I'm as surprised as most everyone at how the election turned out. In the week or so leading up to election night, I considered the possibility that Trump might win the popular vote but lose the electoral college, but not the other way around.

Still, as someone who thinks the electoral college is bullshit, consider this thing from all angles:

Hypothetical Possibility 1: At first, when I thought that Trump might win the popular vote but lose the electoral college, I thought that would be a good thing going forward. Both sides would have been screwed out of a victory by the idiotic system in recent memory, which might push for bipartisan support to scrap it.

But thinking further ... I don't think that would have actually panned out. The GOP establishment wouldn't have seen that as "their" candidate getting screwed, they would have been happy. They might have had to pay lip service to the idea of reconsidering the electoral college to pander to angry Republican voters who felt cheated out of a Trump presidency, but they could easily have just left it at that and sat on the issue until apathy took over again.


Possibility 2: The likely reality. Trump will win by electoral votes but lose the popular vote, and that will stand. The Senate and House are both Republican controlled, and the Supreme Court will very likely swing further in that direction. Possibly a LOT.

That sounds terrible. And it definitely means that in the short term, there will be absolutely zero traction for anyone wanting to push the idea of getting rid of the electoral college. BUT -- it also sets up a gold-plated opportunity to see real, actual movement on that front in 2 years. Think Trump is going to be horrendous? Think GOP-controlled Legislature will be abysmal? Look on the bright side -- if those expectations are correct, the blowback in midterm elections won't be a "wave". It'll be a fuckin' tsunami. And that's what we need to have a shot at killing the electoral college.


Possibility 3: Faithless Elector rampage. You can argue, with some merit, that the electoral college was intended to prevent or safeguard against exactly the kind of situation that we are in now. And I'd love to see President Bernie myself. But what would actually result if enough electors swapped to make that happen?

First, NYTimes projects Trump getting 306 electoral votes. That would mean that 37 faithless electors would have to happen to flip the election. You have to go back more than 100 years to find an election where there has been more than 1 faithless elector. There has only been 1 election with more than 37 faithless electors, and that was in 1872 because the candidate died. So realistically, it would be close to impossible to pull this off. (all info from wikipedia)

But forget the odds and just assume that it did happen. I think that would be a strategically terrible idea for Democrats, liberals, etc. Trump won because enough people didn't like the prospect of President Hillary and/or actually wanted to see what Trump himself could do. In either case, his voters generally aren't going to give him a whole lot of leash to screw things up or fail to deliver on their expectations. It will be next to impossible for him to keep those swing people happy. If Trump is 1/10th as terrible as the average Democrat expects him to be, he will alienate all of those people in very short order.

But if faithless electors "stole" the presidency from him (and you know that's how it would be perceived)? Oh, man ... he'd effectively be a political martyr. The anger and backlash would likely be apocalyptic and/or lead to revolt. Worse than almost any realistic way that Trump himself might fuck things up as the President. Even if that was somehow avoided, which I tend to think would be impossible, whoever got installed as President would have the shortest leash of all time, and a massively hostile and motivated Legislature that they would be forced to attempt to work with. Better have some sacrificial lamb to put in there that has zero political future, and even then they would probably cause massive damage to their party by association when they inevitably fall.

No, I think the clear best option is to let Trump (and the GOP) dig his own grave over the next year or two, and then graciously ride the wave of comeuppance.

I hope by now people know me well enough to know I am far from a Trump supporter.

But we would be missing out on a huge opportunity here if we didn't highlight that 99% of what politicians say is different looking, but equally foul bullshit.

I'm not joking. If you actually look into the 'facts' and 'statistics' that are used to push and promote the different policies, they are all based in falsehood or manipulation of meaning, a few off the very top of my head:
- Austerity - based on a study that was discredited not long after it was used to strip assets and cut funding for those who need it most
- Immigration caps - Theresa May talks big about reducing immigration now, saying what a problem it has become but she was *home secretary*, responsible for handling immigration policy
- Benefit caps - for years they have painted benefits cheats as the great drain on the British welfare system with TV shows and press releases, but the majority of the benefits bills go towards subsidising low pay (working tax credits, people in full time work that doesn't pay enough to live on) and paying rent to private landlords (rents which are unregulated, landlords who are already privately rich).
- Greater autonomy for local government - sounds great, we get a better say about things that affect us locally, except when we say that we don't want fracking in Lancashire, they over rule us and say we WILL have fracking in Lancashire. Greater autonomy only meant "we're not giving you any more money."

