It’s Election Time

Doesn't matter who the winner is, the loser is America.

Everyone is generating such large amounts of turmoil over a whole lot of nothing. In a month, we'll all forget this even happened.

Trump won.

Oh this is gonna be good.

I'm loving all the elitism and classism aimed at Trump voters by people who mistakenly consider themselves progressive.

The great triggering has begun.

Trump is not my president!

I'm not even American!

America, the great democracy: where even if you get more of the popular vote, you can still lose.

Which is a good thing, otherwise only the votes in New York and California would matter...

I think we’re officially living in the Bizarro Universe now.

Havoc that's rubbish. Who's brainwashed you into believing that a system where you votes don't really matter is better than direct democracy?

I'm glad Hillary didn't win. This is a victory for democracy, ugliness and all.

Good job?

I can understand a lot of criticisms of how the US voting works, but I think complaining about one candidate winning with fewer votes in this instance is silly. The entire point of these voting systems is that you need numbers over a diverse geographical region. Nobody just counts votes outright.

The problem with the system now is how votes get thrown away if the state is won by the other side. Transferable votes are cool, Australia is cool, voting for people other than the 2 main contenders without just pissing your vote away is cool.

e: also was expecting much more drama here. Was the Discord a shitshow at least?

Can i come live in canada with you, bungle?

Havoc: That would only make sense if each state had an equal number of electoral college votes. As it happens, NY and California (and Texas and Florida) are disproportionately powerful.

Nate: Yes, but not to a point where only those high population states can determine the entire election. The entire point of the electoral system is to have balance between all states and make all states more or less equally important in the grand scheme of things. Even the smallest states in the country with only 500k citizens have an impact on the results.

Going be popular vote would completely eliminate these small states because they are so relatively small that campaigning there is a waste of time and money. Why spend time and funds on raising votes in Wyoming when you can just visit the big 4, focus on them and address over half the population of the country already?

Not saying the electoral system is perfect, but popular vote wouldn't be perfect either for a landmass as large as the US. Similarly, votes related to the EU across European countries work largely the same for the exact same reason. As a country you either vote yes or no, and the losing votes are cast aside because the differences between countries, cultures and population are just too big to make a popular vote fair.

But as it stands the big states are really important anyway. Because of the all-or-nothing result for almost every state, the biggest states have a massive impact. Texas is 38 votes for a candidate no matter what, even if half of Texas disagrees.

The rioting is nuts. I get that they're a tad outraged, but is it really necessary to tear up their own liberal-oriented cities' infrastructure? That's just making more people go, "Oh no, the evil, anarchist Democrats want to hurt us! We need to vote for Republicans so they can protect us!"

Besides, weren't they all over Trump for him saying he wouldn't accept the results if he lost?

Ha, the great triggering of 2016.

People need to actually give the guy a chance, at least save the roiting until he's in office and has fucked shit up.

He's already started leaning back towards the left, sooner than I expected.

Ah Liberals, "we can stop fascism with strongly worded letters and op-eds in the HuffPo."

Let the people riot, at least they're expressing their discontent in a way that will get people to listen.

What's the end goal of the protests though? Do people really think dethroning Trump is a good idea?

Trump can still get fucked by the Electoral College anyway. The "electors" can still decide they don't like him between now and some time next month. They've always gone with the people in the past, and as much as I dislike Trump I hope there's no fuckery in the vote.

The whole argument about the electoral college just makes me think how wrong-headed top-down electoral structures are these days. The most appropriate way to structure government is bottom-up: have the most amount of power distributed to the lowest levels of the structure through local government, and give the people the most amount of power through their votes through proportional voting. This would solve the problems of disempowerment and low turnout simultaneously; there’s plenty of evidence that shows that when people have more direct power in their democracy they get more engaged.

No, the man campaigned on the most hateful, xenophobic campaign possible and he’s already seeking to use his power to appoint people to his cabinet who will be very, very bad for the US. You don’t give a hatemonger a chance, you oppose him at every turn.

I’m invoking Godwin’s Law to tell you that people literally said the same thing about Hitler. And regardless, his election has already had a negative effect with people reporting an uptick in hate crime and racist attacks – Trump has emboldened the right and has given the Republicans the power they need to enact regressive changes over the next 4 years; and if he does try to swing left you can be sure his supporters will pressure him out of it and elected Republicans will block it.


