eyyyyyyy do you like power, join Team Blue (check your white supremacy at the door tho)

I think there are 13 million more registered Democrats than Republicans in the U.S. Republicans couldn't win another election without the Electoral College.

Given the relationship between urban and rural that makes sense.

Personally I don't want a handful of counties controlling the vote, so I'll stick with the EC. Thank you.

In a democracy, the overall popular vote SHOULD be used to determine the elected leader.

Every individual state in the United States of America (hint in the name) is a pure democracy that uses a popular vote to determine its makeup.

Each individual state is then weighed on a scale that balances its worth purely by population and its worth as a state, assigning then a 'value' to that state that shows how heavily it can contribute to the republic as a whole. This is why we have two legislative houses (one that represents all states equally and one that assigns power to each state relative to the size of its population).

The EC is comprised of electors equal in number to each state's combined Senators and Representatives. Therefore the relative power of each state in the EC is just about equal to that of the House of Representatives (Where states with more population have more voting power), diluted by whatever percentage the Senators bring to the table.

Essentially what this means is the relative power gap between small states and larger states is lessened, but it is never actually closed. California will always have more power than my own state of Montana when it comes to electing the President because it has more people. All the EC does is ensure that we still pay mind to the original intentions of the Founders, because this country could never have been formed if pure population controlled the Executive Branch.

The EC was the result of a compromise, where many of the founding fathers wanted a full popular vote for president. They knew it wasn't perfect and, at the time that they drew it up, there were no political parties. They didn't know how well it would work in practice. I would call myself an Electoral College abolitionist, even if past popular votes had favored candidates that I didn't prefer. Here's a couple of good history articles:

https://www.history.com/news/electoral-college-founding-fathers-constitutional-convention

It mentions the “three-fifths compromise" also.

https://www.history.com/news/the-history-of-the-electoral-college-debate

Hey Democrats!!! Not all Republicans are racist or whatever '-ist/-obe' you want to call them!

Food for thought...

#NotAllRepublicans

I know you're smart enough to realize that the actions of a few hundred far-right anarchists are in no way indicative of the general views or morals of a party encompassing millions upon millions of Americans, so I'll assume this was a crude attempt at humor.

#NotAllRepublicans were literally there rioting in the Rotunda, but the support for these riotous actions among the Republican public at large was disturbingly broad at about 45% according to snap polls.

Even more recently, we saw today that a mere 10 House Republicans dared to cross the aisle to vote to impeach President Traitor for having directly incited this hamfisted rebellion.

There was much hemming and hawing about due process and unity and timing and deflections to BLM and ANTIFA, all intended to distract from the essential point that if a President sending armed thugs in the general direction of Congress with instructions to “fight like hell” and help give Mike Pence and other lawmakers the “courage they lack” to overturn a “rigged election” on the date Congress was due to certify election results is not impeachable conduct, then nothing is.

95+% of nationally elected Republicans would not even cross the aisle to condemn a traitor with a vote that is at this late point in his Presidency mostly symbolic and an ultimate punishment for President Traitor that will amount to little more than public embarrassment and a slap on the wrist, since he will serve out his whole term and not be removed even a week early for having effectively sent his own mob storming through the Capitol, many of whom came armed with paramilitary gear and with a plan, others of whom planted pipe bombs at RNC and DNC headquarters in an apparent effort to divert law enforcement resources from the scene.

Emerging evidence is suggesting that certain House Republicans may have even aided and abetted this activity by giving tours through the Capitol building itself to suspicious groups on Jan. 5, the day prior, which would help explain why many of the rioters seemed to know the labyrinthine layout of the Capitol so well and were rapidly able to reach key checkpoints including Nancy Pelosi’s office.

All of which is to say: The “general views or morals” of the Republican Party are profoundly twisted and in shambles.

Vaguely gesticulating to the benign views of a silent majority of Republicans (according to polls, a bare 55% majority) is not going to cut it anymore.

Snap polls are about as accurate as a burned out AK-47.

Yes, because many Republicans presumably either agreed with him (the more radical amongst them) or viewed it as tantamount to kicking an opponent when he is down.

