Koigate is why Trump got elected

[Gendo]

I'm so pissed at the so called "liberal mainstream media" right now. After years of hearing people who are literally in the media complaining about the media and laughing/crying at the irony, the media goes and does a stupid thing like this.

If you are't familiar with this.... the news is reporting how evil Trump is because rather than follow proper koi feeding protocol, he went and impatiently dumped the entire box of food in the pond; thus overfeeding and murdering all the fish.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/06/politics/ ... index.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-empt ... -koi-pond/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

In reality, Trump followed what the Prime Minister of Japan did step by step; and only emptied his box after Abe did.

CNN literally has a video on their website right now that has been cropped/edited to cut out the part where Abe empties his box.

Seriously? Can we not instead report on the dozens or hundreds of horrific and terrible things that Trump has done and said, and continues to do and say?? Instead we need to invent false stories out of no where in an attempt to make him look bad? Were they so stupid to think that people aren't going to find out the truth about this and stop trusting media as an actual news source, thus leaving people to get bad propaganda from wherever they can find it?

[OpiateOfTheMasses]

They've tried taking the high road before. And all the people that respond to those arguments know he's a moron, so pointing that sort of thing out again isn't going to change their opinion. And the people that still support him obviously don't respond to that sort thing - they like short-easy-to-understand stories - preferably something they can laugh at or that makes them feel clever or superior (and we're generally dealing with a really low bar here) - so perhaps they were aiming for that demographic?

My two cents.

[Raxivace]

I don't quite understand what the complaint about CNN is here- their article you linked to mentions that Abe emptied his box first, and the one video I see at the top of their article shows Abe emptying his box first.

[Derived Absurdity]

Were those articles edited since you posted them? Because neither of them did what you said they did.

Also, I have no idea what Opiate is trying to say, but it seems to me that he's trying to defend the media being dishonest.

[Gendo]

Not sure if the video at the top was always that video or not, but there's another, edited, video shown in the CNN article also. And both headlines are clearly baiting and purposefully misleading to make it sound as if Trump did something wrong. Snopes has already called them out as being misleading.

Both articles literally go on about Trump dumping his box, about how it was a big dramatic gesture, and then as an end-of-article footnote mention "oh, Abe did it too by the way". The CBS one goes on to say "After that, Trump more dramatically tipped his over." "More dramatically? Seriously? If anything I'd say Abe's was more dramatic, but that's a silly judgment call that means nothing.

And it wasn't just these 2 sources, these were just 2 big-name news organizations.

[OpiateOfTheMasses]

Were those articles edited since you posted them? Because neither of them did what you said they did.

Also, I have no idea what Opiate is trying to say, but it seems to me that he's trying to defend the media being dishonest.

I guess I am defending the media being dishonest. (In a way)

The problem with an electoral system where everyone's vote is given equal weight, is that it doesn't matter how ill-informed the voter is, their vote carries as much power as someone voting for good reasons. And if people are queuing up vote because they've remembered two 10 second soundbites that have been hammered into them or have watched a handful of 30 second youtube videos and that's it, then perhaps the other side needs to dumb down their argument to the same level. And if that means being dishonest, then perhaps it's worth being dishonest to achieve a better result.

Or perhaps I'm just getting extra cynical as I get older.

[Raxivace]

People's votes in the American system already aren't given equal weight, at least in Presidential races. The very nature of the system is that the average voter matters significantly less than the an electoral college member's vote. Hence you get Hillary Clinton losing the election despite having 3 million more overall votes than Trump had.

You're otherwise not wrong that democracy only works well when you have an informed, educated populace. Or at least that's one of the things you need.

[Gendo]

People's votes in the American system already aren't given equal weight, at least in Presidential races. The very nature of the system is that the average voter matters significantly less than the an electoral college member's vote. Hence you get Hillary Clinton losing the election despite having 3 million more overall votes than Trump had.

You're otherwise not wrong that democracy only works well when you have an informed, educated populace. Or at least that's one of the things you need.

That's.. not how the electoral college works. It sounds like you might be getting them mixed up with the superdelegates that the democrats use in the primaries.

In the electoral college, it's true that each person's vote is not given equal weight. But it's voters in less populous states that are given more weight, while voters in more populous states are given less weight. Electoral college members are chosen based on the results of the popular vote in each state. Then those people vote for the president according with the party that chose them. It's technically possible for one of them to vote in a way different than the state that picked them, but it doesn't happen; and didn't happen with Trump/Hillary.

[Raxivace]

There were faithless electors in the 2016 election. It wasn't enough to make a real difference but they existed.

[Gendo]

There were faithless electors in the 2016 election. It wasn't enough to make a real difference but they existed.

