If the United States was a Democracy, think of how radically different it would be?

[horn4life 3755]

If in America the person who got the most votes won the Presidency think of how different for example the Supreme Court argument jury might be?  For example there would not have been a Republican Elected President since President George Herbert Walker Bush.  Now this is not absolute and you could argue that there might have been some other Republican that could have won the popular vote.  But the only Republican to get a majority of the  vote that was an incumbent George W. Bush.  But Bush would not have been an incumbent. So you can suppose and propose dozens of "what ifs" but the bottom line is Republicans simply do not win Presidential elections if we are a Democracy instead of a Republic.  So it's easy to understand why the Republicans stacked the court when given the opportunity by hypocritically changing the longstanding traditions regarding Supreme nominations, not once, but twice.  But Trump would not have been in office... because he could never win more votes than the opposing party.

But when you think about the War in Iraq, and the trillions of dollars spent and the added instability that was created by a naive President who attacked a sovereign country with bad intel?

When you think about healthcare, you need to understand that Obamacare was based on a plan previously endorsed by, (hold your breath) The Heritage Society.  If we had democratically elected Presidents broader more affordable healthcare would have been implemented decades ago.

You can also look at the Iraq War and think of whether Al Gore's administration would have paid a little bit more attention to an August Presidential Daily Briefing and perhaps 9-11 never happens?  Think of the trillions of dollars that could have been spent on something else?

Would we be in the same situation we are today regarding Climate Change?  If we had had a President concerned with the warming of our planet who received more votes was President that the guy who sold his West Texas Oil business to Saudi Arabia interestingly enough.  

I could scroll out a shit ton about Trump.  Hell, Jared Kushner would be a couple billion dollars lighter to start. But I'll let other folks address their musings.  The Supreme Court made me think about Democracy, and how our country isn't actually one.

your Thoughts

[Da Fino 2740]

31 minutes ago, horn4life said:

 But Trump would not have been in office... because he could never win more votes than the opposing party.

 

Dr. D'Souza verified that this is a falsehood in his peer reviewed research for 10,000 horses.  

[bolverk 29405]

13 minutes ago, horn4life said:

So you can suppose and propose dozens of "what ifs" but the bottom line is Republicans simply do not win Presidential elections if we are a Democracy instead of a Republic.

Not to dismiss your question, but I think you're not using these terms correctly. For example, both France and Ireland are also "republics" and have direct elections by the people for their leaders.

As for the underlying question of whether we had direct elections for president requiring a majority vote, that's a hypothetical I've often pondered. For the sake of argument with an assumption that the popular vote over the past 30+ years would've remained the same (they wouldn't because electoral strategies would be different), then yes, we'd be in a vastly different climate across multiple fronts. If we took it all the way back to the beginning of the country, well, who the fuck knows?

As a republic, France has a potential two-round process for electing their president. The first round includes candidates from all parties. If one doesn't gain a majority, then the election goes to the top two vote-getters. Apply this process to the 1992 election, where it was Clinton (43.0%), Bush (37.5%), and Perot (18.9%), the latter of whom would've been eliminated in the first round. Clinton probably(?) would've gotten over that hump in the second round and most assuredly would've in the 1996 election when he won it with 49.2% in what would've been the first round.

Then we come to the 2000 election. First round, Gore (48.4%), Bush (47.9%), and Nader (2.7%). Yeah, most Nader voters would hook up with the Gore camp. From there, the timeline branches far too much because it's not guaranteed that even with more vigilance, 9/11 could've been prevented. But even if it had been, we can't know if voter fatigue would've set in and some upstart candidate like Bush Jr. would've beat him in 2004. It's really unknowable.

If we elected our presidents like Ireland, where I believe they have a ranked-choice system, then I can't even begin to speculate.

[elfenix 34172]

Thread title giving off “US is a republic not a democracy” vibes.

 

edit: shouldn’t draft messages on the shitter then go back to work and then post an hour later at lunch 

Edited February 8 by elfenix

[Ghost of LL 15492]

10 minutes ago, bolverk said:

Not to dismiss your question, but I think you're not using these terms correctly. For example, both France and Ireland are also "republics" and have direct elections by the people for their leaders.

