As of 3:39 EST on Sunday, here’s the popular vote excluding California:
Biden 66,055,173 (50.0%)
Trump 66,073,151 (50.0%)
If you carry out the decimals, it’s
Biden 49.993%
Trump 50.007%
And, of course, even a tiny new tranche of additional info could change the leader.
Mike P said: “I hate that little folks are so likely to be punished for their small sins while bigshots get away with murder.”
I hate that too. One of the worst things about the War on Drugs is that the people who have no one to rat on get some of the harshest sentences.
But a lot of the little folks voted for Trump and the Republicans. They seem to love lies that tell them to hate somebody smaller and weaker than they are. They need to learn better for their own good.
President Lyndon B. Johnson once said, “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”
The Republicans seem to have rediscovered this sad truth of human nature, and are working it like a switch engine.
“racism is the engine that transports the masses” per Scoopy in an earlier comment.
This. “Can’t we just get along?” “Yeah, right.”
vox dot com/21549994/p
Thanks for the link, MikeP. People did not go around saying we should get along with Nazis in 1946, and they knew goddamn well why.
BTW, that guy who made the observation about arguments being over when one side calls the other Nazis said it is OK to call the Trump Administration Nazis. I forget his name.
Godwin.
1.Godwin
2.It is true that post World War II the western allies sought to bring (West) Germany back into respectability as soon as possible, mostly due to the Iron Curtain descending on Europe.
However, for those who call the demands to hold those who enabled Trump to account as ‘cancel culture’ (‘holding people responsible for their actions’ and ‘cancel culture’ are two terms meaning the exact same thing) let’s also be clear of what the Allies did to Germany:
1.Germany, which was much more severely punished post World War I (no cold war to worry about then) was also allowed to surrender in World War I without being invaded by the Triple Entente and without a general occupation. While Belgium and most of France were utterly devastated by World War I, Germany got off largely unscathed.
Over time this allowed people like Hitler to lie that Germany was never defeated on the battlefield, but rather that German politicians quit on the war and on the German people.
To prevent this from happening again, the Allies were committed to showing the Germans they had lost World War II. Not only was the country destroyed by aerial bombardment throughout the War, but the allied forces met up in Berlin, so as to have invaded the entire nation.
2.The Germans agreed to unconditional surrender.
3.As part of this, the allies occupied, split up and ruled Germany under four separate segments (with Berlin similarly split up.)
4.The Nuremberg Trials were conducted to convict those who committed the worst crimes.
There was no ‘we can just get along’ right after World War II ended.
Those were at the macro level. At the micro level the Allies carried out an entire program on DeNazification. Included in this, for instance, German citizens in nearby towns were forced by allied soldiers to visit the concentration and extermination camps, to dig up the mass graves, and to dig proper graves for each dead person found in the mass graves.
Other Germans were required to watch films of the concentration and extermination camps.
Yep, that’s what I was thinking of, Adam. The Republicans are even now proving that dreams of unifying the nation are just happy talk right now. The truth, and using the levers of power, is what is now required.
GSA is a notorious CYA outfit. I suspect it’s more that involved than any kind of recalcitrant Trumpism.
So now a Trump appointee team won’t certify so Biden can get needed resources to start the transition process and get access to federal information. McConnell is backing Trump’s efforts in courts, and Graham and Cruz are all in. Also AG Barr is calling for an investigation.
Biden has literally bent over backwards for this alleged utopia of ‘unity’ and you can already see where this one is going to land. At the cost of pissing off progressives for this bullshit idea that Republicans have any bit of decency or good faith effort in them. We already see where this is going.
Yep, they see even acknowledging basic facts as a sign of weakness. I didn’t see this whole Wallace-in-the-school-doorway shtick coming from the GSA, I was picturing more the whining about having no money cos we gave it all to billionaires. But they’ve got 72 days to fuck things up, what are they gonna do – NOT fuck it up?
Yeah, it took Obama at least 5 or 6 years to figure out the front door was boarded shut & his only way in was by the back door, side doors, windows, chimney or basement. Even then, fellow citizens kept calling the cops (courts) on him. By fellow citizens I mean implacable enemies. Americans work the system, that’s why financial markets love deadlock. I hate that little folks are so likely to be punished for their small sins while bigshots get away with murder. I mean bilking citizens bigtime & inflicting large injury on the country… legally. That’s what working the system means.