Sure, but as it wasn't enough to make a difference (and never has been in history), it's just a theoretical thing, not something that actually matters. You made it sound as though the vote of electors have more weight than the vote of other citizens; but if you consider faithless electors, then really it's "the vote of citizens have 0 weight, while the vote of 538 electors hold 100% of the weight". If you don't consider faithless electors, then the electoral college doesn't give extra weight to those people's votes. It DOES give extra weight to residents of smaller states.

[Raxivace]

You made it sound as though the vote of electors have more weight than the vote of other citizens;

That's because EC votes DO have more weight, otherwise there wouldn't be candidates that win the presidency while losing the popular vote by several million votes.

That doesn't mean popular votes have no weight, and it doesn't mean smaller states don't get extra weight in the system either.

[Gendo]

You made it sound as though the vote of electors have more weight than the vote of other citizens;

That's because EC votes DO have more weight, otherwise there wouldn't be candidates that win the presidency while losing the popular vote by several million votes.

That doesn't mean popular votes have no weight, and it doesn't mean smaller states don't get extra weight in the system either.

You're mixing up 2 different principles here... the EC votes themselves have 100% of the weight. The reason that we have a president who lost the popular vote isn't because of faithless electors, or because members of the EC have more power. It's because the EC system gives more weight to less populous states. There's only 2 options here:

1) We discount the notion of faithless electors, because it has never made a difference in our nation's history. In this case, voters from less populous states have more weight than voters from more populous states, because of the way the EC system works. New York has a lower percentage of EC votes per resident than Nebraska does.

2) We consider that faithless electors are a thing, and thus the president can be chosen by however the EC chooses to vote, then technically all non-EC citizens have absolutely 0 say in who becomes president.

When people say that the EC gives more voting weight to some people than to others, they are NOT talking about members of the EC having more weight. They are talking about residents of more rural states having more weight, because those states get more EC votes per person than urban states. The EC voters having more weight isn't why the president lost the popular vote but won the presidency. It's because states like California and New York aren't given as much weight (and pretty much all the extra votes Hillary got over Trump were from California).

*Edit* To put it another way, the outcome of the most recent election, as well as every presidential election in history, would have been the exact same if members of the EC were not people with any voting rights at all, but rather were just numbers assigned to each state based on the way that state voted. If VA's 13 EC votes weren't literally people who voted, but were automatically counted as 13 votes when the results come in on election night.

[Raxivace]

I don't think we actually disagree very much. Just to clear, what I'm not arguing is that Trump won because of faithless electors or that EC voters themselves have more power. I'm arguing that EC votes (As a distinction from the voters themselves) do matter more- in that sense I don't disagree with the hypothetical in your edit.

Again, I also don't actually disagree with your analysis that the EC system gives extra weight to smaller states. I just don't think the system that lets them have that extra weight is necessarily beneficial to the country.

[OpiateOfTheMasses]

The EC system is the product of a historical system that created it and is no longer fit for purpose. In the modern age where every ballot can be quickly and directly voted and applied there isn't really a good reason on things like the election of a president (where by definition there can only be one winner) that a simple, direct count of all votes cast isn't used.

But with only a handful of exceptions it suits the political classes to keep the current system as it generally means they have "safe states" and it means they can concentrate their campaigning. The losers - as normal - are the millions of voters who live in the safe states who's votes often don't count for anything.

It also makes it virtually impossible for a third party candidate to ever breakthrough the two party stranglehold on the system. Because much as the Republicans and Democrats hate each other, what would really scare them would be a strong third party emerging threatening to upset the balance - they'd rather see their "old familiar enemy" in power than see that happen.

We have exactly the same issue in the UK with our FPTP system for electing MPs and by extension the government, where it's very rare for a government to get much more than about 40% of the popular vote (45% would be considered a landslide!), but because of the electoral system that will normally be enough to land them a comfortable majority and the smaller parties can get millions of votes and end up with few (or even no) MPs.

[Gendo]

I don't think we actually disagree very much. Just to clear, what I'm not arguing is that Trump won because of faithless electors or that EC voters themselves have more power. I'm arguing that EC votes (As a distinction from the voters themselves) do matter more- in that sense I don't disagree with the hypothetical in your edit.

Again, I also don't actually disagree with your analysis that the EC system gives extra weight to smaller states. I just don't think the system that lets them have that extra weight is necessarily beneficial to the country.

Ok yeah, there's an important distinction I was missing between EC votes and EC voters.

And I wasn't making a case that the extra weight to smaller states is a good thing, just that it's a thing.

It was just that the way you initially described it sounded a lot like what the democrats do for primaries, where everyone gets a vote, but there's a handful of people who get more votes. Of course, like faithless electors; they have never actually decided a primary differently than the outcome would have been without them.