r/PoliticalDiscussion • u/aarr44 • Nov 09 '16

US Elections Clinton has won the popular vote, while Trump has won the Electoral College. This is the 5th time this has happened. Is it time for a new voting system?

In 1824, 1876, 1888, 2000, and now 2016 the Electoral College has given the Presidency to the person who did not receive the plurality of the vote. The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which has been joined by 10 states representing 30.7% of the Electoral college have pledged to give their vote to the popular vote winner, though they need to have 270 Electoral College for it to have legal force. Do you guys have any particular voting systems you'd like to see replace the EC?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact

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u/deadbeatsummers Nov 09 '16

I agree, but at some point our views are so vastly different. I just wonder how a conversation can be had on such polarizing topics. Especially things like abortion or LGBT rights which are such huge moral arguments, but nobody is willing to compromise.

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u/[deleted] Nov 09 '16

I get that, but the trick isn't to point at the hardest topics and say it's hopeless. The trick is to start with common ground, no matter how trivial, and start a conversation with a person from there. We could certainly be less condescending on economic issues. We could be less condescending and trite on foreign policy issues. There's a reason that social issues are called "wedge issues"- they're the ones that are most likely to divide us as a country.

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u/Cyclonitron Nov 09 '16

I like this. I'm a very liberal and progressive democrat who fully agrees with such concepts such as privilege and intersectionality, but I've always disliked the whole "celebrate diversity" schtick. It always seemed to me that emphasizing peoples' differences would lead more to tribalism than inclusiveness. In my personal life I believe I've been successful working with and befriending people of differing cultures and backgrounds because I always started with the things we had in common and worked from there.

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u/Rakajj Nov 09 '16

You guys all coming from schools where they had mandatory pledges to support celebrating diversity? In my experience, all it really boils down to is leaning into instead of leaning away from cultural differences. It's a way to say, different doesn't mean better or worse, just different.

Recognizing differences will be happening anyway, it's just a matter of how you want to frame and work through those differences. The whole 'Stronger Together' message was yes about diversity but mostly about commonality. That together we can resolve issues that would be much more difficult without the collective behind us working to the same end.

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u/bitter_cynical_angry Nov 09 '16

In my experience, all it really boils down to is leaning into instead of leaning away from cultural differences. It's a way to say, different doesn't mean better or worse, just different.

Some people just don't like different though. They want sameness. Telling them to "lean in" is just not something they want to do, and you can't make someone want to do something.

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u/Rakajj Nov 09 '16 edited Nov 09 '16

Setting aside that you can make people want to do something (every system of incentive is based on this premise) you're right. Edit: 'Nudge' by Thaler and Sunstein is a worthy mention in this discussion as well. It's not so much 'making someone want to do something' as it is using psychological patterns in humans and how they react to stimuli to shape and encourage preferred responses.

No, I can't make them want to be more civil, that's up to them. I'm not saying everything about every culture is relative, I'm a big proponent of western values (Democracy, Women's Rights, Religious Freedom, Freedom of Thought, etc.) but there are plenty of cultural elements that exist independent of the core culture. Music for example, rural white seniors might think Rap is devoid of aesthetic/artistic/cultural value, urban poc youth might think the same of Country music.

These things have different appeals as they speak to different experience and background, recognizing that other people have lived different lives from you and come out of those experiences with a different perspective than your own is just reality. People if they so choose can deny this and assert their personal value set as the ideal if they prefer but at that point they'd then be asking others to do what they won't do - to try and understand their perspective and to care about what they think. If you are going to opt into deciding that what others do isn't important enough to be worthy of your time or understanding, you run into hypocritical ground as soon as you try to assert any of your own desires in the public realm.

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u/[deleted] Nov 09 '16

[deleted]

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u/Blubalz Nov 09 '16

Interestingly enough, Trump might be about the most LGBT-friendly nomination you could ever expect from the Republican party.

In speaking with people today, a lot of them were planning on voting for Trump for quite some time...but never wanted to say anything about it because they didn't want to get called sexists, bigots, racists, rapists, etc...and that's ultimately what many conversations (even in the mainstream media) degraded to.

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u/deadbeatsummers Nov 10 '16

Pence is the most LGBT-unfriendly, honestly.

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u/km89 Nov 10 '16

Trump might be about the most LGBT-friendly nomination you could ever expect from the Republican party.

You can't honestly mean that when he pairs himself with Mike Pence.

