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[EnigmaticHat]

Something strange occurred to me today. Donald Trump did not win the popular vote. A majority of voters, voted against him. And according to polls, many of the voters who voted for Trump did not want him to be president, but rather they were voting against Hilary; considering Trump the lesser evil if you will. A significant majority of Americans do not want the things Trump represented during the election.
So, Trump was elected to represent the will of the majority of American people. And yet, paradoxically, the only way he could honestly represent the majority is by doing the opposite of all the things he said he would do to get elected.

Democracy is stupid. I mean...I just don't even know how else to put it. At least in it's current form, democracy is batshit fucking crazy.

I totally agree with you.  When most people vote based on who they're afraid of, less than half of the people will get someone they actually want to vote for.  So every term is minority rule no matter who gets elected.  Trump is an outlier in this regard, in that most Americans at least start a presidential term cautiously optimistic, but really Trump just highlights problems that are already here.  The Democracy Index downgraded us to a "flawed democracy" recently, they said that it wasn't because of Trump but rather the factors that led to Trump, and even if Trump lost they would have still downgraded us.

The problem is, its really hard to rally people around minor bureaucratic points like "first past the post is bad" or "we should get money out of politics."  A lot of people do "get it" but its harder to explain and dramatize than the other issues that are facing us.  Especially when both political parties benefit from the status quo (but not equally, most flaws in our electoral system favor one party more than the other).  But just because its an abstract problem doesn't mean its a real and important problem.

If election reform does happen it will be because people like Bernie Sanders will find ways to get people mad about this.  Turn it into an urgent moral issue instead of a vague bureaucratic one.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Statistical Society of Canada?

SlateStarCodex.

[EnigmaticHat]

It should be noted that Orange Slice's approval by party is actually really fuckin abnormal. Historically, you tend to get something like 70/30 for a nominally popular President. In the President's party, 70 percent approve and 30 percent disapprove. Out of the President's party, 70 percent disapprove and 30 percent approve. (Not just this data, Pew and Gallup both back me up here.)

Trump, meanwhile, is drastically more polarizing. His approval among Republicans is 10-15% higher than it should be, and his approval among Democrats is now consistently polling below 10%, which may sound right but is insane statistically and historically. Think about how dumb all the people you've met in your life are, how bad judgement a large portion of them seem to have. Virtually all of those people, wise or unwise, who are also Democrats are united on hating Trump. Under 10% means more Democrats approve of extramarital affairs, human cloning programs, and suicide in general than they do Donald Trump. Giant Meteor 2020 isn't even really satirical at this rate, Democrats literally rate human death higher than Trump.

If Trump's Democrat approval drops any further it will enter the territory of approval for re-instituting slavery, voluntary extinction programs, and a violation of the Lizardman's Constant.

It is worth pointing out its not just about yes/no numbers, there's also how strongly each person cares.  You could say "five out of six people would rather see Guardians of the Galaxy 2 today than something else" or "five out of six people on the life boat want to kill and eat Greg".  And despite being the same number those would be clearly different sentiments.

[smjjames]

Now that you mention it, the extreme like/dislike ratio is pretty crazy. There may also be a bit of a 'shy trump voter' type effect here, where Democrats who say they are Democrats and like Trump, but don't want to get caught saying they like Trump.

Also, btw, their stated margin of error is 3.2%. A total Dem approval rating of 4% is pretty dang close to that margin of error, which means a range from slightly under 1% to about 7%.

[Frumple]

Kinda' crazy, but at the same time... kinda' not. You see pretty much the exact same reaction on a smaller scale when a skilled or lucky fraudster sinks their hooks into someone or part of a community. Compromised folks abnormally trusting even as they're fleeced for all they're worth (for all sorts of reasons, and often reinforced by a need to not acknowledge themselves as victimized or having been helping someone abuse people, among other things.), everyone else having a significantly easier time seeing what the hell is going on and even more distrusting of everything the con does (because it's been proven that said con's angle is pretty much never to anyone else's benefit, which makes it a hell of a lot easier to see bullshit for bullshit). And the latter often gets worse as time progresses, as the con only rarely can keep from continuing to piss on everything they touch. Pretty sure there's specialized psych/soc terminology surrounding the phenomena (it's fairly common with abuse victims, which conned people generally are, if to an arguably lesser degree than the more standard conceptualizations of the label), but hell if I can remember any of it at midnight through the haze of a grotesque stupidity induced headache.

