The true Democrat vote

Not true at all. Not in the slightest. And I am saying this because I did not vote for Trump in 2016. I voted for Darrel Castle of the Constitution Party. Most of my friends and family were/are Trump supporters. When I told them why I didn't like Trump they all started on and on about how Trump is an outsider and all the great things he was going to do.

Yes it was a vote against Hillary but they were truly committed to Trump. Back in 2016 before the election Trump said that he could shoot someone on 5th avenue and wouldn't lose a single voter. After what I saw in Trump supporters I believed him. My wife and I used to call those Trump supporters "Trumperoids".

I voted for Trump this time because the Constitution Party candidate didn't impress me and neither did the Libertarian. So I held my nose and voted for Trump. Because as bad as Trump is he is a gazillion times better than Biden or any other Democrat. I reject Socialism and, therefore, I reject the Democrat Party.

Oh, so you didn't know how the Electoral College worked in 2016. I assume you've wised up sense then?

Yes, I'm sure Trump Supporters believe they're truly committed to supporting him. I just don't believe it. They go to his rallies but are they actually listening to what he says or are they only hearing what they want to hear? After all, he "tells it like it is"

So, you still haven't learned how the Electoral College works. It is near impossible for a third party candidate to win mostly thanks to a combination of things, but the final nail in the coffin is the winner take option in most states.

Democrats chose to reject Socialism when they nominated Joe Biden for President during the primary. I would say more than half of the Democrat primary candidates were openly for Socialism. Democrats chose the most moderate of the two. While true, the Democrats do support social systems but not all social systems are evil. Social Security comes to mind. Social media has been quite a useful tool to conservatives in recent years, or people pretending to be conservatives. The fact of the matter is, Republicans have turned into the opposition party. This is why they were unable to follow through with repeal and replace of the ACA when they first got in office. They had no intention of replacing it. In short, they lied to the people who voted for them thinking they would offer a better option.

Which your boy Trump is all for social health care. Or so he continues to claim. So, either he's taking people who need cheap healthcare as suckers or maybe he really is the Great Capitalist you probably think he is. But frankly, I prefer capitalists that have a successful business and Trump is only successful in one regard. There is only one thing he can make money off of. His family name.

Those who opted for the private account when they retired they got 3 to 4 times the amount that SS pays out. It is not that social programs are evil (although some are, like welfare) it is that they are extremely costly and extremely inefficient. That is because the government has no incentive to provide the best coverage at the lowest cost. They won't go out of business if they didn't offer the best deal. Sometimes when a social program is created it comes with a law that prohibits the private sector from offering the same service.

And when Democrats are in control worse things happen. Like how Obama cut charitable contribution deductions. He cut the incentive to donate to charitable organizations because Obama is a Communist. Communist do not believe in charity. They think the government is the only organization that can be charitable. The major flaw in that argument is charity comes from voluntarily giving to specifically help a person or persons. The government steals by force to give. That is NOT charity, it is theft. But that is the Marxist mentality that has permeated our society. Far too many people think they have a right to take everything from rich people. They ironically call it a "fair share" without any respect to how fair it is or even what fairness means and implying that we must by force share what we work for.

Both parties are the opposition party and that is just a fact. They both play the game of if you don't vote for our guy you will be stuck with their guy. And the candidates they produce are getting worse and worse. Hillary and Trump were the two worst candidates from either party. Biden is senile, corrupt and never has had a firm grip on reality, yet that was the guy your party chose to represent them.

One of the things that scared the crap out of me when Trump first ran is his support of single payer government run healthcare. Fortunately his handlers seem to have talked him out of it. He still leans that way.

Socialized healthcare is eugenics. It will cost way more and cover way less. It will give the government the ability to assign value to life based on what they feel is good for society. And if you think I am out there Biden has already asked Zeke Emanuel to be on this staff. Emanuel wrote a book called the Complete Lives System in which he assigns value to life based on age. So you tell me. Am I out there or is Biden out there?

I know exactly how the electoral college works. I am fully aware that my candidate was not going even make a blip on the radar of the election. The point of voting is to vote your conscience. You vote for the person who best represents what you believe in.

I lost faith with the Republican Party years ago because they moved way too far to the left. I didn't leave them, they left me. Both Republicans and Democrats are on the same totalitarian government path, just the Republicans are about 10 years behind the Democrats.

You asked if Trump supporters listened to what Trump said. First off I don't think either party really listens to what their candidates are saying and politicians are fully aware of that. Both parties vote for their party and transfer all of their beliefs to their candidate even if their candidate has never even talked about that belief. The voters look at their candidate and see what they want to see and not who they really are.

I think there was a lot of that with Trump voters in 2016 but with Trump there was a little more. Trump spoke like a normal person and not like a politician. His supporters ate that up. They loved it. Much the same way that Obama occasionally stepped out of the role of a politician and spoke plainly to his base. However, Obama had been in political office long enough to pick up the lingo and he mostly spoke like a politician. But those times he did not the Democrats just fell more deeply in love with him.

