908
I'd like to think they're all just Russian trolls but increasingly, I think some people are just selfish or dumb.
(lemmy.world)
this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2024
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There's also the fact that Harris has to appeal to the electoral college. She's not just trying to win our votes.
If she took a firm stance on stopping the killing in Gaza the electoral college could very easily hand their votes to trump. Like they did in 2016.
I'm fairly certain it's a big contributing factor as to why democrats keep inching to the right on certain issues. The electoral college has too much power. At the end of the day it's their votes that count, so Harris has to appeal to them too.
Why couldn't they do a better job pushing Palestine as a civil rights issue and raising awareness among their voter base like they've successfully done with LGBTQ and women's rights? Or at the very least pretend to support Israel to appear more centrist while stopping the genocide instead of pretending to support Palestinians then handing Israel tons of weapons? Plus it seems like many voters are more concerned about our own economy than what's happening on the other side of the world, so regarding combining pro-Palestine with their current economic policies I don't see how that would be a big issue in attracting undecided voters. The only real obstacle I can think of here is donors and the media beholding the party to their interests, which is a much bigger problem than just the electoral college.
Edit: Wait I think I misread your post, I assumed you were talking about swing states controlling the outcome not the electors themselves.
I wonder if there's some misunderstanding on your part about the electoral college or if I'm just not interpreting your phrasing correctly. It's not an entity to appeal to, it's a flawed system that has subsets of the popular vote represented by electors who are pledged to a certain candidate.
The whole system is basically fucked. The Supreme Court can be bought and so can other politicians via "gratuities"... including the electoral college.
They already did not honor the popular vote in 2016 for whatever reason, and it's not the first time it's happened in recent history.
I can imagine Harris doesn't want to give them anymore reason to just say fuck it and hand us another trump presidency.
So I can say now with certainty that you're not clear on how the EC works in the US. Unless there is a faithless elector, the chosen electors represent the majority vote in their state (or district, in the case of Maine and Nebraska). Some states, due to higher population, have a greater number of voters represented by each elector.
The EC has no mandate to follow the national popular vote. That is by design. Electors sent to the EC are beholden to the popular vote in their state (or district).
Campaigns do not directly court the EC, but they do game the system by focusing on states with a large number of electors and traditionally narrow margins in the popular vote. That's where we get the term "battleground states."
So the "for whatever reason" you allude to in 2016 was absolutely for a known reason: Clinton won in heavily lopsided blue states with high populations while losing in lower population red states and closely contested swing states. Faithless electors did come into play that year, but their impact was negligible. Clinton lost handily in the EC despite taking the popular vote.
It's not that not don't understand how things are supposed to work.... it's that fewer and fewer parts of the government are functioning free of corruption.
Forgive me for not assuming the electoral college is functioning outside of that type of influence.
Learning how things actually function vs what we were taught are two different things.
This isn't a matter of "how things actually function vs what we were taught." You're wondering why the EC didn't respect the popular vote in 2016 and speaking of it as an entity to be swayed. The EC for this election does not exist yet. It has not been selected.
The degree of "influence" you suggest would require potential sworn electors to already be compromised before being selected. That suggests that you believe Democrats at the state level, who have been chosen as potential electors by the party itself, have been influenced to vote for someone other than their party's candidate.
Both your questioning of why the EC didn't follow the popular vote and your implication that Harris would somehow lose party support to such a degree that slates of electors chosen by the Democratic party would cast their votes for a non-Democrat indicate that you don't completely grasp how the EC works either by design or in practice.
Not knowing something is fine, especially something as convoluted as the EC. But there comes a point when it's probably best to admit, at least to yourself, that you had only a partial understanding of a process. Otherwise, how can you ever learn?