I'm barely getting started. You can go on and on - tax policy when it comes to big multi nationals who don't pay their fair share, but we let them haggle and pay a tokenistic amount - but the reason we don't have enough money is because of the burden of benefits cheats and immigrants??? We paid for the damage done by the financial crash, but the same people are still in charge and now they're taking billions in bonuses too - why don't we get any of it back!??

I can turn on the news at any time and within 30 seconds find something that is skirting with the truth or outright pulling the wool over our eyes.

The entire political system is fucked up in America and in the UK, it's not just Donald Trump. Donald Trump is like a huge fist sized bubble in a strip of freshly laid wallpaper. We don't just need to fix the big obvious bubble; we need to change the way we put wallpaper up because when you look at the rest of the wall, there are thousands of smaller bubbles that amount to the exact same problem of a fucked up wall.

Donald Trump is the dead canary in the coal mine. He's the clear and obvious indicator that something is horribly, horribly wrong. Getting rid of the canary's corpse does not solve the fucking problem.

The blowback from the alt-right, these vicious people spouting nationalism and racism and sexism. AND the constantly bickering and clamouring SJW lefties who want to dominate free thought and free speech. Both these sets of people have been pitted against each other intentionally so that they don't turn on the people at the top. It is the oldest trick in the book - don't blame the guys in charge, blame each other, it gives us longer to get away with it. Divide and conquer. Spread hate, spread war, spread fear, spread anger and people gravitate to the extremes... they are easier to control at the extremes.

...rant over i guess

TLDR
If you found this boring, if you didn't want to look into it, you're part of the problem. You're contributing to the environment in which Trump can flourish.

There is no scrutiny, there is no being held to account. There is only the court of Rupert Murdoch and the Barclay brothers.

I'm largely with @newtboy on this one.

Charles Kinsey provides an excellent and concrete example of someone who thought that there was zero chance that what he was doing would lead to getting shot. He did absolutely nothing wrong, and from what I/we can tell actually handled everything as well as anyone could reasonably hope for. If I was in that situation, I guarantee I wouldn't have had the presence of mind to lay down on my back with my hands straight up and calmly explain what was going on.

So, as a white person who has never been in a situation like that, all I can do is try to put myself in the shoes of how a black person would see this. Here's a guy who acted perfectly -- a standard that I can't imagine holding myself to -- and he still got shot. And the police response is (so far) boilerplate utter bullshit.

I can't really imagine what it would be like to be black in the US, and have direct experiences with this sort of thing (even less extreme examples like profiling traffic stops) on top of WAY too frequent reports of this stuff happening. But I can try, and all I can say is that it seems terrifying.

Push people far enough, and they start pushing back. I think that's what @newtboy is saying. I absolutely do NOT condone violence against police, or painting them with a broad brush and claiming they are ALL racist ... but at some point, I can absolutely understand that there is going to be blowback for this shit that has gone on way too often for way too long.

In order to slow down / prevent / stop that blowback, police need to be working their asses off to change that image. The "blue line" mentality of protecting their own even when they make (massive) mistakes has got to go. Yeah, it is a hard job. Yeah, it means that police should be held to a higher standard of conduct than average Joe citizens. Yeah, it means that police need to accept that they face a certain amount of danger and risk -- danger that will make it hard to be calm, cool, and collected. But that's the job. Protect and serve the people, not themselves or the police department.

Until all the good cops (and there are lots of them, including some friends of mine) get together and make it clear that the actions of these bad cops are utterly unacceptable, things will continue to get worse.

