• givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    A bad presidential candidate effects down ballot races.

    Which is why Hillary probably still would have handed Republicans the House and Senate if she didn’t take all the states parties funds for her victory tour.

    trumps daughter in law controls the RNC’s purse strings tho, they’re probably doing a similar grift already.

    Which is why it’s important to keep pressure on Harris from the left. If she gets both houses and doesn’t do anything because she only hears from the right. It’s just handing Republicans one or both houses back for the midterms.

    Now more than ever, we have to be ready to get shit done on day one. None of this shit Biden pulls where he assumed office and “looked into” shit until we couldn’t pass the party platform.

    There’s zero excuse to repeat that

    • qprimed@lemmy.ml
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      4 months ago

      which is why the walz VP pick is interesting. he seems to spend political capital quickly and effectively

      its going to be clear early on how much influence progressives really have in a potential harris administration.

      • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        Walz is exactly what a democratic “moderate” should be

        He might be further to the right than some want, but when they say that. Dude sits down and listens to them and is willing to change his mind.

        I don’t think he’ll specifically pull Kamala to the left. But I think if the base disagrees with Kamala, he’ll push for her to listen to what they have to say and to keep an open mind.

        It’s kind of depressing that’s such a unique thing, but it’s good it’s happening and I hope it signals a change for the moderate wing.

        I don’t think we’d have gotten someone like that if people weren’t vocal about their issues with Biden and his responses. Which is why I think it’s important we keep it up. If the only people pushing for “moderates” to change direction are from the right, we can’t act surprised when they always move right.

        We dont have billionaires lobbying for us, we got to make the noise ourselves.

    • Cephalotrocity@biglemmowski.win
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      4 months ago

      F me I wish Republican majorities weren’t a threat and that they were actually worried about a Democrat super-majority in both Houses. Impeach 2 of the SC and replace with Judges that aren’t corrupt, get those territories (and DC) full Statehood, expressly codify trans, worker, and healthcare rights into the Constitution, and give all the newly blue (in this fantasy of mine) States the opportunity to undo their BS gerrymandering.

      • gravitas_deficiency
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        4 months ago

        Honestly, I just wish the scales weren’t so blatantly unbalanced. The power of your vote depending directly on the state in which you reside is absolutely insane in the modern age.

        • Kethal@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          It is a common misconception that disproportionate power of states is what has resulted in the winner of the popular vote losing the electoral college. That isn’t what has caused it in the past, despite the possibility. What has caused it is the fact that nearly all states allocate 100% of their electors to the simple majority winner. If three candidates get 49%, 48% and 3% of the vote, the top candidate gets 100% of the delegates. That swings the electoral count out of alignment, and if that happens in enough big states, then the popular vote winner can get fewer delegates.

          That historically has been what happened. If you were to imagine elections where all the states had equal power but still allocated their delegates that way, as far as I know, not a single election result would change.

          If however you were to imagine states allocating delegates in proportion to the votes they received, that would have changed election results. There are different ways to do that, but the details are not that important. It’s the solution. Is unequal power among states fair? Not really. But it hasn’t had any impact in the past, so let’s focus on something we know has unfairly altered multiple outcomes.

          States should be doing this. Currently only two do: Maine and Nebraska I think. It wouldn’t take a lot of states for this to fundamentally change elections. Five key states are all that’s necessary. There’s no reason to allocate all delgates to the simple majority, and no one likes it. It’s unfair to the minority in locked down states, and it’s stressful in battleground states. It results in candidate pandering to battleground states and ignoring everyone else. This is something people should be aware of and talk about more.

          • phdepressed
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            4 months ago

            Or we could simply get rid of the electoral college and say a vote is a vote.

            Like as a compromise measure before getting rid of the electoral college delegates based on % is an improvement but how to split based on % would be very contentious. In a 10 delegate state does 52% 48% mean 5 and 5 or 6 and 4? What about a 3 delegate states. Maine and Nebraska do assign some to the state popular vote and one to each congressional district. But states like Wyoming and Vermont only have 1 congressional district that covers the whole state while having 3 delegates. Their state popular vote and congressional district popular vote literally can’t be different.

            • Kethal@lemmy.world
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              4 months ago

              As above, those things don’t matter. You say “simply get rid of the electoral college” as if that is the easier solution, but having a handful of states change laws fully under their control is far, far simpler than having numerous states agree to a change to the constitution, but the two things have the same effect. Do you want to stop having an unpopular president elected in the next 20 years, or the next 80 years?

              • phdepressed
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                4 months ago

                As I said a compromise measure. I’m good with compromise but there are more considerations to that which I haven’t seen addressed in these discussions.

                A major one of getting it done state by state instead of all at once is if a large Blue state like California does the split but a large red state like Texas doesn’t do the split then the electoral college will only get further skewed instead of fixed.

                • Kethal@lemmy.world
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                  4 months ago

                  What happens in California and Texas isn’t the problem so obviously one wouldn’t start there. They’d start with swing states.

        • lennybird@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          The true single-issue vote needs to revolve around support for a constitutional amendment to fix our election system. It is the biggest most important problem in America. Everyone needs to start saying this.

      • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        The thing is, it really wouldn’t take much to get there.

        People’s standards are a lot lower than January 2016. Obviously even with both houses, we’re not gonna get everything.

        But if they still hold votes, and Harris uses the bully pulpit to name and shame everyone voting against party platform, the party won’t lose the voters.

        We’ll lose the politicians acting against their voters wishes, and replace them with more liberal options in fair and open primaries. Some might stay in office, but we just keep doing it till we get the numbers.

        Less then a decade and we’ll have solid supermajorities and actually able to fix shit for good.

        It’s literally right there in our reach, we just need Harris to stick her arm out and grab it. She has the potential to be the biggest name in US history books 50 years from now.

    • ChocoboRocket@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      While I wish Biden did more, he did get a ton of fantastic policy through.

      Anything that helped the people too much was stymied by Manchin and Sinema (arguably the list would continue with centrists peeling off from Democrats) and the supreme court.

      Hopefully a landslide win happens and meaningful legislation is quickly passed. Bringing gov’t programs up to speed for helping the middle class would probably cement democratic leadership for at least a decade

      • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        While I wish Biden did more, he did get a ton of fantastic policy through.

        You mean legislation that he didn’t veto?

        If that counts in his pro column, then everything else that didn’t pass goes in the con column.

        Biden himself wouldn’t shut up about how he couldn’t change someone’s mind even if they had a D by their name. So I’m interested in how you take that comment and rationalize giving him credit for how they vote.

        I mean. He literally said it would be useless for him to try so why should he try… Then you want to clap for him because he didn’t veto something?

    • Eatspancakes84@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      It’s a pretty uphill battle right? Aren’t Dems defending senate seats in Montana, West Virginia, Georgia and Arizona? I think the House is pretty much guaranteed if Harris wins, but the Senate is a long shot.

      • draneceusrex@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        Dems would have to win every competitive race to keep the senate, and that would just be 50-50 so we need Walz as VP too.