Republicans just absolutely love that Trump beats the crap out of the media because the media has been beating the crap out of conservatives for decades. And not just the news media but the entertainment media.

Social Security is a Ponzi scheme. It was created when the average life expectancy was in the 40's. It was created specifically has a cash cow from with both parties pulled money from with impunity. Then life expectancy begin to increase along with baby boomers outnumbering the current work force. That and the fact that neither party can keep their hands out of the money that is collected has finally made SS insolvent. It pays out far more than it collects. It is going to collapse under its own weight eventually and both parties are responsible.

Ron Paul when he was a Representative some how got it worked out so that people who lived in his district where given an option of continuing paying into SS or pay into a private retirement account.

True, we should be able to vote for the candidate that we want but that isn't how the Electoral College works. There are many who would argue that it is working as designed to eliminate the votes who do not understand our government or it's system. They would have it eliminate votes from people who are too idealistic or support radical populist beliefs. Those populist beliefs are already creeping into the both the Republican and Democrat parties. So far, the Democrats have held to their principles and arguably are more conservative than Republicans are who are flocking to the hypocritical stances of Trump and his ilk.

I feel very much the same way about the Republican party as you do, that it left me rather than I left it. Locally they've proven to be promising, at least in my state, but there are some Trump Supporters, young politicians, that echo our current President's irrational trends and tweets. It is my hope that rational minds prevail and in my thoughts, they have with Trump losing the popular vote again and this time the electoral college.

Trump spoke like a person who felt wronged, and I'm sure in a way both him and supporters felt that wrong. And it may have even been very similar. A financial burden laid at both the rich and the middle class alike was the Healthcare penalty. I would argue that Trump felt it harder, tho'. As it is likely he owed millions, while the average American probably owed hundreds to the penalty or to the ACA. Beyond that, it never was much for completing full sentences, let alone a complete thought. He was a catchphrase machine. Either making them himself or acting as some sort of muse for the baser instincts of his lowest supporters. Dragging out these dregs of thought that only continue to divide and conquer our great nation as if it were his personal play pen. The truth is, he did this for why any politician goes into politics. To make money. And I don't hold that against him. I hold it against him that he didn't work to earn that money. That he squabbled his time behind that desk and let lesser men (maybe not lesser than him) run this country. And when they screwed up or if they dared contradict him, they were fired.

I disagree with some of your assessment of Social Security that it was meant to be paid into but never actually utilized to it's full capacity. I do agree that both parties pulled money from it with impunity. But that is as far as I'm willing to agree with you on that.

The electoral college was added to the Constitution to ensure states with higher populations did not invalidate the states with smaller populations.

If the Dems got their way and eliminated it, then New York City and Los Angeles would determine who is president and everyone else in the country would have no voice. There would be no reason for anyone on those states to even vote for president.

I can prove your claim wrong that only New York City and Los Angeles, or at least their states, would determine who is president wrong with history. A caveat that you claim to respect.

In 2004, George W. Bush won the popular vote without California or New York.

In 1998, George H. W. Bush won the popular vote with California, but without New York.

In 1976, Jimmy Carter won the popular vote with New York, but without California.

In 1968, Richard Nixon won the popular vote with California, but again without New York.

In 1960, John F. Kennedy, much like Carter, won the popular vote with New York, but without California.

In 1948, Harry S. Truman, much like Nixon and Bush Sr., won the popular vote with California, but without New York.

In 1916, Woodrow Wilson also won the popular vote with California but not New York.

I believe I've made my point.

Furthermore, if we allowed the individual vote to count, it would hardly matter how New York City or Los Angeles counted. So long as the individual votes outnumber what ever their individual majorities are from that city, those cities would not be beholden to the rest of the country's decisions.

You are going back in time. I am talking about right now and perhaps as far back as 15 years or so. If you abolished the electoral college today all of the big Democrat controlled cities would determine the election. All it would take is enough Democrats votes that LA and NYC could produce. It doesn't have to be LA and NYC. It could be Chicago, Atlanta, Houston, Portland, Seattle and however other major cities that today typically vote Democrat and can equal the number of votes that LA and NYC (the two largest cities) could give.

George W Bush did not win the popular vote in New York or California in 2004 or 2000.

In George HW Bush's time there were still a view "Blue Dog Democrats". Those were the Kennedy Democrats. They were conservatives who were members of the Democrat party.

Blue Dogs helped give Reagan his landslides in both election. Blue Dogs do not exist any more. Some say they still exist because Trump got a lot of Democrat votes this election. I don't think you could call them Blue Dogs. I think who they were were Democrats who actually paid attention to Biden's incompetence.

"All I was saying that IF the Democrats got their way and dumped the electoral college from the Constitution then NYC and LA (and I was talking about these cities alone and not the states where they are located) would decide who our president would be."

