Red Mosquito

I don't think the Electoral College is ever going to go away, at least unless there is some kind of massive realignment in terms of which states gravitate towards which parties. It's possible, but I'm not seeing it. You'd need two thirds of Congress, and three-fourths of the states, and Republicans and small states will never agree to it. Why would they, if they increasingly see that convincing a majority of Americans to vote for their candidate is a lost cause?

Exactly

I think the problem is that even if Biden wins the White House and Democrats win the Senate, they'll never have a 2/3 majority, and they'll never get states to sign on. So until there is some kind of tipping point with a state like Texas, we may be in a position where Democrats could win the popular vote total by greater and greater numbers while continuing to lose the presidency. I'm not sure there is a good answer for that.

digster wrote:

VinylGuy wrote:Saw those ¨its ok to be white¨t shirts....damn, thats just so aggressive.
Im still on the fence with thinking he is done, or that this empty seats mean anything.

He could get destroyed in the popular vote and still win the Electoral College. Putting aside the long-term stability of a country where leaders can lose by four to five million votes and still win, that's still very possible. If the polls as they stand now are fairly accurate (as national polling for the most part was in 2016, within the margin of error), and if Biden's lead sticks, that probably won't matter. But Biden could beat Trump by as large a margin as Obama beat Romney, for example, and still lose.

It’s not just the disastrous polling, it’s the spread of where that polling is. It’s the locality of where his support has collapsed.

If you look at each state’s 2018 election results and apply them to an electoral college count, the democratic nominee wins by 30 points. And Donald Trump’s polling would have to improve...not as a temporary bump, but as a permanent change...by 3 full points **just to get back to that point**. Just to get back to a place where he could say he’s only due to lose the college by 30 points, and could then strategize around regaining those points.

People look at 2016 and think the lesson is that the electoral college is automatically going to do him some favors, but in this specific instance the opposite is true. His polling collapse hasn’t occurred in the bluest states, where he was already deathly unpopular. And it mostly hasn’t happened in the reddest states, although there are exceptions. It has happened in those purple states he’d only managed to win by a tiny margin.

In order to win, Donald Trump has to convince millions of Americans who currently disapprove of him not only that they should vote for four more years, but that they should vote for four more years in the middle of a pandemic. He needs MILLIONS OF PEOPLE who dislike him to do such a turnaround that they go out and vote, because it’s so important to them to make sure that he wins again.

He’s on stage bragging about drinking water and joking about COVID testing. He literally doesn’t know how to win those people back. He only knows how to be the outsider punching in.

I was under the impression those Rust Belt states besides Michigan were still relatively close, and I have little doubt that those numbers are going to tighten a little bit the closer we get to Election Day and partisans unenthusiastically hop back on board. I'm definitely of the opinion that Trump isn't Houdini, and that I'd rather be Biden, but I still think the electoral college map favors Trump at this point.

538 has an average of a five point lead for Biden in PA, for example; if that becomes closer, which I presume it will, Biden could be in a position to wallop Trump in the popular vote and lose the electoral college (how many hundreds of thousands of votes will Biden add to his popular vote total with a good showing in Texas, for example, without one electoral vote to show for it?)

digster wrote:I was under the impression those Rust Belt states besides Michigan were still relatively close, and I have little doubt that those numbers are going to tighten a little bit the closer we get to Election Day and partisans unenthusiastically hop back on board. I'm definitely of the opinion that Trump isn't Houdini, and that I'd rather be Biden, but I still think the electoral college map favors Trump at this point.

538 has an average of a five point lead for Biden in PA, for example; if that becomes closer, which I presume it will, Biden could be in a position to wallop Trump in the popular vote and lose the electoral college (how many hundreds of thousands of votes will Biden add to his popular vote total with a good showing in Texas, for example, without one electoral vote to show for it?)

I would argue that this is impossible to reconcile with the fact that he hasn’t seen polling gains in any battleground state since 2018. But I’ll put it another way:

If you take the last 10 weeks of polling and award any state where Donald Trump polled more than 5 points ahead of Biden through at least three pollsters...as in, more than just in an outlier poll...to Donald Trump, it amounts to 69 electoral points (nice).

If you take the last 10 weeks of polling and award any state where Joe Biden polled more than 7 points (I’m being more stringent on Biden’s leads, because the perfect storm of events in 2016 cost Clinton around 3 points nationally and a maximum of 6 points in any one state) ahead of Trump for any stretch to him, it comes out to 202.

The spread and degree to which he would have to reinvent his appeal, with mere months left, is staggering. Absolutely staggering.

Does anyone actually KNOW someone who has been polled?

digster wrote:I think the problem is that even if Biden wins the White House and Democrats win the Senate, they'll never have a 2/3 majority, and they'll never get states to sign on. So until there is some kind of tipping point with a state like Texas, we may be in a position where Democrats could win the popular vote total by greater and greater numbers while continuing to lose the presidency. I'm not sure there is a good answer for that.

I agree. That's why I said we need Biden, the House, and the Senate for it to be more than a moot point. I didn't say those three things get it done.

B wrote:

That’s fucking great is what that is.

wease wrote:

B wrote:

That’s fucking great is what that is.

2016 Biden? I want Biden jogging around, drinking water, going down icy, wet ramps in leather-bottom shoes in 2020!

wease wrote:

B wrote:

That’s fucking great is what that is.

That was...not good.

Obviously earlier in 2019 there was no pandemic but John Tesh pulled a bigger crowd at the Tulsa arena than Donnie did I guess.

did he play the NBA on NBC theme when he was there

Omg that theme is genius

i've actually come around on the electoral college-hating and am onboard with keeping it. it's helpful for a divided country to better ensure it doesn't regionally tear apart. truth is, the dems need to improve their message to the "rural" parts of the country. they should have an impetus to think about steps to improve the wealth gap everywhere, protect american jobs in the midwest, find solutions that work for the 'deplorable', etc. you don't get to be President of 50% of the country. You're president for 100% of the country. To win you should have to appeal to more than just the concentrated urban areas. it sucks if you get 5 million more votes and still lose but there is an obvious lesson there - you gotta take it to the swing states and listen to their needs and speak to them.

on a related note, i hate trump, think GWB stole both his elections, and hate voter disenfranchisement deeply

The electoral college allows for someone to be President of 40% of the country

College is a waste of time

The Argonaut wrote:The electoral college allows for someone to be President of 40% of the country

no, it's a winner take all system.

verb_to_trust wrote:Omg that theme is genius