Nikki Haley

[Ivytalk]

Professor Heck, Super-voter!

I see nothing wrong with admitting that I didn't vote for Hillary or Trump. Why do you think otherwise? I can rest assured that there was no chance the whacko I was voting for had any chance to actually be President.

And remember, I basically wrote myself in as a Township Auditor - I have ballot box power baby!!!

I was just picking up, as Flaggy did, on your equation of a vote for Stein with the vote of a highly-informed voter.

[GannonFan]

I see nothing wrong with admitting that I didn't vote for Hillary or Trump. Why do you think otherwise? I can rest assured that there was no chance the whacko I was voting for had any chance to actually be President.

And remember, I basically wrote myself in as a Township Auditor - I have ballot box power baby!!!

I was just picking up, as Flaggy did, on your equation of a vote for Stein with the vote of a highly-informed voter.

The fact that I knew she was a complete whacko, had no chance to be elected, and that she wasn't Donald or Hillary cements me as a highly-informed voter. If we went ahead with the façade of a second, "run-off" election I would've either done a write in vote or just would've left the race blank without a vote.

Screw this artificial "let's rig it to get someone 50% so that everyone feels better" movement. Without looking it up, I'd wager that 20%-40% of US Presidential elections since we really started voting (i.e. direct election by ballot) didn't result in a person winning 50% of the popular vote and we managed to get through the past 200+ years with just one civil war.

[AZGrizFan]

I was just picking up, as Flaggy did, on your equation of a vote for Stein with the vote of a highly-informed voter.

The fact that I knew she was a complete whacko, had no chance to be elected, and that she wasn't Donald or Hillary cements me as a highly-informed voter. If we went ahead with the façade of a second, "run-off" election I would've either done a write in vote or just would've left the race blank without a vote.

Same logic I used voting for Johnson. That and the fact I really wish he'd win. And yes, in a "runoff election" I would have abstained.

[mainejeff]

I support ranked choice voting. I think it'd do a lot of good.


I also support our current system, the Electoral College. It's worked, as design, +90% of the time. Mistakes are not often.

Not sure about ranked voting, but I do not want the Electoral College screwed with in any way. This gives smaller states a say instead of 10 large cities.


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I’d rather give people a say than land masses. And why should less people be more important than more people?

[CID1990]

Not sure about ranked voting, but I do not want the Electoral College screwed with in any way. This gives smaller states a say instead of 10 large cities.


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I’d rather give people a say than land masses. And why should less people be more important than more people?

Maybe you should go back and take a basic civics class .... and pay special attention to why we have the EC and a bicameral Congress in the first place

Despite what all these Maoist retreads are saying - it wasn't simply to preserve slavery

Get rid of the Electoral College is today's hotness- in a couple years you'll be saying get rid of the Senate


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[AZGrizFan]

I’d rather give people a say than land masses. And why should less people be more important than more people?

Maybe you should go back and take a basic civics class .... and pay special attention to why we have the EC and a bicameral Congress in the first place

Despite what all these Maoist retreads are saying - it wasn't simply to preserve slavery

Get rid of the Electoral College is today's hotness- in a couple years you'll be saying get rid of the Senate


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Or expand the Supreme Court to get back their perceived “majority”.

[css75]

Not sure about ranked voting, but I do not want the Electoral College screwed with in any way. This gives smaller states a say instead of 10 large cities.


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I’d rather give people a say than land masses. And why should less people be more important than more people?

Here listen to this, there is a chance you could get the concept, but I doubt it.

https://youtu.be/V6s7jB6-GoU


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[mainejeff]

Maybe you should go back and take a basic civics class .... and pay special attention to why we have the EC and a bicameral Congress in the first place

Despite what all these Maoist retreads are saying - it wasn't simply to preserve slavery

Get rid of the Electoral College is today's hotness- in a couple years you'll be saying get rid of the Senate


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Or expand the Supreme Court to get back their perceived “majority”.

No, we’ll just keep changing the rules so Republicans can keep picking SC justices.

[GannonFan]

Or expand the Supreme Court to get back their perceived “majority”.

No, we’ll just keep changing the rules so Republicans can keep picking SC justices.

I'm reading a book by Jeffrey Toobin now (written back in 2007 or so) called "The Nine", and it's basically a book about the Supreme Court. But he could've written it today because none of the talking points have changed. Very interesting part, just a throwaway paragraph really, about how O'Connor postponed her departure from the Court until after the 2004 elections because the Dems had the majority in the Senate before that election and it was well understood by both parties that the Dems were going to delay any nomination Bush made until after the election that year. What a novel concept.

[css75]

SCOTUS is not how it was originally planned. Don’t now when it became political, but it has been that way for quite sometime.


