Ah so elections should be a piece of cake then!
this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2024
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Good luck trying to get an American conservative to understand what the second map represents. I means shit, they refuse to grasp the concept of "per capita" because they know it makes them look bad.
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What's the medium sized red dot just north of LA? I live around there and it makes sense but there's a lot of small-ish towns around here and I don't know what it represents. What population patterns do these dots represent? I'm guessing the red dot is either Visalia, Tulare County, San Joaquin Valley in general, or Fresno.
The dots are counties - the largest red one above LA is Kern county - Tulare county is the smaller red dot above it to the right
This is a clearer version of that map. The other two much smaller red dots above LA are Kings and Inyo counties - this map is based on 2016 presidential results, as Inyo went blue in 2020 (by only 14 votes though)
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I don't know that there's a lot of sand in Kansas.
There's a whole lot of dumbass rednecks though.
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If like 200,000 move to Wyoming it could flip. I have seen people bring it up numerous times but no one acted on it.
Because it would mean living in Wyoming.
Don't threaten me with a good time.
Why don't the Blue states just enact social democratic policies and let the Red ones rot in their ancap dystopias?
Americans seem to have forgotten about federalism. You don't need the same laws governing all 340 million of you.
The EU is a patchwork of rights for example. Poland doesn't have marriage equality and only permits abortions in case of rape, incest, or danger to the mother. The Netherlands has marriage equality and abortions on demand up to 24 weeks. The union is not endangered by this.
Hell, Canada does federalism better than you, with a relatively weak federal government that needs to be always consulting with the provinces. Provinces retain much of the income-tax revenue and get to experiment much more meaningfully with different policy mixes, under a multi-party system.
Why don’t the Blue states just enact social democratic policies and let the Red ones rot in their ancap dystopias?
Because the red states have outsized influence over federal law, and they can outlaw the social democratic policies at a national level.
The traditional map is more reflective of electoral power. This one is by population which would be critical in a republic, but traditional map where each count is colored by their majority shows how being the majority in lightly populated areas gives outsized power.
Cities tend to be Blue, but cities don’t get a unified vote, plus are subject to state laws. Look at Houston: they don’t have a chance
But yes, we do federalism. Speaking for Massachusetts:
- as close to universal healthcare as you can get in the us
- healthcare “sanctuary” state
- consistently the best or near the best education system
- free tuition at state universities
- minimum wage over $15, among the highest
- strong emphasis on transit, walkable cities
- strong anti pollution and anti climate change laws
- strong wetlands and coastal protection
- among the first states to be entirely rid of coal
- immigrant protections
- first state to legalize gay marriage
- among the first to legalize marijuana
- by some reviews, highest quality of life in the US
But we’re affected by everyone else:
- not allowed to make air pollution rules. All we can say is we agree with California
- we had forced EPA to regulate Midwest polluters where downwind pollution affected us. Worked for a few decades but recent Supreme Court ruling says EPA can’t regulate interstate pollution, wtf
- strong gun control laws, partly invalidated by recent Supreme Court. I know I’m not surrounded by “good guys” with concealed weapons ready to blast away when they get uncomfortable
When I read about some places attempts to prevent voting, I am so happy none of it is relevant. My state has good outreach to make it easy to register, easy to vote in whatever manner you choose, and has sufficiently funded voting center ps that everyone has a convenient one with little to no waiting. I can walk to mine. When there’s been a line, it’s short and in air conditioning. There’s always a school fundraiser bake sale if I want a treat
So yes, believe me, we look down on all those dystopias between free cities as we fly over. They may have been misled and manipulated but they chose their poison
Why don’t the Blue states just enact social democratic policies and let the Red ones rot in their ancap dystopias?
If we assume that the Democratic Party actually wants to do good and not just what their donors want. They still have to contend with a Senate that's is biased towards the empty states, and even the House of Representatives is somewhat biased but not as bad.
Now if the Blue States (or even Counties) form some kind of union to transcend the USA, things might begin to happen.
The EU is a patchwork of rights for example
The EU is a confederacy. It has a much weaker central government and much stronger states. The US could go back to a confederacy model.
