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[Karnewarrior]

That, or a return to Roman-esque gladiatorial games. Trump would love being able to kill a man with a tiny thumbs-up just for the attention.

"The athlete is asking for his favor from God-emperor TRUMP. Let's see how he does...

"Trump is making the signal... Mike Pence has his binoculars out... This is very trying, trying to tell a thumbs up from a thumbs down from a full five feet away... AND IT'S A THUMBS UP! TOM BRADY LIVES ANOTHER DAY!"

[Max™]

That, or a return to Roman-esque gladiatorial games. Trump would love being able to kill a man with a tiny thumbs-up just for the attention.

"The athlete is asking for his favor from God-emperor TRUMP. Let's see how he does...

"Trump is making the signal... Mike Pence has his binoculars out... This is very trying, trying to tell a thumbs up from a thumbs down from a full five feet away... AND IT'S A THUMBS UP! TOM BRADY LIVES ANOTHER DAY!"

You lucked out, Brady... this time...

Also, I hate to say it, but goddamn McCain might be the GOP VIP of the year.

There are a number of angles this can take, ranging from how EC votes are tabulated on a state by state basis, (EG, winner take all, vs fractional award by district count, vs fractional award by population, vs other), and then on a district level analysis of individual states (Gerrymandering for the win, et al) however, both sets of semantics that could be thrown at this are thrown a huge fucking curveball by the very anomalous results from the eastern seaboard states.  Either the republicans are fucking brilliant at planning gerrymandered districts to engineer elections, in states that were controlled by democrat senators and governors, or there is something fishy about this line of argument.

Gerrymandering isn't just about getting more votes for you, it's also about making sure every single vote which you wouldn't get anyways winds up in as few districts as possible, and yes, they literally pulled off a supervillain level scheme with the 2010 census > 2012 redistricting that definitely won them two of three branches of government.

As for Clinton... she needs to go the fuck away, tag in someone else to carry the crown and get the fuck out of here, goddamn woman, no means no.

[Reelya]

Gerrymandering isn't really relevant for the presidential election, since I don't believe any state calculates results on a congressional-district basis. Sure it's relevant in other races, just not that one. e.g. this article is titled "How the electoral college gerrymanders the presidential vote".

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/11/29/how-the-electoral-college-gerrymanders-the-presidential-vote/?utm_term=.8a0e1ec2258f

But the problem is that they need to move state borders to prove their point, which effectively disproves the point. Borders which cannot be moved can't be manipulated by either party, so the gerrymandering term isn't really applicable.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Maine and Nebraska both have some district-votes, and while they are admittedly only a few, they do have the potential to flip an election.

[EnigmaticHat]

Gerrymandering isn't really relevant for the presidential election, since I don't believe any state calculates results on a congressional-district basis. Sure it's relevant in other races, just not that one. e.g. this article is titled "How the electoral college gerrymanders the presidential vote".

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/11/29/how-the-electoral-college-gerrymanders-the-presidential-vote/?utm_term=.8a0e1ec2258f

But the problem is that they need to move state borders to prove their point, which effectively disproves the point. Borders which cannot be moved can't be manipulated by either party, so the gerrymandering term isn't really applicable.

The electoral college is functionally the same thing as gerrymandering tho.  55-45% red/blue split is the same as a 95-5% red-blue split.  Yeah the parties don't control it any more, but they explicitly drew up a good chunk of the states in the union to create a balance between slave states and free states.  Even now Puerto Rico can't be admitted as a state because it would disrupt that balance, make politicians still complicit in the old system of the Missouri compromise.  Remember, gerrymandering to maintain status quo is still gerrymandering; you don't have to do it to make your party win.

Edit: Although yes, technically it isn't gerrymandering since it doesn't involve districts.  But I don't think the technical definition was their point

[misko27]

Even now Puerto Rico can't be admitted as a state because it would disrupt that balance,

DC, not Puerto Rico. DC is blue, PR is purple. Both parties support Puerto Rican statehood, it's just that the Puerto Ricans can't figure their shit out. It's DC that screams at the top of its lungs for statehood.

And the thing about Gerrymandering is it needs to be current. Over time all borders become arbitrary due to the movement of peoples and the shifting identities and importance of cities, towns, and rural areas. All sorts of demography can shift the balance between borders, and has, for decades. An ideal system puts borders around people with shared interests, heritage, and culture, but one where the borders are arbitrary and stand for nothing is still superior to one where the borders exist specifically to gain political control.

[sluissa]

It's technically not gerrymandering because it isn't. The whole problem with gerrymandering was that they were drawing districts so wildly shaped and disconnected that it made no sense except as an exercise in political manipulation.

Trying to drag the Missouri compromise into this is just trying to tack on an element of racism to the side you don't agree with to try to claim the moral highground. Was there some connection way back in the past for a couple of the states? Sure. But that was a long time ago and certainly doesn't apply to anything today. Certainly not to anything beyond 1865.