Well, Trump is obviously going to go down with the sinking ship, because what choice does he have? And the Republicans in Washington seems to think Trumpism did well enough at that ballot box that they are going to continue to march under its banner.
Apparently Biden foresaw this particular kind of obstructionism and prepared for it; he assembled a first rate foreign policy team for his campaign, even though foreign policy was barely an issue, and now they are functioning as his foreign policy transition team, as much as they can. He may have done this in other areas as well. (I got this from a YouTube video by “Beau of the Fifth Column”, a commentator I respect.)
I am encouraged by this display of shrewdness, preparation, and competence on Biden’s part. Dear god, what a change from Trump!
Finally, I am glad that the Republicans are showing that for them, reaching across the aisle and bipartisanship for the good of the nation are dead letters already. It saves a lot time, and shows that they want to play hardball. That removes any doubt that the Democrats should play hardball right back.
Pretty sure posted this recently in another thread:
Did this analysis 2/3 yrs ago looking up each state’s current population:
AK
ID
MT
WY
UT
ND
SD
NE
KS
OK
AR
LA
MS
AL
—–
14 States = 72 Electoral Votes = 32,840,000 pop.
CA = 55 Electoral Votes = 39,144,000
America is not a representative anything and each state has their own election laws.
>
Adding: Actually many counties within each state are not universal. 😮 Democracy in action. The only way to do the electoral college fairly is to use fractions and that ain’t gonna happen ~ totally getting rif of the EC notwithstanding.
btw, the election is over! Time to accept reality and move on.
Yielding back the balance of my time …
1. The small states would still retain their disproportionate weight.
2. I think the allocation of each state’s votes can’t be decided nationally. It is the decision of the individual states.
3. Therefore, every state would have to agree on it at the same time, or it would not be fair. It would be worse than now if California gave away some of its votes to the GOP, but Texas gave none back to the Dems. (And you know the GOP would game that and the Dems would be totally gullible, fair-minded saps.)
4. That doesn’t solve the Senate issue, which is the real core of the government’s problems. Because the senate configuration allows a majority of senators to come from a minority of the population, it skews the electoral college. Worse than that, it allows that minority, in bed with their lobbyists, to block things that are wanted by an overwhelming majority of Americans, and even the president is powerless to fix it. And, back to the subject at hand, the number of electoral votes includes the number of senators. Note that fixing the senate problem also fixes the Supreme Court problem in the future.
I’m still an advocate of four Californias, + DC and PR statehood, adding 10 new senators, and getting close to the right proportion of Blue/Red senators relative to the population. Maybe that’s not the right method to attack the problem, but the one thing I’m sure of is we have to repair the senate imbalance, because so many other things derive directly from that.
While I broadly agree with you, there was already such a ballot measure to split up CA not too long ago. Not many people considered it to be a serious proposal & IIRC it didn’t come anywhere near passing.
Well, that’s another thing people need to think again about.
What if all the states just adopted Maine and Nebraska’s approach? You split the state’s EVs based on a proportion of the popular vote received. I think those two states divide it into geographic regions, but there no reason you’d have to do it that way.
The small states would still retain their disproportionate weight of EVs, but you would still bring the Electoral College more in line with the national consensus.
The Republican candidate won California every presidential election from Nixon through Bush #1. As late as 1996, Bill Clinton carried nearly the entire Mississippi & Ohio Valley. It shouldn’t ever be about working around the divide, but rather working through it.
What the country needs right now is leadership that can sell a diverse electorate on the benefits of its policies and turn the nation’s attention back to what it has in common and away from the us-vs-them mentality that’s taken hold over the past 2 decades or so. There’s not a damned thing stopping a candidate from carrying both Oregon and Arkansas. It’s happened numerous times before.
Somewhere along the way, election strategy devolved from, “What ideas do I present to get the most people possible to vote for me?” to “How do I get my base demographic in targeted areas fired up enough to allow me to win by the smallest margin possible?” and we’re all the worse for it. I’m old enough to remember seeing candidates who at least gave the appearance that they merely had differing philosophies on how to best run the country as opposed to just overtly battling to either gain or maintain their own power. Thankfully, Biden apparently remembers those day, too. His speech last night was refreshing.
Can anyone or anything can change the mind of a staunch Trump voter? I don’t know, but maybe as The Donald shrinks in the rear-view mirror, Biden can take a crack a getting “folks” (I love his use of that word) to actually buy what he’s selling and win them over instead of having to run them over.
