A View From The Beach’s Fritz has a long running series on Reasons Why Trump Won, such as this one. Here’s another
https://twitter.com/WilliamTeach/status/1012341845081370626
Will Wilkerson at the NY Times tries to sorta be rational, but, you can feel the derision, condescension, and hatred shining through
The great, gradual migration of the human population from the countryside to the city has transformed the world, but we’ve barely begun to reckon with its political implications. Over generations, urbanization has sorted us on the traits — ethnicity, education level, personal temperament — that draw us toward cities or keep us away.
The logic of our electoral institutions has always sorted the bulk of American voters into one of two major parties. What’s new is that the sorting dynamic of urbanization now accounts for partisan sorting, too. Democrats have become the party of the multicultural city, Republicans the party of the monocultural country — the party of urbanization-resistant white people.
The only thing missing is calling them racists, Fascists, Nazis, and KKK members.
Such a clean partisan break along density lines has thrown our democracy into a crisis of legitimacy and dysfunction. Our federal system of democratic representation has drifted dangerously out of sync with the geographic distribution, demographic makeup and outsize economic role of America’s urbanized population.
Our politics is cracking up over the density divide. Big cities and their distinctive interests are suffering a density penalty and need more visibility in our scheme of representation.
This is the old whine about less populated states having *gasp* the same representation in the Senate as populous states (can we repeal the 17th now?). I mean, how dare those yokel hick redneck have representation, amiright?
America’s Constitution was devised in the 1780s to balance power between free and slave regions in a thoroughly agricultural economy. In an urbanized polity in which a handful of dense, multicultural metro areas contain most of the people and produce most of the wealth and tax receipts, our federal scheme of representation, which effectively gives extra votes to dirt in low-population states, defies both moral and prudential common sense.
America’s outdated system of representation allowed Donald Trump and the party of the monocultural country to seize total control of the state with a minority of votes and about 36 percent of the economy. That’s not just a glitch. That’s a disaster.
That type of sneering is why Trump won.
Under Mr. Trump, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has singled out urban Democratic strongholds for terrorizing deportation raids under the pretext that so-called sanctuary policies imperil public safety by attracting and shielding dangerous criminal immigrants.
That’s where most of the illegals go, because the Democrats protect the illegals over US citizens.
A Democratic takeover of at least the House in the midterm elections would blunt Mr. Trump’s ability to inflict this sort of cruelty — unless our system’s density penalty allows Republicans to hold it with a minority of votes. It happened in 2012, and election wonks say it has a nearly one-in-three chance of happening again.
In other words, Dems are pissed off by those votes to dirt people being given the Right to vote and have them count as much as the cool city folks.
Families are being torn apart, thousands are packed into squalid prisons, and millions of city-dwelling Americans have been made to suffer under a regime of “institutionalized cruelty†because country people are anxious and city votes count less. Fixing this is far more important than whose team wins when we fix it, because the basic framework of democratic self-defense is far more important than any ephemeral policy. As Judith Shklar sagely said, “without enough equality of power to protect and assert one’s rights, freedom is but a hope.â€
See? They want the hayseeds’ votes to barely count. And this is why Trump won. And will continue to win.
Somehow they never come up with what rights have been taken away and they no longer have.
Just making up shit like that idiot from St. Louis.
Desperate and delusional.
Dp,
We don’t have rights, none. We have some things they let us do, but no rights. I watched a doc yesterday and it pointed out each American commits 3 felons daily without trying. We have too many laws. This seems to come from our liberal friends who don’t seem capable of leaving us alone.
Teach, every so often when I try to read comments on your site the comment form is covered by something from Jetpack claiming my IP has been locked out — but the IP it shows isn’t mine.
Plugin error?
Same thing has happened to me.
“Democrats have become the party of the multicultural city, Republicans the party of the monocultural country — the party of urbanization-resistant white people.â€
No.
Democrats have become the party that divides Americans into different ‘cultures’, Republicans (conservatives, anyways) have become the party that unites us all – as colorfully different looking as we are – as Americans.
Mr Wilkerson combitched:
He stated that it was the composition of the Senate, with each state having two Senators, and therefore two electoral votes, that threw off the results.
Donald Trump received 304 electoral votes to 227 for Hillary Clinton. If we subtract the sixty electoral votes for the thirty states Mr Trump won, that would leave him with 244; if we subtract the 42 electoral votes for the twenty states plus District of Columbia that Mrs Clinton carried, she’s down to 185, and Mr Trump still wins! Even if all of the ‘faithless electors’ votes went to Mrs Clinton, those seven additional votes would not have changed the outcome.
The bigger problem for the Democrats is that they have packed themselves in too close together. In 2017, there were 57 precincts in foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia in which Barack Hussein Obama took 100% of the vote. With our representation being based on geographical districts, as the Constitution specifies, how do you manage to distribute precincts in which the Democratic candidate gains such overwhelming majorities into separate districts?
In 2004, John Kerry had twenty congressional districts in which his percentage margin was greater than President Bush’s best district. The sensible vote is simply more spread out across the nation, while the stupid people pack themselves into sardine cans.
Mr Wilkerson wrote:
And they wonder why the people in ‘flyover states’ don’t listen to them? Mr Wilkerson’s condescension fairly drips from his statement. Us rubes just don’t have the smarts to know we should live in a 450 ft² fourth floor walk-up in Manhattan, instead of an eight acre farm out in God’s sunshine for a tenth of the cost.
It’s the same argument they make about the Electoral college. They were fine with it when it selected Bill and Obama, but when it failed to select Hillary, it must be broken. For Democrats, it’s all outcome based. They want the outcome they want, and are willing to change the process until they get it. As if they can’t tell that two can play that game.
Under that logic, we don’t need a Senate at all. It is already just a superfluous House of representatives. Just abolish the senate and have a general assembly, based on population. Like most of the rest of the world does (at least the parts that pretend to care what the mob thinks). 100 fewer petty aristocrats and their staffs sent home would be a nice little part of the Swamp drained.
Note: If the Senate gets abolished, neither democrats nor republicans will care about DC or PR statehood. Democrats only want them to get 4 more permanently Democrat party senate votes and Republicans only oppose it to prevent that. Abolish the Senate and the issue goes away.
Even the burbs and old ethnic neighborhoods in big cities can be Trump strongholds.
The real issue is workers vs welfare. And any time they say politics are “broken”, it’s because they can’t win. In fact, the only place they could count on winning was the appellate courts and now that’s going away thanks to you-know-who.
Now that vote fraud and union dues are being taken away (by those same appellate courts), watch them really go insane.
Two of the last three Presidents received fewer votes than their opponents. In some red states more Dem than Repub votes are cast but more Repub House members are elected due to GOP gerrymandering. Imagined “voter fraud” is used as an excuse for voter suppression.
The GOP is smarter and more determined than the naïve Dems.
How does losing feel?
Doesn’t even know what gerrymandering is.
I have a progressive friend who thinks gerrymandering is something only evil republicans do to keep the country from being a democracy
Something has happened to the liberals/communist/progressives, I was sharing comments with another board and pointed out that Trump is only following the law in respect to his handling of this children issue they have dreamed up. That law was passed by Democrats. Someone from San Francisco responded that I should not blame the Clintons that it is Trump zero tolerance policy that is the fault for the children being ripped from the arms of adults who are with them (and likely exploiting their sex). So the issue with the left is that Trump is horrible for not ignoring the law. Yet we have an investigator looking into every aspect of Trump’s life for an imaginary association with the Russians, who are not our declared enemy. You can make this crap up.