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[Skjellyfetti]

I feel like you've been reading that book for awhile...

[GannonFan]

I’d rather give people a say than land masses. And why should less people be more important than more people?

Maybe you should go back and take a basic civics class .... and pay special attention to why we have the EC and a bicameral Congress in the first place

Despite what all these Maoist retreads are saying - it wasn't simply to preserve slavery

Get rid of the Electoral College is today's hotness- in a couple years you'll be saying get rid of the Senate


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And heck, just another example of the poor state of civics education and American History education in this country. The Electoral College (and an upper house of the legislature not tied to population) was never put in place for preserving slavery. On the contrary, it was the slave states, namely Virginia, that were the biggest champions of tying representation directly to population. James Madison, a slave owner, ironically called the father of the Constitution (more accurately the father of the Bill of RIghts), came out of the Constitutional Convention despondent because he didn't win the argument and instead the Senate gave equal votes to all states regardless of population. Population in the slave states was artificially boosted by counting the slaves in the population, so having anything that wasn't tied only to population went against the preservation of slavery.

[Skjellyfetti]

Population in the slave states was artificially boosted by counting the slaves in the population, so having anything that wasn't tied only to population went against the preservation of slavery.

How is that artificially boosted? Counting slaves as 3/5 of a person is artificially diminishing the population, no?

[GannonFan]

Population in the slave states was artificially boosted by counting the slaves in the population, so having anything that wasn't tied only to population went against the preservation of slavery.

How is that artificially boosted? Counting slaves as 3/5 of a person is artificially diminishing the population, no?

They were property under the law, so counting them at all was artificially boosting the population.

[Skjellyfetti]

How is that artificially boosted? Counting slaves as 3/5 of a person is artificially diminishing the population, no?

They were property under the law, so counting them at all was artificially boosting the population.

They were counted in the census. The census is what is used to determine representation. Deducting from the total population is diminishing the population.

[GannonFan]

They were property under the law, so counting them at all was artificially boosting the population.

They were counted in the census. The census is what is used to determine representation. Deducting from the total population is diminishing the population.

And again, since they were property under the law and had no say in really anything, just because they were counted did not mean they were represented by the federal government. That's why even in 1790 slaves were an entirely separate column in the census count. Counting them and including them in the population figures was the way for slavery to protect slavery, as the South needed the extra population boost to protect their peculiar institution. Getting back to the point, including non-population based parts of government (i.e. Senate and the Electoral College) gave more power to smaller, non-slave states, that they wouldn't have had had a strict population-based system so therefore, things like the Senate and the EC were actually anti-slavery facets of the government then.

[CID1990]

Maybe you should go back and take a basic civics class .... and pay special attention to why we have the EC and a bicameral Congress in the first place

Despite what all these Maoist retreads are saying - it wasn't simply to preserve slavery

Get rid of the Electoral College is today's hotness- in a couple years you'll be saying get rid of the Senate


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

And heck, just another example of the poor state of civics education and American History education in this country. The Electoral College (and an upper house of the legislature not tied to population) was never put in place for preserving slavery. On the contrary, it was the slave states, namely Virginia, that were the biggest champions of tying representation directly to population. James Madison, a slave owner, ironically called the father of the Constitution (more accurately the father of the Bill of RIghts), came out of the Constitutional Convention despondent because he didn't win the argument and instead the Senate gave equal votes to all states regardless of population. Population in the slave states was artificially boosted by counting the slaves in the population, so having anything that wasn't tied only to population went against the preservation of slavery.

double post

[CID1990]

Maybe you should go back and take a basic civics class .... and pay special attention to why we have the EC and a bicameral Congress in the first place

Despite what all these Maoist retreads are saying - it wasn't simply to preserve slavery

Get rid of the Electoral College is today's hotness- in a couple years you'll be saying get rid of the Senate


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

And heck, just another example of the poor state of civics education and American History education in this country. The Electoral College (and an upper house of the legislature not tied to population) was never put in place for preserving slavery. On the contrary, it was the slave states, namely Virginia, that were the biggest champions of tying representation directly to population. James Madison, a slave owner, ironically called the father of the Constitution (more accurately the father of the Bill of RIghts), came out of the Constitutional Convention despondent because he didn't win the argument and instead the Senate gave equal votes to all states regardless of population. Population in the slave states was artificially boosted by counting the slaves in the population, so having anything that wasn't tied only to population went against the preservation of slavery.

I know it wasn't - I put it in there because it is part of the current narrative



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[Ivytalk]

And heck, just another example of the poor state of civics education and American History education in this country. The Electoral College (and an upper house of the legislature not tied to population) was never put in place for preserving slavery. On the contrary, it was the slave states, namely Virginia, that were the biggest champions of tying representation directly to population. James Madison, a slave owner, ironically called the father of the Constitution (more accurately the father of the Bill of RIghts), came out of the Constitutional Convention despondent because he didn't win the argument and instead the Senate gave equal votes to all states regardless of population. Population in the slave states was artificially boosted by counting the slaves in the population, so having anything that wasn't tied only to population went against the preservation of slavery.