You may very well be right, Sparks. I am not smart or knowledgeable enough to know. All I would say is that there are some very rich people and corporations making a lot of money by peddling an us-vs-them mentality, and they do that because a lot of people seem to really love that. I don’t think the corporations created the market; they found it, But it seems to be a self-sustaining process.
And perhaps because of that, quite a few politicians have found it a successful strategy for getting elected.
So for what you want to be successful, we are going to need better human beings. At least, they will have to be better informed, and believe the truth (at least, the truth as you and I see it).
Given how many people voted for Trump and other Republican candidates now, what do you think the odds of that are?
Also, personally, I am not interested in uniting the country right away. I think a clear example needs to be made of Trump and his accomplices, to the full extent of the law, as well as righting the wrongs and injustices he and they committed. THEN we can start to heal and unite, on the basis that they were criminals, IMO.
Anything else amounts to allowing criminals to go free with the fruits of their crime in exchange for momentary peace and quiet – which we won’t get anyway.
Yeah, that’s what my heart says, too. My head, however, still can’t think clearly about it & remains undecided.
To me, if California’s perfectly legitimate and justified contribution and right to the vote just barely tipped the overall win to Biden it just makes it that more legit.
Right. It’s unlikely that states like CA & TX would opt to dilute their outsized EC impact by splitting their delegations.
California would increase its influence, not decrease it. By splitting into four states, they would have the same number of representatives plus six more senators. (stateEV =stateRep + stateSen)
Moreover, they would quadruple their influence in the senate – from 2 senators to eight. That is probably more important than the presidential election because the President’s power is severely limited by the Senate.
Again, I stress that the important issue is the Senate, not the Presidency. But if you fix the senate, you also amend the electoral college as a ancillary benefit. Split California into four states and approve statehood for PR and DC, and you come pretty close to having the proper blue/red proportion in the senate, based on the proper proportion in America.
And one other point – the California leadership would love it, because it creates tons of new leadership positions for them (including three senate seats and three governorships), as well as tons of new jobs in the three new state capitals.
I think it depends on how/where you split the state. If you do it based on geography or interest you will end up with a couple of republican states. If you do it based on the current gerrymandered districts to guarantee democrat control of all 4 states you will see some crazy maps.
When you have power, you use it. The GOP has gerrymandered the crap out of plenty of states. I would feed them their own medicine.
Interesting, I can’t reply to your comment. So I will reply here.
I don’t disagree that the GOP has gerrymandered plenty of states, VA and NC are obvious examples. It happens by both parties all the time, ie MD.
I am only pointing out that when you go to creating states it will be very difficult to put together useful functioning contiguous states out of the necessary voting blocs to get 4 truly Dem states.
It is amusing though that you happily state that when you have the power you use it, while clearly being angry that repugs did it elsewhere. It is one of the leading complaints on the left but never acknowledged that they have done it as well.
I think you’re missing the nub of Nature Mom’s question. When I said “splitting” CA’s EC, I meant just that. You’re talking about the Senate problem. She & I were talking about the EC overrepresenting small states. To be specific, we’re talking about the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC at Wikipedia). See also NationalPopularVote dot com. States where the compact is law now total 196 EVs. If & when it hits 270, it goes into effect. The national popular vote would then completely determine the EC.
Also, I’m a liar. CA’s already in. Gov. Jerry Brown signed it into law 9yrs ago.
The NPVC is great, and I’d love to see it enacted, but you’re missing the point. Even having the fairly-elected President is not useful when you don’t control the Senate, which has the privilege to reject all of your appointments (or ignore them, as we found out) and block all legislation.
The imbalance in the Senate is a three-fold problem: (1) it affects the Senate itself, enabling it to block both legislation and nominations; (2) it partially determines the ratios in the electoral college; (3) in effect, it configures the Supreme Court and all the lower courts.
From that one single problem, we have five Supremes nominated by Presidents who were defeated in the popular vote, we have elected two recent Presidents who were defeated in the popular vote, and we have seen critical legislation blocked by a senate majority that represents a minority of the population. In essence, the Senate imbalance dooms us to government by the minority, even if the presidential problem is fixed.
Yes, I know the multiple Californias idea has been defeated before, but I think it is an easy sell if everyone on the blue team sees the long-range strategic benefits of it.