Honestly, I think shifting the fed to a more Confederate model would be a good idea. A large number of problems we're running into is the attempt to control the whole nation over local interests. It might be possible to diffuse a large number of contentious points just on that alone.
What's stopping California or Vermont or whatever from enacting state-level Universal Health Insurance programs or free university or whatever else?
Nothing other than cost and logistics. Massachusetts had "RomneyCare" before ObamaCare existed for the country as a whole.
The fact that now state-level reforms and policies aren't pursued is partially a symptom of the American people become national-authority simps.
And it's partially because Democrats and Republicans seem determined to make everyone follow their interpretation of the rules. Most of American politics at this point seems to be about "hurting the right people."
Lastly, most key wedge issues in the United States are often fundamentally moral questions that relate to constitutionality, making it impossible to allow some states to, for instance, hold slaves, allow child labor, allow abortion, allow religious fascism in public schools, allow racial discrimination, etc., without other states prevailing on the bedrock morality of the constitution.
I.e., the United States does not, as a singular country, remotely agree on fundamental ethics that can form a foundation for a coherent nation that would then allow for more state-level experimentation. The are certainly "different" states though. Look at Vermont vs. New Hampshire for instance. They're quite different despite being bordering states.
Yes, I agree. That's why I wrote that Americans have forgotten how to do federalism. Like, I get that states rights used to mean fucking slavery and you needed a strong central government to keep the southern racists from lynching people, but how else are you going to manage such a vast space and remain a democracy in the 21st century?
The moral issues you guys are culture warring over are nowhere near as grave as slavery or segregation now.
Not only that, but you have also concentrated the arbitration of these cosmic moral wedge issues on like what 10 people? President, SCOTUS, and whatever Manchin figure is the Senate kingmaker of the year. No wonder it's breaking at the seams.
Yeah, that's why I mentioned that the United States has basically become national authority simps. "Voting" these days for most people is synonymous with presidential elections.
That being said, for many people, issues like abortion, trans and gay segregation/discrimination, legal slavery of prisoners, mass and school shootings, and the rates of violence and murder against: Indigenous, black, etc men and women are fairly serious and important issues that are, if not equal, relatively close in terms of moral outrage to lynching and slavery. I can understand that you don't see it that way though.
Don't get me wrong, I am passionate about civil and economic rights in Quebec. But I accept that certain rules change at the Vermont border. The question even the most ardent internationalist must ask is at what threshold do things in another jurisdiction become so intolerable that they would need to get personally involved and intervene in another People's business. In international law, which we can take as the base rate, that threshold is pretty high, at crimes against humanity-ish. From there it goes down. How far down? Depends on the balance different communities are willing to strike. Inter-community intervention also has its own catastrophic consequences. There is no right answer of course but I strongly suspect the contemporary American one is not it.
Yeah, well put. I generally agree.
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The Commerce Clause is one often cited by conservatives. I am not a lawyer but if they can abuse it you bet they will even if that's not what it was meant for.
The commerce clause doesn't apply to in-state systems unless they interact with a foreign nation, native tribe, or another state.
What kind of abuse is even possible here?
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https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/10/30/opinion/election-results-maps.html
https://purplestatesofamerica.org/
Yall should read How to Lie with Maps.
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Oh shit
Issue with this (because of first past the post) there are still a significant number of people voting the opposite way of who wins in their electorate, for the most part.
Thank you
Who’s read an argument that’s something like “if we change this, then elections will always go blue, and red areas will feel unheard and _____”
It’s argued the blank is something bad but I can’t recall what it was 🤷♂️ IDK if it was civil war/secession bad or what
I remember a coworker from Utah once telling me that farmers are the most disadvantaged minority or something. Basically his argument was it is better that rural areas get more representation and people in the cities don't need to be represented as much. For him it was an easy argument to make since it is the status quo and serves his interests.
The people who want to change things are who need to come up with either strong arguments to win public opinion or increasingly evident win their rights by direct action. No one who benefits from the current system will give up anything.
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Sam Kinison reference. You are a gentleman and a scholar.
"We have deserts in America. We just don't fucking live in them!"
I don't think it is relevant.
The xkcd points out distribution and population.
The second map highlights how much more democratic the us is than republican and that is it obviously a broken system that republican's have a chance of winning
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