I highly doubt the left will do anything uncivil. How can they win back the country? Is it too late?

  • Jeena@piefed.jeena.net
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    16 days ago

    Democracy is just the tyranny of the majority.

    I think that most of the Americans want this, even if people on the outside do not understand. So in that sense they are right now winning back their country, as confusing as it might sound.

    • Deadlytosty@feddit.nl
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      16 days ago

      Normally in Democracy the majority or popular vote wins, however due to the electoral college America has, it doesnt necessarily mean the majority voted for the winner. This was the case for Bush, and some other moments in the past.

        • Dasus@lemmy.world
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          16 days ago

          How in the fuck.

          Like what drives a majority of Americans to vote for a demented toddler. It’s insane.

          As a kid I always wondered how on Earth did Hitler ever make anyone follow himself, how did those people not realise. Turns out a majority of people are just fucking morons.

          • yeahiknow3@lemmings.world
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            16 days ago

            For all practical purposes, about 30% of people are unfeeling morons - basically psychopaths. That’s the number that consistently opposes abortion, for instance. Add to that all the dumbasses who don’t know any better (the undecideds on any extremely obvious moral issue), et voila. That’s how you get slavery, nationalism, genocide, theocracy, you name it.

            Unless people are willing to screen for psychopathy and remove it from the gene pool, the human species will keep fucking around until it finds out. Might be nuclear apocalypse or environmental collapse, but at this rate it’s inevitable.

          • TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip
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            16 days ago

            The rise of the NSDAP has been studied quite a bit. Also, the psychological aspects are really interesting. Basically normal people can make all of this possible as long as the conditions are just right.

          • Coco
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            16 days ago

            There are many leftists and minorities that have “voted strategically” time and time and time again only for things to get worse and worse.

            This kind of disenfranchisement leads to apathy and low turnout.

            We are told from a young age that our vote matters, and then when we are older we are told you can only vote for red fascist or blue fascist and many choose not to participate.

            There are more who did not vote than who voted for Trump. This is not what the majority wants, but with the system as it is, it is not possible for the majority to voice what they actually genuinely want and have a chance to get it.

            The votes do not have to be rigged at the ballot box for voting as a whole system to be rigged.

          • Wooki@lemmy.world
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            16 days ago

            Non mandatory voting wouldnt help, being that its more susceptible to eroding a merit process from campaigns of fear or otherwise.

        • s38b35M5@lemmy.world
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          16 days ago

          And I was so loving Lina Khan’s FTC, asking among other things…

          Edit: autocorrect

      • azertyfun@sh.itjust.works
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        16 days ago

        Whether it’s 48 or 52 % is an immaterial difference. Every other American who voted, voted for Trump. The rest don’t seem to care either way. He has very broad popular assent and is as popular as Harris give or take a margin of error.

        Everyone is lasered-focused on the EC because it makes all the difference for the practicalities, but if one is to make a broad judgement of whether Trump won fair and square the answer is “yeah, mostly”. Further proof is the fact that the House is probably going to be his as well.

        Americans now bear the collective responsibility for the horrors of the next 4(+?) years. Do not make the mistake of blaming the popular will of outright fascism on institutional failures, because institutions didn’t force half of Americans to vote for the fascist, again.

        • Serinus@lemmy.world
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          16 days ago

          I’ll wait 72 hours before settling with it, in case any shenanigans were involved. I expect it’s legitimate, but I want that window open if it’s needed.

      • Fosheze@lemmy.world
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        16 days ago

        Trump is winning the popular vote by a pretty decent margin. The electoral college isn’t the issue here.

        • gerbler@lemmy.world
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          16 days ago

          They haven’t finished counting that’s why. Rural areas are faster to count and skew conservative.

          A republican hasn’t won the popular vote in 20 years. Trump is projected to win but like last time he’ll lose the popular vote and win by virtue of the electoral college.

          • Fosheze@lemmy.world
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            16 days ago

            All the projections I’m seeing him show him almost certainly winning the popular vote. There’s a gap of 6 million votes and almost every state is over 90% reported in. That gap is going to likely shrink a bit, but unfortunately it almost certainly won’t be enough for him to even lose the popular vote.

            Lets face it, we’re (assuming you’re american) apparently just a country of facists. It looks like GOP is going to have majority in both houses too so here comes project 2025 I guess.

            • gerbler@lemmy.world
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              16 days ago

              Sorry bud, not a yank. You have my sympathies though.

              If it turns out that he does indeed win the popular vote then yeah I’m sorry for your loss. A nest of at least 50% fascists or fascist enablers.

              Heart aches for those that did their civic duty and yet have to suffer the repercussions :(

          • dhork@lemmy.world
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            16 days ago

            It looks like turnout is way down compared to last election. Trump is pulling about the same amount he did last time ( maybe a few million down, but there are still results to get). Harris is currently down 15M from where Biden was.

            Trump’s support is no larger than it was last time. Harris’ supporters just didn’t show up

            • superkret@feddit.org
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              16 days ago

              Harris’ supporters just didn’t show up

              Anyone who didn’t show up is not a Harris supporter.

