are a large number of small-population urban states. Should they still use the Electoral College? Or do you think they should use a different system?

In any case, I state again that going to the Maine/Nebraska solution solves the issue you have raised as it pertains to the constitution.  You don't like that, suggest your own fucking amendment to the fundamental document related to our republic and try to sell it.

What I said was that the *good* and *intended* property of the Electoral College is that it guards against factionalism. It forces presidential candidates to have widespread geographic support, rather than concentrated support in just one region. I consider that to be a positive for the long-term stability of the country. By contrast, the Maine/Nebraska approach of split electors takes away this feature - if it were to be implemented by all the states - which it is unlikely to. So, I consider the Maine/Nebraska approach to make the system worse by removing it's most positive feature.

From my view, I don't think there is a simple or easy solution from our current status as a union. I think an improvement might be to expand the Senate, so the largest states have three Senate seats instead of two. For consistency, I might say if a state is more than 50% over the average state population, it should get a third seat.

[Luca]

With all due respect, and being aware I'm not from the US... most of you people enjoy your current standards of life in no small part due to the fact that the US is the biggest superpower in the world and the US dollar is essentially the world's default currency.

Pretending the US is not a monolithic country is a bit ridiculous at this point in history. You would be in a totally different (and much worse) position in your everyday life if the US was not a single country with a single army (which also happens to be by far the biggest army on the planet). Just think at the sustainability of your current national debt without the "backing" of the dollar.

Also, in practical terms, should worse come to worse, whoever gets the backing of the army wins by default and gets to control the country. At that point, the constitution, the laws, the accords between states etc. would just be pieces of paper.