I know it wasn't - I put it in there because it is part of the current narrative



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Ganny’s on a roll. He always has to have the last word, especially when he’s teaching some Donk doofus about history.

[Ibanez]

I support ranked choice voting. I think it'd do a lot of good.


I also support our current system, the Electoral College. It's worked, as design, +90% of the time. Mistakes are not often.

Not sure about ranked voting, but I do not want the Electoral College screwed with in any way. This gives smaller states a say instead of 10 large cities.


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You rank the candidates and when things are too close to call, it helps make a better decision based off what the population wants. Go read about it, I probably am not explaining it well.

[JohnStOnge]

Stock market was way down today. Hurts me personally for the time being. But hopefully we'll have a little bit of an economic disturbance to increase the odds of the Democrats taking at least one House of Congress. Disturbances happen. I'd be good for one to happen now. It'd be better for the country in the long run if it contributes to reigning in the corruption that is the Republican Party right now.

Meanwhile we really need to start pushing for automatic runoff voting to provide at least SOME chance that other parties and/or independents can gain some traction. We need for people to feel free to vote for other options without worrying about their votes being wasted.

I thought the economy did not influence voters or was I just reading your past missives wrong?

I have never believed that one SHOULD vote based on what the economy is doing at the time. And I do not do that. To my recollection what the economy has been doing at the time has never been a factor in any of my voting decisions over 42 years of voting.

At the same time, the reality is that what the economy is doing at the time DOES impact the way many people vote. So I think it'd be good to have a little bit of a disturbance right now in order to increase the odds of having the Democrats gain control of at least one House of Congress.

[JohnStOnge]

I thought the economy did not influence voters or was I just reading your past missives wrong?

It occurred to me that maybe you were talking about what I had to say about the 2016 election. What I said/wrote is that Trump did not win because of the economy. If you look at the exit polls from back then, the economy was indeed an important issue. When asked what the most important issue was, 52% of exit polling respondents said it was the economy. That far outpaced the next most cited issue. Number 2 was terrorism. 18% of respondents said that was the most important issue.

HOWEVER, among those who said the economy was the most important issue, 52% voted for Clinton vs. 41% who voted for Trump. That issue worked in Clinton's favor. To put it in perspective: In 2012 the REPUBLICAN (Romney) beat the Democrat (Obama) among those who thought the economy was the most important issue by 51% to 47% among respondents. The idea that Trump won because of the economy appears to be a myth.

Trump appears to have gotten enough to win based on overwhelming support associated with other issues. For instance, among that 18% who said terrorism was most important, Trump won by 57% to 40%. And the big one was immigration. Among the 13% who said immigration was most important, Trump won by 64% to 33%.

Trump did not win because of the economy. And that's not a surprise because the economy was doing well when the election took place. The incumbent was up by 52.4% to 44.6% in job approval. He won because of what the liberals would coin as "Xenophobia" and stuff like White Evangelical Christians being pissed off about homosexual marriage and transgender bathrooms.

Oh...and then there was the thing where he drew a really bad Democrat candidate who was under FBI investigation through much of the campaign then had that FBI bomb dropped on her near the end. Had Trump had to run against Obama he'd have been destroyed worse than Romney and McCain were.

Nevertheless, an economic disturbance right now would hurt Republicans. And all that's needed is a few percentage points.

[css75]

One reason the north approved the 3/5 rule was that the majority of slaves were in the South. The North figured the South would eventually want the slaves counted as whole to have a higher population count, they were wrong.


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[Winterborn]

I thought the economy did not influence voters or was I just reading your past missives wrong?

It occurred to me that maybe you were talking about what I had to say about the 2016 election. What I said/wrote is that Trump did not win because of the economy. If you look at the exit polls from back then, the economy was indeed an important issue. When asked what the most important issue was, 52% of exit polling respondents said it was the economy. That far outpaced the next most cited issue. Number 2 was terrorism. 18% of respondents said that was the most important issue.

HOWEVER, among those who said the economy was the most important issue, 52% voted for Clinton vs. 41% who voted for Trump. That issue worked in Clinton's favor. To put it in perspective: In 2012 the REPUBLICAN (Romney) beat the Democrat (Obama) among those who thought the economy was the most important issue by 51% to 47% among respondents. The idea that Trump won because of the economy appears to be a myth.