          • Ioughttamow@fedia.io
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            16 days ago

            Wasn’t he ahead in 2016 around this time, but then once all was said and done he was a few mil behind?

      • Ð Greıt Þu̇mpkin@lemm.ee
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        16 days ago

        u̇nfoṙtcėnetlı, H ſımz t bı ƿinıŋ ð pȯpyulṙ vot æz ƿel.

        spoiler

        Unfortunately, he seems to be winning the popular vote as well.

      • DeltaTangoLima@reddrefuge.com
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        16 days ago

        I believe the states responsible for those silly outcomes have since passed laws to prevent it happening again.

        Could be wrong, but I listened to a podcast last week with an American professor who’s pretty much written the book, explaining the history of the Electoral College and how it really works. I’m sure he said those states since fixed those loopholes.

        Either way, the damage is done today. Another four years of stupidity in charge.

        • zkfcfbzr@lemmy.world
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          16 days ago

          This is not correct. The electoral college is exactly as susceptible to giving the win to the person with fewer votes as it was in 2000 and 2016. It’s also not an issue that’s due to any state in particular and is not an issue that can be solved by individual state action. The NPVIC would fix it but requires the cooperation of many states and is not in effect, and has stalled pretty hard in recent years.

              • DeltaTangoLima@reddrefuge.com
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                15 days ago

                Seriously - the whole thing is such a befuddling mess to us non-Americans.

                How exactly can one win the popular vote but not the actual election? From the outside, the reporting I’ve seen always talks about the faithless elector problem (not in those words - just in describing the problems). Is it more to do with how many votes (electors) each state gets, based on population size?

                • zkfcfbzr@lemmy.world
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                  15 days ago

                  That’s it, yes - each state gets as many electoral votes as it has congressmen, including senators. Most states award all of their electoral votes to whoever wins the state, with no proportionality to it at all - only two states (Nebraska and Maine, neither one large) do anything proportional with their votes.

                  With a system like that it’s easier to see how things can end up with the less popular candidate winning - they can, for example, sneak by with 50.1% of the vote in just enough states to win, but bomb it out with 20% of the vote in all the other states. That’s an extreme example specifically for the purpose of illustration, but less extreme versions of that are usually what happens.

                  The electoral votes also aren’t distributed entirely fairly - the number of electoral votes per person tends to be larger for less populated states. The less populated states also tend to be Republican states. So in a very real sense, each person’s vote counts for “more” in those states, and “less” in states with high populations. I don’t believe it’s really possible to fix this problem without vastly increasing the number of electoral votes, but congress currently has its size capped at 535 members for what I consider not very good reasons.

                  Yes, the whole system is trash from the ground up. But much of its structure is defined in the constitution itself, which is very difficult to change.

    • Varyk@sh.itjust.works
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      16 days ago

      No, there is a concerted effort by conservatives to use voter suppression to subvert the will of the majority in the US.

      conservatives are clawing back the country right now by hook and by crook.

      can’t go on forever, but I don’t know which is going to last longer: the country or the aging frightened conservatives willing to subvert democracy to hang on to control.

      • Seleni@lemmy.world
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        16 days ago

        Isn’t just the aging ones sadly. Lots of young people, especially young men, went for Trump. Andrew Tate has taught them well.

        • Varyk@sh.itjust.works
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          16 days ago

          progressive policies are annually more popular and conservative policies and election results like 2016 and 2024 are won mainly by the old guard funding and utilizing their careful network of voting interference and collusion.

          Andrew Tate is a vile exception amongst younger generations, not the rule.

    • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world
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      16 days ago

      I think that most of the Americans want this

      Maybe, but none of the facts directly support this.

      There have been large campaigns to disenfranchise several types of voters for decades in the country. The Electoral College was designed to be unfair to appease Slave states. Voter turnout is abysmal, only about 35% of eligible citizens vote. Out of those turnout is usually around the same percentage. The highest turnout recently was 2020 only because mail in voting was expanded so dramatically, and even then it was only 67% of registered voters, so it was still only 67% of that original 37% of eligible voters. So with the highest recent turnout, we’re looking at about 25% of eligible citizens actually voting.

      • Max@lemmy.world
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        16 days ago

        I believe that the 67% number for the 2020 election is of eligible voters and not registered voters. While turnout is low, it’s not 25% low.

        • Billiam@lemmy.world
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          16 days ago

          It was ~67% of eligible voters that were registered to vote. Over 94% of registered voters actually voted.

    • illi@lemm.ee
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      16 days ago

      Democracy really is the worst form of government, just not as bad as all the others…

      Unfortunately in such polarized times like now, even though majority wants this, the ammount of people for which this is unacceptable is only slightly less than “the majority”. And besides, I believe a big part of “the majority” is just gullible enough to be persuaded they want this while it actually goes against their interests

        • Hugin@lemmy.world
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          16 days ago

          It’s a famous quote. The contradiction is intentional. It means democracy has a lot of problems and often looks terrible. However when you step back and consider the alternatives they are worse.

        • illi@lemm.ee
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          16 days ago

          Take it up with Winston Churchil - I was just paraphrasing his quote.

          The point is democracy is terrible, but we don’t have anything better.