And it doesn’t require Californians to approve it in a referendum. It can be done by the state legislature and the U.S. Congress. In fact if the U.S. Constitution is applied literally (article IV, section 3), it is solely the responsibility of the legislature and Congress, so it can’t even be vetoed by the governor. I think this is one case where the strict constitutionalists would object to what the constitution actually says and insist on judicial activism if they wanted the governor to veto (same thing they always do when they don’t like what the Constitution really says).
Thanks for that, Scoops. I’d like to correct myself that CA would not be “diluting” its votes but ceding them. Bowing to the will of the country over its own voters.
As for who’s missing what, I didn’t mean you might not have a better case for your better proposal. I was saying you were effectively intruding into what I saw as a separate thread on a related but different topic initiated by Nature Mom specifically asking about the status of NPVC. My reply was to suggest it seems like a long shot, to me. In hindsight, I may have lowballed its chances, but I still don’t feel it’s likely to happen.
IMO, the state wouldn’t honor a legislatively passed bill that Congress happened to ratify. It needs force of law or courts would strike it down. Now, if, by referendum you mean ballot measure, there are 2 kinds, laws or amendments. Passing muster with voters by itself carries the same force as state laws passed by other means.
You’re right, the Senate’s a more important problem than the EC. I’ve long felt SCOTUS has too much power, too. You weren’t off-topic in a global sense, only in a micro one. SCOTUS jurisdiction can be subject to limitations imposed by Congress. It’s just, SCOTUS acts. Congress’ stagnation is frustrating. When it does manage to do its work, it does bad things. Those bastards can really get my dander up. (I return the balance of my 2c.)
That’s a fair point. California made a substantial contribution despite being underrepresented in the EC.
Then there’s that ongoing project to enlist states to volunteer their electors to the winner of the popular vote. No conflict with the Constitution. Have any of you heard if that’s getting any closer?
My sense is that most of us are realistic about that possibility. That is, that it’s ridiculous to think lots of little states are going to cede their paltry grip on power to their bigger, economically heavyweight rivals.
AOC argues Dems need the Left more than vice versa. Guardian 11/8.
One pal o mine said: “I just hope dems remember 2010.”
I’m aware of AOC’s position. She’s right, basically, WRT blue states’ need to move further, faster to the left. But the blue states are not a faithful representation of the whole country. And, it isn’t just on the basis of folks’ POV, either. How much thought have we–have you–or have I–given to how to scale up the experience of only blue states to the whole rest of the country, especially the big, empty red zones?
It’s a heavy lift. I don’t know if there’s anybody alive with a true handle on that problem. IMO, our political divide is cultural, that’s largely true, but it also reflects a hard truth. Objective, economic separation. Oh, there’s inroads. Prosperous, blue life in a few red state cities. Progressive pockets, where the prevailing lifestyle is even better than most other places, even in the blue states.
In a way, our red/blue regions split up rather like Ireland. Northern Ireland, blue. Their republic to the south, red. The tech boom there is concentrated in blue-like enclaves. Like our red states, the south is heavily dependent on the spillover from the north. That’s my take.
Please bear in mind that my take is not that blue states ought to lord it over the red ones. Nor that we really should split up & let those leeches suffer the misery of life without us. It’s that, the reality in this country has been that the west coast in particular has enjoyed our place in the sun, in effect 5yrs ahead of the rest of the country, culturally, for reasons that’ve largely failed to replicate elsewhere.
That’s the reality that our polarization reflects, IMO. It isn’t just that there’s little hope for us as a country. It’s that our prospects of rising above the muck are hard, uphill & a deeply unsolved problem.
California should be split into at least 4 states, all with Senators. If instead, you split it off from the country, please give us in the Northeast Megalopolis some notice so we glcan get out of here also.
“Probably in Trump voters, and Republicans minds, California may as well be a different country and wish it was treated this way.”
Not just in their minds. That’s also in California’s collective mind, and has been for some time. It would be far better off as a separate nation because of the fact that it pours far more into the tax base than it takes away. Lacking a military, it would have to spend some of that benefit back on national defense, but it would not need much.
The only significant mass of people that absolutely, immutably want California to remain a state are the other blue states, which definitely need their big brother to beat up the bullies.
Rather than seeing California leave the nation or remain, I prefer a third option: split it into four states and change the composition of the Senate (and thus the electoral college). We could do that if Democrats could control both houses and the White House.