As for the underlying question of whether we had direct elections for president requiring a majority vote, that's a hypothetical I've often pondered. For the sake of argument with an assumption that the popular vote over the past 30+ years would've remained the same (they wouldn't because electoral strategies would be different), then yes, we'd be in a vastly different climate across multiple fronts. If we took it all the way back to the beginning of the country, well, who the fuck knows?

As a republic, France has a potential two-round process for electing their president. The first round includes candidates from all parties. If one doesn't gain a majority, then the election goes to the top two vote-getters. Apply this process to the 1992 election, where it was Clinton (43.0%), Bush (37.5%), and Perot (18.9%), the latter of whom would've been eliminated in the first round. Clinton probably(?) would've gotten over that hump in the second round and most assuredly would've in the 1996 election when he won it with 49.2% in what would've been the first round.

Then we come to the 2000 election. First round, Gore (48.4%), Bush (47.9%), and Nader (2.7%). Yeah, most Nader voters would hook up with the Gore camp. From there, the timeline branches far too much because it's not guaranteed that even with more vigilance, 9/11 could've been prevented. But even if it had been, we can't know if voter fatigue would've set in and some upstart candidate like Bush Jr. would've beat him in 2004. It's really unknowable.

If we elected our presidents like Ireland, where I believe they have a ranked-choice system, then I can't even begin to speculate.

Ok--we need to flesh this bit of language out right now.  And I love you, @horn4life, but you and everyone else who espouses the "we're a republic, not a democracy" line of shit needs to go and slap the elementary-school teacher who taught them that.  Because "democracy" and "republic" literally mean the same thing; the only difference is whether you prefer Ancient Greek or Latin to name your form of government.

"Democracy" comes from the ancient Greek: "Demos"=people and "kratos"=rule.  So literally "rule by the people."  

"Republic" comes from Latin: "Res"=the thing and "publica"=the people.  So literally "the affair of the people."

The dichotomy that people think they're ascribing between "democracy" and "republicanism" is actually between "direct democracy" and "representative democracy."  In a direct democracy (e.g., ancient Athens), all of the voters get together in the town square and vote on individual pieces of legislation.  In a representative democracy (e.g., the UK), the people vote for representatives, who then vote on legislation.

The Roman Republic had aspects of both representative and direct democracy.  The Senate was a representative body.  And constitutionally, matters of treasury and foreign affairs were handled exclusively by the Senate (until the Gracchi upset that constitutional order, but that's a discussion for another thread).  But then there was the Assembly (which were actually three different Assemblies, but that's not important right now), which were convened in the Forum and in which every citizen voted on individual propositions.  So even the Roman Republic--from which the term "republic" derives--was not a purely representative democracy.

So please, please, please, for the love of God, Zeus, Jupiter, and for good measure Odin and Horus, please stop drawing a false distinction between a "democracy" and a "republic."  We live in both a democracy and a Republic.

 

For now.

[High Plains Drifter 10978]

 

 I was in Germany this summer visiting friends and of course doTArd came up, and my (flaming liberal by US standards, but mainstream by European standards) friends asked me how the hell we ever elected dOTard, and then I reminded them that Hillary actually got 7 million (or whatever it was) more votes, and then they asked me to explain how that worked. 

I do understand the electoral college but explaining it to these Germans how it worked was not easy. Once they finally, maybe sorta got it, they asked why we had such a fucked up system and I said that's how the founding fathers designed it, and nobody wants to change it either because they like it or because they are afraid that once we start monkeying around with the constitution who knows what would happen, and then they finally concluded, good-naturedly, that maybe we should have just remained part of the British Commonwealth.

 

Maybe that's a better question to ask: What if the US revolution had never happened? We probably would have gained our independence at some point, maybe peacefully, maybe not, but how would our democracy be different today? 