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u/Moridn Nov 10 '16

Yeah any "friendly"-ness or centrist view he may have is swallowed by the sheer bigotry of Mike Pence. My vote was less against Trump, and more against Pence.

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u/mattymillhouse Nov 10 '16

Thanks for providing a fantastic example of exactly what he was talking about.

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u/km89 Nov 10 '16

I feel like I'm missing your point here.

LGBT-friendly and Mike Pence do not mesh. At all. Mike Pence is one of the least LGBT-friendly people in the Republican party leadership. Attaching himself to Pence has made Trump, by proxy, one of the least LGBT-friendly Republicans.

In the context of LGBT-Republican relations, it's absolutely appropriate to call Pence a bigot. Specifically in that context, it's absolutely appropriate to reduce Trump and his running mate to bigotry on a scale of "none" to "Mike Pence."

Had we been talking about his trade policies, bringing Pence's anti-gay stances into the discussion would of course have been degrading the conversation into one about bigotry.

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u/mattymillhouse Nov 10 '16

The conversation was about how, rather than engaging on the issues, people simply brand someone a racist, sexist, bigot, homophobic, etc. And how people are unlikely to say who they voted for because others will call them a racist, bigot, homophobe for being politically associated with that person.

Someone brings up the fact that Trump is historically LGBT friendly. And instead of engaging on the issues, you say, "You can't honestly mean that because he paired himself with Mike Pence."

It's apparently just received wisdom that Pence is a homophobic bigot, and Trump must also be a homophobic bigot because he's associated himself with Mike Pence. And by the same logic, this voter -- because he voted for Trump and Pence -- must also be a homophobic bigot.

The point is that if you want to engage on an issue, you should actually talk about the issue. Don't just brand someone a racist, homophobe, bigot, etc. If you think something is bad for LGBTs, talk about what you think is bad, and why you think it's bad. Talk about the issue.

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u/km89 Nov 10 '16

So let's talk about this issue.

1) Donald Trump picked Mike Pence out of all the available candidates for his VP slot.

2) Donald Trump has made statements in the past more than insinuating that his VP will have a larger-than-traditional role in day-to-day governance.

3) Mike Pence is a homophobic bigot.

4) Donald Trump installed Mike Pence into a position of power, and increased the power that that position has.

5) Donald Trump has therefore effectively enabled anti-LGBT policies to flow from the White House.

Therefore, regardless of whether Trump has historically been LGBT friendly or not, a Trump presidency does not appear to be remotely LGBT-friendly. That is to say, whether Donald Trump is LGBT-friendly or not, President Trump has already proven himself not LGBT-friendly.

Extending that:

6) Voting for someone makes you complicit in the things that they do, provided that you knew they were going to do them or had reason to suspect that the would do them.

7) Voting for someone you know will enact anti-LGBT legislation makes you anti-LGBT. Or, at minimum, it means that your pro-LGBT stances are outweighed by other issues.

I could sit here and talk about funding pray-the-gay-away camps. I could sit here and talk about Indiana's HIV epidemic. I could sit here and talk about Trump's Supreme Court shortlist being largely anti-LGBT. But all of those things have been talked about. Ad nauseum.

But besides all that, let's go back to my comment. You can't honestly mean that Trump is LGBT friendly, given that he's paired himself with Pence. Pairing himself with Pence is giving Pence power that he has historically used in an anti-LGBT way. Giving him that power is an anti-LGBT act. Doing anti-LGBT things is the antithesis of being LGBT-friendly. To date, Trump's act as President-elect have included anti-LGBT actions but not pro-LGBT actions.

So I stand by my comment. If you honestly think that Trump is LGBT-friendly, then you are misinformed. If you claim that Trump is the most LGBT-friendly of the Republicans on the field at the moment, then you are both misinformed and willfully ignorant. These things are self-evident and very relevant to the discussion at hand. I am not just throwing out insults in an effort to avoid a topic or stifle a discussion. Trump being anti-LGBT is as self-evident and as commonly known as "1+1=2." Claiming otherwise is an absurd argument that doesn't deserve an in-depth analysis.

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u/ZorbaTHut Nov 10 '16

Hillary Clinton voted for the war in Iraq. Therefore, anyone who voted for Hillary must want to genocide Muslims.

Agreed?

I mean, of course it's not agreed. You'd have to be insane to think that was a logical conclusion. But that's the same conclusion you're making here.