I explained to you that I went by the states as I don't have the individual data of how those cities voted.

It is still irrelevant to an individual system of voting as it's not reliant on regional voting at all.

If it is a constitutional institution, don't you think it should hold up for more than fifteen years, let alone four Presidential terms? My point was that it is not anymore crucial to hold California or New York, than it is to not lose both of them. You might even think coastal cities shouldn't have much sway over our elections, which is the typical argument I hear, but they matter too. Their voices occasionally do need to be heard.

And I do hope Democrats and Republicans are doing more than watching those counties that are under a hundred thousand closely, particularly the farmers as they will also be crucial in the next one-hundred years of our country.

So, let's talk about these so-called Democrat controlled cities. Given time, if things do not improve under one governor, or mayor; people tend to do something very extraordinary. They vote oppositionally. (Much like what happened to Trump and Bush Sr; tho' I'd argue the latter did not deserve his ousting as much as the former.)

As you so keenly observed, overtime, even the politics of one's party can change in just a few short decades. I'm not even arguing against the Electoral College, tho' I do have some issues with how it completely undermines our multiparty system in favor of a two-party system; which I'm sure you agree, the Founding Fathers never intended us to be a two-party system.

But back to my point of individual voting. In the popular vote, it doesn't matter how one state, or one city, votes. Or how many major cities support one party or the other. Individually, each vote counts equally. And while you may disagree that equality doesn't equal freedom, in this case it does. Maybe not freedom from the majority, but the political majority changes every year.

With stagnation, or worse a decline, people will shift their political views. Again, just look at any Republican who has ever won the popular vote in 50 years. Just because two Republican Presidents lost the popular vote, and still won, is not a good reason to keep the Electoral College. Nor is it a good reason to keep the Electoral College just because Democrats appeal to major cities, but not to rural eras. They should both be trying to appeal to both areas.

While no small feat, it isn't impossible.

I'm not sure what you are getting at by the 15 year thing. When I said 15 years I was talking about how the cities have changed politically in those years. Your comment sounded like you thought I was saying that the electoral college should go away in 15 years or something along those lines.

All I was saying that IF the Democrats got their way and dumped the electoral college from the Constitution then NYC and LA (and I was talking about these cities alone and not the states where they are located) would decide who our president would be.

The states DO get their voice heard because California and New York (state) have more electors than any other state. Those two states have such a commanding voice that they almost already do decide who our next president will be.

It wasn't always this way. My comment about the last 15 years was made about how in the last 15 years the Democrat party has locked down the vote from LA and NYC.

I DO NOT want to get rid of the electoral college.

There are Democrat controlled cities that have been controlled by the Democrats for around 60 years with no signs of letting up. They are also craphole cities like Detroit and Chicago. NYC was a craphole in the 70's after years of Democrat control and it is returning to that after Mayors Bloomberg and DeBlasio. LA and San Francisco are falling apart.

The only changes that you are talking about happen at the federal level.

You and I are in agreement on the system favoring the two party system but that is not the electoral college. It is the fact that voters stopped voting their conscience before you and I were born. All we do is vote for candidate X to stop from getting candidate Y. It is a game played and counted on by the Republicans and Democrats. Watching the Democrats leading the way and the Republicans following them it has become apparent that they are essentially just the same party and they are playing us. They have so divided the nation now that both side believe if the other wins then that will be the end of the Republic. And pretty much they are right, because both parties are heading towards destruction.

The electoral college just reflects the votes of the people. If people were spread out over all of the different parties then the electoral college would reflect that. Unfortunately because most of America is stuck playing the game very few people vote 3rd party. I would have voted 3rd party this year but I didn't like any of the 3rd party candidates.

"You and I are in agreement on the system favoring the two party system but that is not the electoral college. It is the fact that voters stopped voting their conscience before you and I were born. "

I disagree. I'm sure we were both alive in 1968. In fact, I was voting. You may have been in diapers. But I suppose I could be wrong about your age by only a decade or so.

Though I would hardly categorize George Wallace a vote of conscience, he was the last third party candidate to make a dent in the Electoral College. His follow ups such as Ross Perot and Ralph Nader, who took a fair amount of popular votes but no electoral votes.

It seems to me, around that time the restrictions that solidified us as a two-party were later put in place. Though it could've been later, and slower. And I believe they at least indirectly changed how the Electoral College worked but I'll have to brush up on my reading on that.

I think the winner-take-all option was ramped up in that time, basically making it impossible for third parties outside of the two popular parties to win.

I was 10 in 1968.

I think we are actually agreeing more than you think on the electoral college. Wallace was probably the last to make a dent but if we can pull enough people out of the voting trap set by the two parties then there would be a more votes for third parties.

I don't see that ever happening. Not with both parties convincing their constitutes that the other party will destroy America.

Your old, lady

That's interesting because there was this whole thing in the primary and the pair of old shoes didn't get any votes at all.

Thank you Captain Obvious.