 

 

[ChiTownDoc 21102]

2 hours ago, horn4life said:

If in America the person who got the most votes won the Presidency think of how different for example the Supreme Court argument jury might be?  For example there would not have been a Republican Elected President since President George Herbert Walker Bush.  Now this is not absolute and you could argue that there might have been some other Republican that could have won the popular vote.  But the only Republican to get a majority of the  vote that was an incumbent George W. Bush.  But Bush would not have been an incumbent. So you can suppose and propose dozens of "what ifs" but the bottom line is Republicans simply do not win Presidential elections if we are a Democracy instead of a Republic.  So it's easy to understand why the Republicans stacked the court when given the opportunity by hypocritically changing the longstanding traditions regarding Supreme nominations, not once, but twice.  But Trump would not have been in office... because he could never win more votes than the opposing party.

But when you think about the War in Iraq, and the trillions of dollars spent and the added instability that was created by a naive President who attacked a sovereign country with bad intel?

When you think about healthcare, you need to understand that Obamacare was based on a plan previously endorsed by, (hold your breath) The Heritage Society.  If we had democratically elected Presidents broader more affordable healthcare would have been implemented decades ago.

You can also look at the Iraq War and think of whether Al Gore's administration would have paid a little bit more attention to an August Presidential Daily Briefing and perhaps 9-11 never happens?  Think of the trillions of dollars that could have been spent on something else?

Would we be in the same situation we are today regarding Climate Change?  If we had had a President concerned with the warming of our planet who received more votes was President that the guy who sold his West Texas Oil business to Saudi Arabia interestingly enough.  

I could scroll out a shit ton about Trump.  Hell, Jared Kushner would be a couple billion dollars lighter to start. But I'll let other folks address their musings.  The Supreme Court made me think about Democracy, and how our country isn't actually one.

your Thoughts

See below, Ghost nails it...

20 minutes ago, Ghost of LL said:

Ok--we need to flesh this bit of language out right now.  And I love you, @horn4life, but you and everyone else who espouses the "we're a republic, not a democracy" line of shit needs to go and slap the elementary-school teacher who taught them that.  Because "democracy" and "republic" literally mean the same thing; the only difference is whether you prefer Ancient Greek or Latin to name your form of government.

"Democracy" comes from the ancient Greek: "Demos"=people and "kratos"=rule.  So literally "rule by the people."  

"Republic" comes from Latin: "Res"=the thing and "publica"=the people.  So literally "the affair of the people."

The dichotomy that people think they're ascribing between "democracy" and "republicanism" is actually between "direct democracy" and "representative democracy."  In a direct democracy (e.g., ancient Athens), all of the voters get together in the town square and vote on individual pieces of legislation.  In a representative democracy (e.g., the UK), the people vote for representatives, who then vote on legislation.

The Roman Republic had aspects of both representative and direct democracy.  The Senate was a representative body.  And constitutionally, matters of treasury and foreign affairs were handled exclusively by the Senate (until the Gracchi upset that constitutional order, but that's a discussion for another thread).  But then there was the Assembly (which were actually three different Assemblies, but that's not important right now), which were convened in the Forum and in which every citizen voted on individual propositions.  So even the Roman Republic--from which the term "republic" derives--was not a purely representative democracy.

So please, please, please, for the love of God, Zeus, Jupiter, and for good measure Odin and Horus, please stop drawing a false distinction between a "democracy" and a "republic."  We live in both a democracy and a Republic.

 

For now.

Also should be noted, the founding fathers saw this coming.  They really wanted little shit ass states to be able to punch up in weight with the big boys.  If this was just some odd coincidence, I guess I'd be more moved, but the reality is it's exactly what the founding fathers wanted.  

[David Dennison 18661]

11 minutes ago, High Plains Drifter said:

I was in Germany this summer visiting friends and of course doTArd came up, and my (flaming liberal by US standards, but mainstream by European standards) friends asked me how the hell we ever elected dOTard, and then I reminded them that Hillary actually got 7 million (or whatever it was) more votes, and then they asked me to explain how that worked. 