Or you could split it into 51 states – each larger than Wyoming. Why 51? That would give the nation an even 100.
Or just get rid of the electoral college. Easier and simpler.
That would be the right choice from any correct sense of justice or ethics, but it is certainly neither easier nor simpler. In fact it is all but impossible. It would require a constitutional amendment. I don’t believe we will ever see another one of those unless it is something completely bland and non-controversial. They require approval of a 2/3 majority in both houses and ratification by 38 of the 50 states.
That’s certainly not easier or simpler than creating new states from existing ones. Creating a new state from an existing state is a fairly simple matter. It requires a simple majority in both houses of Congress. no veto from the President, and approval by the state legislature. It could have been done next year if the Dems had taken the Senate.
You’re ignoring establish 50 new state governments. You’re ignoring then people who live in these places that don’t want to be part of a new state. You’re ignoring that the new states will have 0 money on day one to pay for any basic state function (I.e sewage). You’re ignoring that you have to draw these new states.
What’s next turn New York into 20 states and Pennsylvania into 10?
This is asinine and just because you don’t think the electoral college won’t be removed ignores that it is the simpler solution. The fact that idiots/power mongers in the federal government won’t agree to it doesn’t mean it’s not the simple solution.
Popular voting is “simple” in the sense of how it would operate …
if it were possible.
But it isn’t.
I would love to see it, but it will never happen, while the other idea, while unwieldy, can be done easily.
(I was joking about 50 new states. Splitting California into four – three new – would be reasonable, and not that difficult to create.)
It’s always better to restrict the options to things that are really possible, as opposed to pipe dreams.
Only four things are necessary to split California: simple majority in the House, simple majority in the Senate, approval of the state legislature, and no veto from the President. All eminently doable. The Constitution spells it out literally, and there is precedent from four other states, so the courts could not intervene. It could have been passed next year if the Dems had gained the Senate.
———–
And it’s not just the “idiots” in the Federal government who would oppose the popular vote option. Even if you could somehow get 2/3 approval in both the Senate and the House, you would still need 38 states to approve. Even if Congress were not involved at all, state ratification will never happen.
In addition, allowing a popular vote for President would solve only part of the problem. It does not change the Senate. A majority in the Senate would still represent a minority of the people, as they do today. In order to make democracy truly more representative, you have to address both the electoral college AND the Senate. Adding three more Californias does both, and is eminently doable.
Wouldn’t dividing states electoral votes proportionately get us 95%+ of the same effect as popular voting for POTUS?
That would take a Constitutional amendment, which means approval by 2/3rd of the state legislatures, and the little states are NOT going to give up their outsize voice in the Senate willingly.
Once again, that can’t be done because
(1) Once again, the senate is the problem. The number of electoral votes is dependent on the number of senators – thus Wyoming and California get two each from that portion of the formula (EV = sen + rep + 3)
(2) Changing the formula would require a constitutional amendment, and those may never happen again.
As far as I can see, the only practical, doable solution is to split the larger states, starting with California, a solution which only requires simple majorities in both houses, the consent of the state legislature and no veto from the prez. We were almost in that situation. (And I guess we might still be, in the unlikely event that the Democrats win the two senate run-offs in Georgia.)
Note that if this were done properly by the Dems while they had power, the GOP would never get to retaliate by splitting their states, because they could never again gain the power necessary to do so (because with their advantage eliminated, they could no longer win the presidency or the senate with a minority of voters).
As Trump and McConnell have demonstrated, power begets power, and you have to use it while you have it.
This is fucking pointless.
It reminds me of when SNL did “What if?… Spartacus had a Piper Cub?”
Sorry, I don’t mean to be dense, but … why is excluding CA even a thing?
As of current results, CA cast 14,183,390 ballots for president. Biden has 9,163,725 of them (an almost 2:1 margin…)
If you’re a strict EC person, Biden wins the states votes. If you prefer Popular Vote metrics, he wins the state.
I guess I just don’t even understand why it’s even valid to remove an entire states voters from tabulation of nationwide results? It seems like doing that is trying to validate and/or increase the importance of … empty land voting.
I reflects that Mr. Trump is extremely popular out in the rolling hills of the republic.