We always see protest after a controversial political change. I don’t think there is really an end goal planned, people are just using it to vent their anger and frustration. Long-term, the protests will dissipate and people will move on to organizing into a more effective opposition.

I’ve seen people raising this possibility and the possibility of one of his many upcoming court cases bringing him down; and as much as I’d like to see him never make it to office I doubt it will happen. He holds too much influence and power now, and if something did block him it would throw the US into even worse political turmoil as his supporters turned angry and claimed rigging (which Trump has already encouraged).

I fucking pissed myself at the Hitler comparison.
I thought you were a feminist, isn't Huff Post supposed to be like your Mecca or something?

One of Trump's biggest platforms is his stance of nationalism over globalism. Isn't Oddworld anti-globalism (heck, Lorne Lanning said something about showing "the dark side of globalization")?

I’d invest in some incontinence underwear if I were you.


Oddworld criticizes globalization specifically in its economic implications – markets having maximal power and control at the expense of people and individuals. I’m not sure Trump’s campaign of nationalism was quite along those same lines – he did proclaim he would bring back jobs from China, but most of his nationalism focused on anti-immigrant sentiment (build the wall, deport Muslims, close the borders, etc). So I don’t think the two are entirely compatible.

The problem with the USA is it is a rigid two party system. Bourgeois liberals yammer on about how awful the country must be to elect Donald Trump after the mean things he said about Mexicans and Muslims, but people who don't spend all day reblogging Steven Universe memes on tumblr typically have broader political concerns than xenophobic rhetoric. Trump was elected because this was very much a two horse race and his vaguely pro-protectionist, anti-establishment bullshit was more palatable to a crucial demographic than what Clinton had to offer. I think the lion's share of the blame should be taken by the Democratic Party for offering such a weak alternative to Trump.

I'd like to think Trump was elected in spite of the problematic shit he said rather than because of it, and the massive dive he took in the polls after the pussy grabbing video was leaked seems to suggest that that is the case.

I think that’s exactly the case moxco. I’ve also seen analysis that compares Sanders’ (who positioned himself as the Democrats’ own anti-establishment candidate) performance in the Democrat primaries to Trump’s performance in the general election, and it turns out Sanders beat Clinton in many of the same areas that Trump later beat Clinton. I think a big part of Trump’s success (and Sanders’) is the positioning as an anti-establishment change-bringer who called out the government’s failings, collusion and corruption; and regardless of Trump being unlikely to really change any of that for the better he sold that narrative to enough people to get through.

The burden is now on the Democrats to build a much more compelling alternative. The status quo is clearly not good enough for the electorate; we can see the same rejection of center-led neoliberal politics in other places like Europe with the UK’s Brexit, Greece’s Syriza, and Iceland’s Pirate Party gains.

Why would you want to lose the argument on purpose?

The Hitler comparisons are fine and a good way to keep someone in check globally. If for some stupid reason Trump does in fact decide to go the full holocaust, there can be intervention before it happens since the whole world has eyes on him now.

Is the only thing that needs to be focused on right now. I'm all for giving Trump a chance, before he swung his campaigning to pull in the republican's typical demograph he's had a pretty socially liberal history. Not to mention his wife's a damn immigrant he probably bought and he's spent a good portion of his career exploiting immigrant workers so clearly he doesn't have an issue with immigration.

The thing I'm worried about is the fact that the House and the Senate are republican dominated now. Not just your run of the mill conservative, either. A very large chunk of them actually are radicals, and from what I can see, are all people who would find Pence far more agreeable than Trump. Pence, the creationist who advocates for conversion therapy and wants miscarriages to be investigated as murder. I've been seeing a lot of shitty rhetoric calling for a Trump assassination already, which happens every damn presidential cycle, but if anyone takes out Trump before he can make any moves, it's going to be "his own" party.

I feel like Trump may have picked Pence as insurance against the radical left, who everyone knows were going to start making all sorts of threats and were going to protest/riot and absolutely would have called for assassination because that's just what people who freak out when things don't go their way do. The whole, "if you kill me then you have to deal with this guy as president for the next 4 years instead" and then you'll catch me freaking the fuck out about potential oppression and people dying in the streets yadda yadda....

Also I'm amazed anyone thinks Hillary lost for any reason other than the DNC being run by a bunch of pretentious morons.