[EnigmaticHat]

Do you realize how slowly US politics move?  As I would define it, we've had only 3 political shakeups since 1865, and aside from that our politics have been largely stagnant.  That would be the Great Party Switch, the New Deal Coalition, and then the Southern Strategy.  Aside from that, the broad strokes of our politics have remained stagnant.  Notice how for all the fireworks around Trump and Bernie, the actual effect has come to about zip?  If the cycle holds, the most long-lived of forumites will only get to see 2 shakeups.  And aside from those changes it'll be every state but the swing states voting the same way every election.  US politics is slow AF, 150 years isn't that much and hell yeah racism and the echos of the civil war are still relevant forces in our politics.

But anyway, like I said.  Its not technically gerrymandering, but its close enough.  In the same way that if a brick falls on my head tomorrow, I wasn't murdered because there was no perpetrator, but "murdered by bad stonework" or "killed by a brick" would be an effective description.  I'm still dead either way, just like the EC fucks up the presidential election in the same way that gerrymandering fucks up House elections.  Even tho no one could be said to have gerrymandered.

[Frumple]

'Course, you don't exactly need the missouri compromise to tack an element of racism onto the current state of gerrymandering. It's pretty bloody blatant. Can't recall at the moment if it's one of the things the judiciary has specifically told the GOP to knock the fuck off on discrimination grounds, though.

[EnigmaticHat]

Looking it up, the most recent supreme court case on gerrymandering was indecisive because it failed to establish a standard for what gerrymandering is.  A district court case last year (Whitford vs Gill) used the standard of the gap between what the voters wanted and what they got, and found that in Wisconsin there was a ~12% efficacy gap in favor of Republicans.  But that means little until its established as the nationwide standard, which will probably involve the supreme court.

[smjjames]

We're certainly in the middle of a realignment period, only problem is that nobody can agree definitively on when we entered the seventh party system. They can happen on average of 30-40 years, and there's a timeline which you guys can just google image that shows them coming roughly every 40 years and is kind of tied to generational cycles.

It's entirely possible that the rise of mass media with television and the internet is making the political realignment thing more fluid than a relatively quick shift.

'Course, you don't exactly need the missouri compromise to tack an element of racism onto the current state of gerrymandering. It's pretty bloody blatant. Can't recall at the moment if it's one of the things the judiciary has specifically told the GOP to knock the fuck off on discrimination grounds, though.

The judicary has told the GOP to knock it off on discrimination grounds, repeatedly. Also, the concentration of Democrats in urban areas is also complicating things.

Looking it up, the most recent supreme court case on gerrymandering was indecisive because it failed to establish a standard for what gerrymandering is.  A district court case last year (Whitford vs Gill) used the standard of the gap between what the voters wanted and what they got, and found that in Wisconsin there was a ~12% efficacy gap in favor of Republicans.  But that means little until its established as the nationwide standard, which will probably involve the supreme court.

There's a SCOTUS case on it coming up in October, it's the Wisconsin case you mentioned I believe.

[Frumple]

The judicary has told the GOP to knock it off on discrimination grounds, repeatedly.

Oh aye, just not terribly sure if it's been specifically on gerrymandering stuff, recently-ish. Seem to recall most of the more present stuff's been about voter ID nonsense or junk along those lines.

[Folly]

In other news, Trump's taking massive fire from the NFL and the NFL Player's Union, which have jointly denounced a speech in which he advocates firing any player who participates in the Anthem Protests. This is intensified by his revocation of the traditional White House invitation to the Golden State Warriors (the current NBA champions) after a player expressed reluctance to participate.

I'm hearing a lot of First Amendment talk over this issue. Here's what it boils down to in my view...

If Trump were to use his position as a government official to force people to show respect during the National Anthem, that would be a violation of their First Amendment rights.
If Trump uses his position to encourage people to show respect during the National Anthem, that type of moral counseling is considered an acceptable extension of his office as a leader of the people.

The problem is, Trump's language currently falls in a grey zone somewhere between these two extremes. Trump is strongly implying, though not out-rightly stating, that his expectation of NFL team managers is that they will not continue to employ individuals who fail to share his personal opinions. This is not the first time that we have seen Trump skirt this line, dangerously close to the wrong side of it, and it surely will not be the last.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Trump's influence as President is such that this is an inappropriate action regardless of whether or not it is a legal one. And yes, Trump still seems to be under the impression that his office makes him "boss of America" and able to issue instructions to anybody that "just ought" to be followed whether there's legal authority or not.

I'm starting to see why he talked so much shit about Obama, if that's seriously what he thinks the Presidency is.

Anyway, while we can't fully quantify the President's "soft power", I'd say that we probably don't have to worry about violating the rights of the President rather than the public, and so should err on the side of the latter.

[scriver]

I think he's over the line with what should be acceptable from a president (And I wholeheartedly think that "to encourage people to show respect during the National Anthem" is a thing that a president should do),  but in the end I think it comes down to whether he is putting any direct pressure on the NFL or whatever to fire anyone or whether it's just blusterous words from a big mouth.

Preedit:

Anyway, while we can't fully quantify the President's "soft power", I'd say that we probably don't have to worry about violating the rights of the President rather than the public, and so should err on the side of the latter.

I agree that that is probably the most sensible stance to take.