Shit like this makes it easy to understand why the police have been getting so much "blowback" *promote

So, he says clearly that if cops think you have a gun, they will shoot first and figure out the situation later. That sounds like a reason to shoot cops first if you have a gun, not a reason to comply. Terrible.
Making a bad decision based on fear or hate that kills another person makes you a bad person. Making them consistently and repeatedly makes you a bad organization. Defending those bad decisions makes you a disgusting pile of shit that's not worth the skin you're wrapped in.

Lets see them get rid of those officers who are disgracing the badge first, then they can start complaining about the blowback it's causing.

Well, I'll agree with him to this extent:

Parties need to be concerned with choosing candidates that are at least a baseline level of acceptable to the whole range of their usual voters.

Republicans have a big problem with that, because the biggest single segment of their base (at least 40%, probably more) wants Trump, and will be (pretty legitimately) upset / mutinous if the party tries to foist someone else on them. The rest of the party might hate Trump, but they have utterly failed to present an alternative that appeals to a bigger segment of their base than Trump's 40+%.

On the other side of the coin, the Democrats have issues with this also. Not as severe, but Hillary has a really high proportion of haters / mistrust even among registered Democrats.

Assuming Trump and Hillary are the final candidates, I hope that however it turns out there is a huge amount of blowback to *both* parties in terms of drastically higher numbers of people voting for 3rd party "also rans", write ins, or people otherwise clearly voicing their displeasure. Both parties have to do better than this pathetic set of choices.

I agree with most of what he says.

Get rid of the electoral college? YES PLEASE. I was amazed that there was pretty close to zero push to scrap the system after Gore "lost" to Bush. Not even from Democrats. And it (popular vote winner not winning the electoral college) has happened FOUR times! Why wasn't there HUGE blowback in each of those instances, especially in 2000? Hell, why isn't there consistent resistance to this indefensible "system" ALL THE TIME? Instead, people periodically get reminded about it and say "wow, that's pretty fucked up ... meh".

Have primaries settled by actual VOTES instead of weird-ass caucuses / conventions / delegates / "super"delegates, etc.? Undoubtedly better than what goes on now.

Get rid of the senate? Nah. The house is good for being a reasonably-accurate division based on population, which is a good thing. But, there are some issues where regional concerns are better addressed by equal representation per state (farming, manufacturing, business, tourism, etc.). It has the unfortunate side-effect of making a "rogue" senator that does things against what their constituents want worse than in the house, but I think that is a good argument for term limits (possibly *term* limit, as in one and only one) but not scrapping the senate entirely.

Actually, my friend, 'tis you who is overthinking it now.

Recap of our convo:

You: I don't think she's funny.

Me: Wondering if this comedy is directed at you.

You: Nah, I don't think she is funny.

Me: I hear you. Let me tell you why I find her funny.

You: Nah, you're wrong, I don't think she is funny.

Your last response "should" have been -- Huh. So that is why you think she is funny. I still don't find her funny. Or maybe -- Huh. I don't want to think about it. Don't bother me with your opinion.

No need to bring up what anyone else said in this comment stream. I'm not them.

It's all good. You don't think she is funny and you aren't interested in knowing why someone else might.

As for "overthinking", many many column inches have been written by relatively serious people over why Amy Schumer is so wildly popular. Oddly enough, none of those articles mention you personally.

That last line? That was a joke. But you don't have to think it is funny. It makes me laugh though.

TLDR: You are absolutely entitled to your opinion. You aren't entitled to belittle me and what interests me, not without getting some blowback from me.

In November, how many citizens were killed by cops?
Statistic say if 12 cops were killed, at least 120 citizens were killed by them.
It's a terrible situation, but one caused by cops acting inappropriately aggressive repeatedly, causing DEATHS, and other cops standing in support of them. I'm sad if this is leading to more police deaths, but I'm glad they're finally feeling blowback, and hope it makes them de-escalate rather than escalate the violence and discord.

We got our hands up, we're begging 'don't shoot and beat our 12 and 77 year olds', and we can't breath.

@lantern53
oh come on man...
now your just trying to get peoples goat and garner a reaction.you cant seriously be THAT ignorant to history.
no way..
uh uh..
unless you dropped out of school in the 8th grade.
so i aint buying your schtick,go to another corner and peddle your wares somewhere else.