And? I’m really, really fucking tired of ill-educated, regressive detritus from the bottom of the gene pool obstructing any sort of real progress in this country. Fuck them, fuck their land, and fuck their crops. We can import more food than this country needs to eat for less than we currently spend (accounting for subsidies, etc).
What’s the economic engine of MS? Fucking Nothing. GA? Pigs. AR? Pigs. TN? Fucking Nothing.
Why do we CONTINUOUSLY permit states that provide * NOTHING * to the economic / social well being of this country to have an outsize voice in the direction we’re going?
Look, I know I’m just ranting, but … I am so, so very tired of watching the wheels spin because we can’t get out of the muck that these backward chuckfucks are keeping us mired in.
We are in this hole because in 1789 the little states would not agree to the Constitution unless they got a equal voice with the big states in some way. That compromise is now coming back to bite us in much the same way that the founding compromise on slavery came back to bite us in 1861. Let’s hope we don’t have to start shooting this time. I am too old for that.
Probably in Trump voters, and Republicans minds, California may as well be a different country and wish it was treated this way.
Except for you know, if California were a different country it would be the fifth largest economy in the world, and like all ‘blue’ states and ‘blue’ cities, even inside of red states, they want liberal welfare to pay for their base’s public services.
Essentially, for rural conservatives it’s ‘don’t mess with our civil liberties California and other blue areas’, but by all means – keep giving us that liberal tax money to keep our public services up and act entitled about it. That’s essentially what it comes down to.
Let California keep its federal tax money it pays into the government, and stop paying conservative states with federal money and lets see where that leads. Or let big cities keep their state tax money inside of the county, instead of giving rural counties liberal welfare. Then maybe conservatives will get a little taste of what bootstraps are all about.
What a truly sad election result…the Dems actually managed to lose House seats. It’s self-evident that the American embarrassment that is Trump would have been re-elected handily if not for Covid-19. Is the US headed for a breakup? Those election numbers would suggest the answer is yes. Maybe, you’ll follow the example of the former Czechoslovakia or maybe not….
Hey, look, it’s a troll.
How boring.
I thought Putin fired all you guys after Trump blew it.
Putin didn’t fire them, just quit paying them. They’ll keep working til they wise up.
Still, look how close it was. No covid and Fuckstick would have just kept taking credit for the Obama economy. With the incumbent bias in our system, that might have been enough.
What’s the results without Texas?
Not a valid comparison. The nation without Texas is still the same nation. The nation without California would be radically different.
First of all, Texas only had the fourth-highest margin of victory.
Second, if California were split into four states, they would produce the four highest victory margins. In fact, it could be split into seven states, and they would all produce higher victory margins than Texas.
Sure, other states like Texas, Illinois and New York produce fairly big margins of victory, but they are all less than a million. If you remove any one of them, it barely matters. On the other hand California, which will finish at about five million when they finish counting, produced the entire margin of victory for the nation.
The same is true of the electoral college. Eliminate California and you have 483 electoral votes. As it stands now, Trump will win 232 of those with Alaska and North Carolina, while Biden will win 235 with Arizona, leaving Georgia’s 16 as a question mark. If California were a separate country, we would still not know the result of the election, pending a Georgia recount. It does not get much closer than that.
Does that mean anything? Maybe. It means that when you would leave your newly formed Republic if California and head east, you would enter a world far different from yours. You would find your land is more similar to Canada than to the USA-1.
Am I suggesting that fact should reduce the amount of power wielded by California? God, no. Not at all. I would give it far more. The Golden State is underrepresented in our national government. I am suggesting that our government has to be aware that the non-California portion of the country has a very different mind-set, and can’t be force-fed California’s politics or, to cite a movie title, “there will be blood.”
I don’t buy this premise. California looms large because of its large population, but the margin for Biden was larger in Massachusetts, Vermont, Hawaii, and DC, and there was an even larger margin for Trump in Oklahoma, North Dakota, Wyoming, West Virginia. Even the state averages disguise the true polarization, which is a stunning and historic split between urban and rural voters which holds true in every state in the nation. I live in a blue state but that’s the 10,000 foot perspective–at the local level it’s mostly either deep red or deep blue.
At this point, with the levels of unreasonableness that have been reached there being blood might not be the worst thing. Let the absolute fucking morons on all sides go at it for a while then once the smoke clears let the sane, responsible adults clean up the ones left standing and then get back to running things. Metaphorically of course.
An alternate reality is an alternate reality.
And just as relevant.