let’s gooo

  • FoxBJK@midwest.social
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    7 months ago

    I remember seeing this comment on Digg while people speculated that W would be the last republican president elected for a generation.

    • AFaithfulNihilist@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      To be fair, he didn’t win his first election by getting the most votes, and neither did Trump.

      The Republicans realized during the Reagan administration that they would soon be unable to win the presidency with a majority of votes and took many steps to undermine the Democratic process. Voter suppression, purges, intimidation, voter ID laws, all of that began with Reagan.

      Bush the elder was the last to win a “democratic” victory. If it weren’t for 9/11, Bush wouldn’t have been able to win his second election either. That fact always blows my mind. Like people rallied around the incompetent fool who managed to ignore warnings and let a terrorist strike happen only to then go on and invade the wrong country multiple times and spend trillions of dollars on nothing.

      • FoxBJK@midwest.social
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        7 months ago

        I don’t disagree. I’m just calling out the whole “things will change when conservatives start dying off” trope because people have been banking on that for 20 years.

      • pigup@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        " ya don’t change horses midstream 🤠" was a literal campaign ad phrase back then I remember

        Boomers have a lot of lead accumulated in their brains, not entirely their fault

        • frezik@midwest.social
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          7 months ago

          That was so dumb. We literally had a President die in office during the biggest war humanity has ever seen, and we still won. Not only that, but Truman was kept out of the loop on a lot of things (“What’s the Manhattan Project all about?”).

    • Diplomjodler@feddit.de
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      7 months ago

      If the US president got elected by getting the most votes, there wouldn’t have been a Republican since Bush senior. I really don’t understand why electoral reform is not higher on the political agenda in the US.

      • dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        7 months ago

        Having it based purely on a popular vote will still wind up with a 2 party system. Ranked voting needs to be implemented. All of the benefits of a popular vote, with actual checks and balances to elevate 3rd parties.

      • Lad@reddthat.com
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        7 months ago

        The Democratic party and Republican party are united in their opposition to electoral reform because they both benefit the most from it.

      • stoly@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        This was the deal with the devil that people in the North made with people in the South to convince people in the South to join them in a government specifically set up to defy the British. The US as a democracy has always failed because it was designed to give ultimate executive power to the states rather than to the people.

        • SeaJ@lemm.ee
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          7 months ago

          Or because it would take a constitutional amendment. The only way around that would be making the electoral college irrelevant via the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact which has largely only been signed by democratic leaning states. In fact, of the states that have passed it, zero have been right leaning.

          There are certainly shitty corporate democrats that do fall into your category but to say the party as a whole is that way is ignorant.

        • stoly@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          The DNC would actually benefit here because the popular vote would always bring in a Democrat. It’s the small, red states that will never let change happen because Wyoming enjoys having more direct representation than California.

          • SeaJ@lemm.ee
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            7 months ago

            The PEOPLE would benefit since they are the ones doing the voting, not the states. It is just as ridiculous that Republicans in California have little say in the presidency as Democrats in Wyoming.

            • nybble41@programming.dev
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              7 months ago

              It is just as ridiculous that Republicans in California have little say in the presidency as Democrats in Wyoming.

              The Republicans in California have a better chance of seeing a Republican president with the electoral college than they would with a national popular vote, even if their particular votes carry less weight. In a sense that gives them more representation in the end, not less—their voices are ignored but they get what they wanted anyway.

        • frezik@midwest.social
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          7 months ago

          That must be why Republican-dominated states have passed the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. /s

    • stoly@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      It’s important to remember that collapse doesn’t happen overnight, and then suddenly it does. It takes a great deal of times for cracks to form and a structure to fall, but once it goes, it goes.