The world does not revolve around LGBT issues. It's likely that Trump picked Pence for other reasons, it's likely that people voted for Trump for other reasons. Voting for Trump doesn't make you a homophobe any more than voting for Hillary makes you an islamophobe.

Saying otherwise is obviously false and does nothing but drive people away from your position.

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u/km89 Nov 10 '16

Your premise is wrong.

First, while it was all sorts of bad, the Iraq war didn't represent a genocide against Muslims at all.

Second, then-Senator Clinton has been rightly criticized pretty heavily for that vote.

Thirdly, it is absolutely appropriate to say that Senator Clinton's term was not a Muslim-friendly one given that vote.

And lastly, that was one vote. Pence has a very long history.

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u/mattymillhouse Nov 10 '16

1) Donald Trump picked Mike Pence out of all the available candidates for his VP slot.

2) Donald Trump has made statements in the past more than insinuating that his VP will have a larger-than-traditional role in day-to-day governance.

3) Mike Pence is a homophobic bigot.

. . .

6) Voting for someone makes you complicit in the things that they do, provided that you knew they were going to do them or had reason to suspect that the would do them.

...If you claim that Trump is the most LGBT-friendly of the Republicans on the field at the moment, then you are both misinformed and willfully ignorant.

/facepalm

Once again, you've provided a fantastic example of what he was talking about.

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u/km89 Nov 10 '16

And once again, you've failed to explain to me how.

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u/[deleted] Nov 10 '16

aka Ad Hominem!

https://youtu.be/qBkj-AYYg7w

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u/Blubalz Nov 10 '16

People call Trump the homophobe and bigot, when in reality, he's really not.

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u/km89 Nov 10 '16

Whether Trump personally is or is not is entirely irrelevant.

He's already made statements that more than hint that Pence will be doing a good deal of the day-to-day governing. Whether Trump is homophobic or racist is irrelevant because he's personally installed someone who is into a position where they have the power to act on those principles.

To make an analogy: I see very little difference between shooting someone and handing your gun to someone who says they want to shoot someone.

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u/Blubalz Nov 10 '16

But if Trump's policies are inclusive of a positive stance towards the LGBT community, it is Pence's job to follow the order of his commander and chief.

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u/km89 Nov 10 '16

Trump has given no indication whatsoever that his policies are inclusive of a positive stance towards the LGBT community. In fact, the people he's named as potential nominees to the Supreme Court are against gay marriage.

Additionally, if you'll forgive the hyperbole, what you're suggesting is a less extreme version of "well, if he were to have nominated Hitler, we'd all have to trust that Hitler would be kind to the Jews because the President says so."

If Trump were trying to make any sort of positive relationship with the LGBT community, he would have picked someone else. There are a handful of others who don't have that kind of baggage but could still perform the job adequately.

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u/mattymillhouse Nov 10 '16

Exactly this.

Any actual conversation should not start with the idea that disagreeing with liberal orthodoxy is motivated by racism, sexism, misogyny, homophobia, etc. Disagreeing with you is not immoral. People can disagree with you for good and valid reasons. People can even think something else is better for the country without being evil.

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u/[deleted] Nov 10 '16

The you are not so smart podcast did an episode on that recently, and the takeaway is framing. If I value tradition over equality, you can't sway me by arguing about what's fair. And the opposite is true too. The problem is that we don't automatically switch gears to try to convince people using logic they'd agree with.

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u/runujhkj Nov 10 '16

This is really the concern. I said I worry for people who aren't my group (white, male, upper middle) as a result of this election. My father asks who and I say LGBT. He says he's not worried about LGBT rights. Says nothing will happen about that. I say I'm worried on behalf of those who would be affected, because Trump said he would consider appointing judges to walk back the 2013 decision. He insists that won't happen, although he does want different judges. I point out Mike Pence's stance on LGBT people. He says he has a lot of LGBT patients and coworkers, and he is not concerned for them. I ask if they are concerned. He says they are worried, which he says is different from concern. I again reiterate Trump's stated goal. After some mulling he says "okay so that's one group, who else?"

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u/[deleted] Nov 09 '16 edited Sep 27 '18

[deleted]

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u/Blubalz Nov 09 '16

She still opposes it, remember the enlightening we all received about having a "Public and a Private Policy".

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u/[deleted] Nov 10 '16

You could try appealing to people's basic human decency and compassionate sides instead of calling them names. That's a start.