Trump appears to have gotten enough to win based on overwhelming support associated with other issues. For instance, among that 18% who said terrorism was most important, Trump won by 57% to 40%. And the big one was immigration. Among the 13% who said immigration was most important, Trump won by 64% to 33%.

Trump did not win because of the economy. And that's not a surprise because the economy was doing well when the election took place. The incumbent was up by 52.4% to 44.6% in job approval. He won because of what the liberals would coin as "Xenophobia" and stuff like White Evangelical Christians being pissed off about homosexual marriage and transgender bathrooms.

Oh...and then there was the thing where he drew a really bad Democrat candidate who was under FBI investigation through much of the campaign then had that FBI bomb dropped on her near the end. Had Trump had to run against Obama he'd have been destroyed worse than Romney and McCain were.

Nevertheless, an economic disturbance right now would hurt Republicans. And all that's needed is a few percentage points.

If the polls going into the election were wrong, why should anybody believe the exit polls?

And I disagree on his wining was based off “xenophobia”. Yes, for a small majority of people on both sides of the isle it was, but it is just what gets published as it is a good narrative to sell newspapers. It was people seeing that the status quo under Obama (and that would more than likely continue or get worse under Hillary) was not going to continue working and that a change was needed. I have friends that own small business and they are doing much better now and have greater hope to stay in business then they had through the previous administration. The policies in place by the previous administration were not small business friendly. Which is reflected in the current small business optimism index being the highest since Reagan was president. People vote based on their wallets and paychecks.

The NFIB Small Business Optimism Index continued its historic 23-month positive trend, with a reading of 107.9 in September, the third highest reading in the survey’s 45-year history. In the small business half of the economy, 2018 has produced 45-year record high measures of job openings, hiring plans, actual job creation, compensation increases (actual and planned), profit growth, and inventory investment.

http://www.nfib.com/surveys/small-busin ... ic-trends/

[JohnStOnge]

If the polls going into the election were wrong, why should anybody believe the exit polls?

And I disagree on his wining was based off “xenophobia”. Yes, for a small majority of people on both sides of the isle it was, but it is just what gets published as it is a good narrative to sell newspapers. It was people seeing that the status quo under Obama (and that would more than likely continue or get worse under Hillary) was not going to continue working and that a change was needed. I have friends that own small business and they are doing much better now and have greater hope to stay in business then they had through the previous administration. The policies in place by the previous administration were not small business friendly. Which is reflected in the current small business optimism index being the highest since Reagan was president. People vote based on their wallets and paychecks.

You may have not seen me write on the topic of the polls before but the polls for the 2016 election were not "wrong." What they indicated is that Clinton would win the popular vote but the electoral college was too close to call. The RealClearPolitics average of polls on the overall vote on election eve estimated Clinton by 3.3 percentage points and she won the overall vote by 2.1 percentage points.

With respect to the electoral college: The election eve RealClearPolitics Electoral Map is still up at https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epoll ... e_map.html. It has neither candidate with the necessary 270 electoral votes needed to win. It's got 15 jurisdictions (13 whole states plus the two Maine jurisdictions) as toss ups. Note the blue and red shading. There are 39 jurisdictions on the map whereby the information was sufficient to make some kind of call. In 38 of 39 cases the candidate indicated as favored in the State won it. The only exception was Wisconsin. But Wisconsin was at the lowest level of confidence with respect to the call (Leans). I don't think being right in 38 of 39 cases is bad.

You may not have seen it before but this is not something I am just saying now. I posted on this board on election eve that the polls did not provide sufficient evidence to say Clinton was going to win. The problem wasn't the polls. It was pundits who, I think, just couldn't believe enough people would vote for somebody like Trump to allow him to win.

The premise that we shouldn't believe the polls because they were "wrong" for the 2016 election is a false one. Polls always have some error. And that's understood. But the polls were not wildly off for the 2016 Presidential election. They suggested Clinton would get more votes and she got more votes.

And I guarantee you that Republican political professionals are not dismissing polls. They are using them. They are doing their own.

It's not that NOBODY who thought the economy was the most important issue voted for Trump. In Michigan, for instance, 52% of exit poll respondents said the economy was the most important issue and 43% of those who said that voted for Trump. So a lot of people who thought it was the most important issue voted for Trump. But 51% said they voted for Clinton. The sample size was 2812; which means it's virtually certain that most of the people who voted in that State who thought the economy was the most important issue voted for Clinton than for Trump.
Voting by people who thought the economy was the most important issue was a net negative for Trump. There is no reasonable doubt about that.

Meanwhile White Evangelical Christian respondents voted for Trump over Clinton by 81% to 14%. It's unfortunate that the exit polling didn't ask questions about things like abortion, homosexual marriage, etc. But White Evangelical Christians didn't vote by that overwhelming majority for Trump because of the economy. I think we all know that if we're honest with ourselves.