Notice I've not once said this impeachment wasn't deserved. No need to preach to the choir.

Like I said, views vary. You and I agree that he earned impeachment with this particular stunt, but many view it as unnecessary because he will already be leaving office in disgrace. Again, you do not kick a downed opponent. They either believe that OR they're being kept in line by diehard party whips.

'certain House Republicans' implies a few, and in the House a few is not a majority, or even a solid minority.

No it does not say that...thus far you've used snap polls, your own distilled assessment of reasons to support or oppose impeachment, and the actions of a handful amongst bushels (figurative bushels, mind you;) to unilaterally conclude that the views of the majority of Republicans are traitoristic and condemnable. Unless you cite better sources like PewResearchCenter then I'm forced to conclude that you are utilizing targeted and questionable sources and practices to feed confirmation bias.

If you don't like the snap poll, then just focus on the impeachment vote which is an indisputable matter of historical record.

If the views of House Republicans on the Capitol Hill riots were in line with those of average Republicans in the snap polls, then we should have seen roughly 55% of House Republicans vote for the impeachment resolution. Instead, 95%+ voted against.

I'll even concede to you that House Republicans know their constituencies better than pollsters. And if that's the case, then the "errors" in the snap polling, whatever they were, were not errors that redound to the benefit of exonerating Republicans.

In their speeches opposing impeachment, GOP congresspeople opposing impeachment cited (with varying degrees of hypocrisy, given that so many of them *also* baselessly voted not to certify Biden's election): process, precedent, and unity. They also deflected to BLM, ANTIFA, etc etc. Each of these offers a way of weaseling out of holding a Republican president accountable. And if there is always a way to weasel out of accountability (and there is), then there is no accountability.

I repeat, the Republican Party is profoundly broken.

And they have also torn the constitutional safeguard of impeachment down with them.

Specifically: If Republicans think they'll ever again get any bipartisan support for impeaching a Democratic president for virtually anything after these last 4 years (certainly not for lying about a BJ), then they're delusional.

Unfortunately, Trump's deranged presidency and its partisan brokenness seem destined to become the new normal and the new "precedent."

No, we'd have not seen 55% of Republicans vote for impeachment. Like I said, you discount the fact that views on whether impeachment is necessary to terminate one week of a Presidency are absolutely a factor in play and highly important. For whatever reason (personal morals, fears of losing their voters, etc) most of them decided it was not.

Yeah, politicians are hypocrites. The sun is also orange, and rain comes from clouds. I mean not to insult, but more offer a jaded agreement that politics and integrity rarely demand the same course of action.

It's not broken, but the rift within it has certainly widened by a lot. There are the moderates (Cheney) and the diehards (Hawley, Cruz). The moderates will generally break towards party lines in the future, but will act independently to get results. The diehards will always break towards the views of party whips and kingmakers. For the next few days Trump will occupy that position (I postulate he'll flee the country on the 20th, but we'll see what happens...bit of a digression there).

If I could hazard a guess, and ironically enough this does somewhat line up with your snap poll, I'd say just over half of Republicans will fall into the moderate camp. Nuances that affected the impeachment vote aside, I'd bet you $5 that we see this camp generally prioritize bipartisan solutions rather than party line politics.

That leaves what I'll estimate to be about 35% of Republicans in the Trump camp. They may not all support the attack (this grouping encompasses a few million people at least, and even a tiny radical percentage of million is more than the hundreds we saw last week), and I would bet another $5 that within a year most of these people will abandon the man and try to return to the moderate center.

The GOP is currently evaluating its situation. Trump dealt them a potentially fatal blow, losing them both Houses and the Oval Office for the first time in decades IIRC. The vocal minority will try to posture and preen for as long as it can, but they will never represent a majority view within the party when it comes to supporting a single man over the rule of law in this country.

(This is somewhat of a rambling diatribe...I pulled a very long day at the firm and need to go to bed. lol)

You're right. But I would suspect someone waving a Confederate battle flag isn't on the left.

Correct, but that's not grounds to denounce all right wing people either.