← Back to context

Comment by codyb

12 days ago

I'm not sure how your math stacks out... but 2/3rds of 330 million people is not 75 million votes.

The fact is, the American electoral system is heavily stacked against the actual population due to...

- Citizens United allows individuals with sums of wealth which are nearly incomprehensible to literally drop hundreds of millions of dollars on a single election and not even have a dent in net worth

- The electoral college which may have made sense in 1796 or whenever they were deciding it means presidential elections focus on approximately 7 of our 50 states

- Many places like Puerto Rico, DC, the US Virgin Islands, and other territories just flat out don't have federal representation

- In the Senate small state citizens can sometimes wield up to 60 times as much representation as large state citizens (Hey guess which states those billionaires drop money to buy representation in... I'll give you a hint, it's not the populous ones)

- The House of Reps is capped in size which again hurts large states

It may be time to start talking about structural change here in the United States.

That being said... The United States and (most of) Europe have been allies for 8 decades, it's not like Europe hasn't had it's fair share of bullshit and far right parties.

The fact everyone in this thread is saying our relationship is done cause America's going through a rough patch is ridiculous. Especially given that a year ago our President was helping the expansion of NATO, and we're still sending arms to Ukraine (although the terms are differing), and we just took out Russian ally Maduro.

And I for one am happy that the outcome from this absolutely awful human being is increased European self reliance.

I'm hoping it shakes out that the US rebukes this awful party, and president (which many many people were duped into voting for cause most people are not paying as much attention as say... me and combine hundreds of millions from Musk, and misinformation flowing in through social media, and the stacked systems laid out above)

And when that's all said and done, and millions and millions of us are donating, and marching, and calling, and working to make that happen and there has been very real push back here, although slower than maybe some would hope

That then the US and Europe can be more equal partners than before this monster of an individual

5 comments

codyb

Reply
dspillett  12 days ago

> but 2/3rds of 330 million people is not 75 million votes

It was a remembered stat, and there were more than 75,000,000 who “either directly voted for it or sat on their elbows and let it happen”.

A quick check of official stats:

    The turnout of 64.1% and 49.1%/49.3%/1.9% “of the vote” figures means:
    ~32% rep
    ~31% dem
    ~ 1% other
    ~36% did not vote

So 68% voted for it or sat on their elbows. Pretty close to my half-remembered two thirds.

> it's not like Europe hasn't had it's fair share of bullshit and far right parties.

True, and they are worryingly gaining ground in a number of places (here in the UK for one), but the whole EU (or Europe, or the EEA, depending on the exact set of countries we want to include in the pot for this discussion) has never been close to far-right in that time.

> That then the US and Europe can be more equal partners than before this monster of an individual

Eventually, hopefully. We'll see what happens in a couple of years. But the trust won't come back overnight even from where it is now, and there is plenty of time for the situation to get worse. I expect it will take a couple of terms at the very least for things to even out close to where they were before, if they ever do.

And for all the claims of “defending democracy and the free world”, the unilateral arseholery in general and active threats to other democracies (the EU overall, its individual states, and non-EU states), gives other regimes a loverly big mess to point at while asking “Do you really want democracy?”, so it might not even be possible for things to revert over that timescale because of the changes in balance elsewhere as less direct consequence.

  • TeMPOraL  12 days ago

    The biggest problem here isn't the numbers, but the usual manipulative rhetoric of putting people who "voted for it" and those who "sat on their elbows" into the same bucket, to vilify them together.

    I'll skip the philosophical argument for the absurdity of this view in general, because the numbers you provided speak even louder. Consider that both big parties got pretty much the same amount of votes[0] - so whether or not the 36% of population who didn't vote are seen as complicit villains, depended on how a different 0.5% of the population (or 0.15% of the voters) voted!

    --

    [0] - I'd argue that 0.2% difference is within margin of statistical error, but that's a whole other discussion.

    • dspillett  12 days ago

      > so whether or not the 36% of population who didn't vote are seen as complicit villains

      Not complicit villains, it isn't as black and white as that, but those who don't engage and then complain are pretty close. After the brexit vote a number of people said things along the lines of “if I'd know it would matter, I'd have bothered”, which is something I find difficult to respond to in a polite manner.

      1 reply →