@RedSky
i hear ya and the situation did not just pop out of nowhere.this has been brewing for decades all the way back to world war one.
for anybody interested *cough* lantern *cough* look into:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_Declaration
and a most excellent book by chalmers johnson:
http://www.thenation.com/article/blowback

I'm fairly conflicted.

The issue with having an assassination program with virtually no oversight, run by a government whose people are all too willing to ignore the collateral damage it brings to foreigners is pretty obvious. You could argue that terrorists target the US because of genuine grievances (past blowback particularly from intervention during the Cold War motivated largely by opposing a communist threat over any moral considerations). From there you could argue that if only the US avoided foreign intervention, in time it would no longer be a terrorist target and have no need for such morally questionable action as using drones with significant civilian casualty risk.

I'm sceptical of this argument. For one I think the espoused goals of many terrorist organisations are often a sham. They may start as violent reactionaries to some genuinely held grievance. But mature organisations initiate a conflict with the US because notoriety brings financial support and more fighters which in turn improves their ability to project power, which is their ultimate goal. So I don't see US disengagement as a solution because terrorist attacks and beheadings of its nationals will continue to politically galvanise the US into action. At that point having being disengaged beforehand (lacking intel, ability to target leadership with drones) is just a disadvantage.

I also don't see a government other than the US capable and willing to rally a group of nations and take a leading role against a group like ISIS. It's fair to say that the US invasion of Iraq was largely responsible for destabilising an authoritarian government under Saddam that would have prevented the emergence of a Sunni group like this. But then, imagine if Saddam was still in power in reaction to the Arab Spring and the result was a situation like Syria today. It is all too possible that a similar group would have emerged in a power vacuum not caused by US intervention.

My point is, I agree it is horrible to see civilians being killed by drones and having to live under the constant terror of attack but I don't see a better solution. In fact it seems that drones are probably the solution with the least risk of civilian casualty. There is a reason why the Yemeni/Pakistani government tacitly support them even while publicly disavowing them.

Of course I would like to see them used more judiciously but I am sceptical that this is feasibly possible. I do not doubt that the CIA/Pentagon who run the program are familiar with blowback and the risks of inciting attacks on the US through the killing of innocents in these strikes. It is possible incentives for 'results' may lead to their overuse at the expense of civilian lives and the long term cost. Maybe more openness would be best. Then again more openness would serve as a rallying cry for existing terrorist organisations.

Bravo.

Non-covert blowback anyone?

I'm with you, but I must admit that the ONLY argument that gave me any pause was the one that goes "if he is practicing civil disobedience, he should WANT to get arrested and stand trial".

Real civil disobedience types like Martin Luther King Jr. and others intentionally broke laws (bullshit laws, but still laws) knowing full well that they would be arrested and go to jail. The point was to bring those terrible laws under public scrutiny and ideally ridicule. Point out how unfair they are. I think that people that take such actions are incredibly noble and selfless. To a certain degree, I think that the arguments that Snowden could or should follow that approach at least partially resonated with me.

But then, I considered some mitigating circumstances. IF Snowden had done that right out of the gate, he'd probably have been tossed in Gitmo for life without ever standing trial -- the administration has made it clear that they consider him an enemy of the state and that they are fine with the precedents of how such individuals are treated (ie., rights don't apply to you).

Basically, it boils down to respect. Dr. King Jr. hated some of the BS laws and social injustices in the South, but he respected the justice and good intentions of the US Government in general at the time. Snowden, on the other hand, had firsthand knowledge and proof that our government doesn't deserve such respect from us. They lie, they shit on the constitution, and they have the audacity to call him a criminal.

So, fuck them. They've pushed the line too goddamn far to expect civil disobedience; I think they clearly deserve every bit of blowback they get in the form of uncivil disobedience. Hell, I hope that Snowden has enough more dirt that he can turn the dial up to 11 and get into downright nasty disobedience if the government steps a single corrupt toe out of line in their attempts to extradite him back to their bullshit kangaroo courts.

redefining blowback