It's not impossible for the victimized group to eventually realize what's been done to them, but... it can take a while, and it requires a degree of desire to see what's happening to and around them. And, well. The republican folk largely don't want to, quite yet. Unfortunately for the rest of us in particular, it's probably going to take shit starting to fall down around them pretty hard before the process involved there starts to happen.

[misko27]

If I were President, I'd have a friendly lap cat I could play with absentmindedly while I hear serious conversations and deliver life-and-death judgements. Like the one in the first Godfather scene,
 where the Godfather has an actual stray on his lap while listening to the story of that girl who was beaten and negotiating with her father.

Kinda' crazy, but at the same time... kinda' not. You see pretty much the exact same reaction on a smaller scale when a skilled or lucky fraudster sinks their hooks into someone or part of a community. Compromised folks abnormally trusting even as they're fleeced for all they're worth (for all sorts of reasons, and often reinforced by a need to not acknowledge themselves as victimized or having been helping someone abuse people, among other things.), everyone else having a significantly easier time seeing what the hell is going on and even more distrusting of everything the con does (because it's been proven that said con's angle is pretty much never to anyone else's benefit, which makes it a hell of a lot easier to see bullshit for bullshit). And the latter often gets worse as time progresses, as the con only rarely can keep from continuing to piss on everything they touch. Pretty sure there's specialized psych/soc terminology surrounding the phenomena (it's fairly common with abuse victims, which conned people generally are, if to an arguably lesser degree than the more standard conceptualizations of the label), but hell if I can remember any of it at midnight through the haze of a grotesque stupidity induced headache.

For reasons I've made clear in the past, I find this an extremely apt analogy for a lot of reasons.

[smjjames]

Stockholm syndrome comes to mind, though that may not be the correct one, but it's also about tribalism and group identity.

On the Republican politicians, they're trying to get their agenda done, so, they're attempting to keep Trump around as long as possible, however, it seems like it'd be a hell of a lot easier for them at this point to ditch Trump and go for Pence. Then again, I doubt they'd have much of an easier time with Pence at the helm.

[EnigmaticHat]

Re: ridiculous approval gap.  Part of it has to be that Americans no longer all get their news from the same relatively small amount of sources.  We've gone from fireside chats to the big 3 to "oh hey I'm a carpenter let me get the latest carpentry news on my phone".

Beyond that, eh, I don't know?  I think part of the polarization might not be a big scary trend and might actually be Trump.  There are gaffs that sink political campaigns, in the sense that they do enough damage to the support base that everyone kinda knows that its over.  Romney's 47% gaff didn't have, I think, quite so strong an effect, but its a good example of the kind of thing I'm talking about.  Trump had like, a hundred moments that would have torpedoed anyone else's campaign.  We can talk about why exactly he won anyways but the point is he did and in recent history that's unusual.

[Frumple]

... actually, you could almost make the argument it's not terribly unusual for recent history. The last time the EC shat on the popular vote to the republicans' benefit was just two presidents ago. For a fair amount of our population this is anywhere from half to two-thirds the presidents they've lived through, if a bit fewer on the straight up election front.

Circumstances there were a bit different (the gap was a lot smaller, ferex, and the electoral bullshit more concentrated), but... still. Perhaps tellingly, for all bush jr. was less overt/called on it, he also ran a campaign fueled by lies, vicious twisting of facts and/or reality, and character assassination, more than just about anything. I'd be pretty willing to buy someone saying his election vs. gore was more similar to 2016 than it wasn't.

[smjjames]

Isn't that how all campaigns are run these days?

Anyways, it starts in 15 minutes or so.

Regarding the behavior, longtime associates and observers are saying that this kind of behavior is something that Trump has been doing for a very long time. And a former Trump employee talks about it too.

[Andux]

Comey hearing is underway.

C-SPAN stream

[Puzzlemaker]

Well so far Mark Warner is fucking slamming Trump, holy shit.

[smjjames]

Well so far Mark Warner is fucking slamming Trump, holy shit.

He's a Democrat, so, no surprise there. It'd be holy shit if it were a Republican slamming Trump.

[sluissa]

Pretty obvious there will be no "smoking gun" today. All we have is Trump standing next to a mattress covered in piss and no hookers in sight. All we know is something disgusting happened here but there's no proof it was a crime.

[Reelya]

Enjoy Neil Cavuto of Fox News ripping Trump a new a-hole:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQK-Z50f5QI