I do understand the electoral college but explaining it to these Germans how it worked was not easy. Once they finally, maybe sorta got it, they asked why we had such a fucked up system and I said that's how the founding fathers designed it, and nobody wants to change it either because they like it or because they are afraid that once we start monkeying around with the constitution who knows what would happen, and then they finally concluded, good-naturedly, that maybe we should have just remained part of the British Commonwealth.

Maybe that's a better question to ask: What if the US revolution had never happened? We probably would have gained our independence at some point, maybe peacefully, maybe not, but how would our democracy be different today? 

Slavery.

[Ghost of LL 15492]

4 minutes ago, David Dennison said:

Slavery.

You know--at the risk of going full CRT, this is the correct answer.

[shakahorn 1627]

33 minutes ago, ChiTownDoc said:

See below, Ghost nails it...

Also should be noted, the founding fathers saw this coming.  They really wanted little shit ass states to be able to punch up in weight with the big boys.  If this was just some odd coincidence, I guess I'd be more moved, but the reality is it's exactly what the founding fathers wanted.  

Well the delta between the small states and the big states was smaller at that time as well.  The big states had 10x the number of folks as the small states, whereas now, CA has 60x the number of people as WY, almost 40x of RI and Del.

[horn4life 3755]

I agree with a lot, but doesn't mean that a true democracy without the Electoral college would not be a different and more modern country.

I will also say that our Founding Fathers also created a government where compromise and legislation created by debate and compromise that would lead to legislation that was not perfect, but was possible.  The beginning of the end of this possibility was when the GOP elected a child molester Speaker of the House. The "Hastert Rule" was implemented for the Republican party where no legislation would be brought to a vote that would allow any compromise beyond passing with ONLY Republican votes.

But my point still stands.  The power of the Electoral college has only grown as a means to promote minority views at the expense of the majority.  It's one thing to have this as a check, when there is balance.  But when you have a party in the GOP today that hasn't passed much of anything meangful in the last 20 years with only GOP votes, beyond tax cuts creating more deficit spending they system isn't working.  When the Court is packed with minority appointed judges do to a changing of the rule os "principle" (if that word even applied to elected Republicans anymore) you had two appointments "stolen.
 

But my point was really not about the founding fathers trying to protect a few colonies to get them to sign on.  I am simply talking about how many trillions upon trillions of dollars could have been saved.  It's a "what if" post.  Simply musing about how the electoral system has truly let the country down over time as it dilutes more and more the votes of more and more of the citizenry.  

Hell when you look at the mess of economies that Republican Presidents have handed off and the superior economies routinely handed off by Democratic Presidents, it's just interesting to think about how very different this country might be, if Presidents were indeed majority elected.  But hey if I was in the minority and always wanted to look back instead of forward I would avidly support the GOP's Minority positions.  But Minority elected Presidential decisions have been particularly costly for our country and have corrupted the Supreme court in the process.

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The way the US elects Presidents does not count each vote equally, no matter how you slice it.  Whether you want to call us a Democracy, a Republic or a Democratic Republic.

ONLY for the Presidency are some votes worth a lot more than others depending on what state you are in.  Which... dare I say it... seems like "not democratic" when the person with fewer votes wins?  Or maybe I don't understand math... 😉

 

 

 

[Ghost of LL 15492]

15 hours ago, horn4life said:

 

The way the US elects Presidents does not count each vote equally, no matter how you slice it.  Whether you want to call us a Democracy, a Republic or a Democratic Republic.

ONLY for the Presidency are some votes worth a lot more than others depending on what state you are in.  Which... dare I say it... seems like "not democratic" when the person with fewer votes wins?  Or maybe I don't understand math... 😉

 

 

 

That's not true at all.  It's definitely the case in the Senate.  And it's also the case in the House.  Wyoming has one member of the House for its 580,000 people.  A congressional district in Texas has, on average, 790,000 people.

The fact that individual small-state voters' voters count for more across the entire federal government has been a feature of the Constitution since the beginning.

[The Original Greaser Bob 2799]

I don't know.  Whether it's 40% of the country supports Trump or 51%, it still sucks.