Every square yard counts! Every square yard counts!
When it suits them. That is basically how it does work, to their benefit. If it benefitted Democrats, well then... "that's entirely different, see?", they'd be screaming to high heaven at the "unfair librul conspiracy to take over the government!"
The second map highlights how much more democratic the us is than republican and that is it obviously a broken system that republican's have a chance of winning
I doubt anyone will disagree with me but "look at how red this map is" is the stupidest arguement.
Last year after ana election my dad reposted a map on Facebook like this but for the single issue on our states ballot. The comment from the original poster was something like liberal cities decided this all counties need representation. Of course the counties that weren't blue were mostly populated by cows.
But like seriously this was a direct popular vote on a single issue you can't get a more representative election than that one.
My favorite thing to do with these people is to ask them "okay, would it be alright if these issues were decided on a per-county basis then?", if they say no they've outed themselves as just wanting to hold as much control over others as possible from a minority position, if they say yes ask again but with individual towns, if they say yes to that, then you narrow it down to individual people, then they tend to get mad when they realize what you've done
Yep. There are currently three heavy biases favoring the rural population.
-senate (by design)
-the house --not by design, but because the representation was capped at 435. It hasn't grown with population and thus a citizen in Wyoming gets more representation than a citizen in California (or Texas for that matter)
-the presidency by virtue of the above two being biased.
Fix house apportionment, let the Senate be the safeguard, and the presidency will have a very slight protection by nature of the electors via what matches the Senate.
This is all in line with the framing of the Constitution, but it gives up power to "the bad guys" (aka the actual majority)
Why don't the Blue states just enact social democratic policies and let the Red ones rot in their ancap dystopias?
Americans seem to have forgotten about federalism. You don't need the same laws governing all 340 million of you.
The EU is a patchwork of rights for example. Poland doesn't have marriage equality and only permits abortions in case of rape, incest, or danger to the mother. The Netherlands has marriage equality and abortions on demand up to 24 weeks. The union is not endangered by this.
Hell, Canada does federalism better than you, with a relatively weak federal government that needs to be always consulting with the provinces. Provinces retain much of the income-tax revenue and get to experiment much more meaningfully with different policy mixes, under a multi-party system.
Because there will be a lot of people in those areas who are not happy living under an ancap dystopia. Those states may even try to trap them there like Texas wants to do.
Imagine a couple moved to one of these ancap dystopias and have a kid. That kid turns out to be a big leftist and they hate not having rights.
We can't just forget about the other states and only care about some. At that point, you can consider the United States to have fallen.
That also supposes that everyone can afford to move to somewhere they would like to be. There's a reason the right wants people to stay where they are regardless of political affiliation. Those states tend to be full of poor folks living where they can afford to live. Not everyone has the privilege of living in a place that treats them they way they'd like to be treated.
No, I said freedom of movement AND basic democracy. It assumes that people have enough democratic rights that they can organize to change the laws in their own community.
It is a truism that oppression exists and that it affects exactly the people who can't escape it. There are no shortcuts to freedom unfortunately. The American solution has been that some external authority, the federal government comes and resolves this. For the big things, slavery, apartheid, I get it. But for things below the threshold of crimes against humanity, it becomes trickier because then control of the Big Saviour starts being a critical battleground, it can turn into the Big Oppressor, and basically you might end up with the unworkable federalism you currently have.
Why don’t the Blue states just enact social democratic policies and let the Red ones rot in their ancap dystopias?
If we assume that the Democratic Party actually wants to do good and not just what their donors want. They still have to contend with a Senate that's is biased towards the empty states, and even the House of Representatives is somewhat biased but not as bad.
Now if the Blue States (or even Counties) form some kind of union to transcend the USA, things might begin to happen.
The EU is a patchwork of rights for example
The EU is a confederacy. It has a much weaker central government and much stronger states. The US could go back to a confederacy model.
Nothing other than cost and logistics. Massachusetts had "RomneyCare" before ObamaCare existed for the country as a whole.
The fact that now state-level reforms and policies aren't pursued is partially a symptom of the American people become national-authority simps.
And it's partially because Democrats and Republicans seem determined to make everyone follow their interpretation of the rules. Most of American politics at this point seems to be about "hurting the right people."
Lastly, most key wedge issues in the United States are often fundamentally moral questions that relate to constitutionality, making it impossible to allow some states to, for instance, hold slaves, allow child labor, allow abortion, allow religious fascism in public schools, allow racial discrimination, etc., without other states prevailing on the bedrock morality of the constitution.
I.e., the United States does not, as a singular country, remotely agree on fundamental ethics that can form a foundation for a coherent nation that would then allow for more state-level experimentation. The are certainly "different" states though. Look at Vermont vs. New Hampshire for instance. They're quite different despite being bordering states.
Yes, I agree. That's why I wrote that Americans have forgotten how to do federalism. Like, I get that states rights used to mean fucking slavery and you needed a strong central government to keep the southern racists from lynching people, but how else are you going to manage such a vast space and remain a democracy in the 21st century?
The moral issues you guys are culture warring over are nowhere near as grave as slavery or segregation now.
Not only that, but you have also concentrated the arbitration of these cosmic moral wedge issues on like what 10 people? President, SCOTUS, and whatever Manchin figure is the Senate kingmaker of the year. No wonder it's breaking at the seams.
Yeah, that's why I mentioned that the United States has basically become national authority simps. "Voting" these days for most people is synonymous with presidential elections.
That being said, for many people, issues like abortion, trans and gay segregation/discrimination, legal slavery of prisoners, mass and school shootings, and the rates of violence and murder against: Indigenous, black, etc men and women are fairly serious and important issues that are, if not equal, relatively close in terms of moral outrage to lynching and slavery. I can understand that you don't see it that way though.
Don't get me wrong, I am passionate about civil and economic rights in Quebec. But I accept that certain rules change at the Vermont border. The question even the most ardent internationalist must ask is at what threshold do things in another jurisdiction become so intolerable that they would need to get personally involved and intervene in another People's business. In international law, which we can take as the base rate, that threshold is pretty high, at crimes against humanity-ish. From there it goes down. How far down? Depends on the balance different communities are willing to strike. Inter-community intervention also has its own catastrophic consequences. There is no right answer of course but I strongly suspect the contemporary American one is not it.
You must also recognize you’re not getting an unbiased source here online. What are the true differences? I suspect us Americans are more likely than most to complain about politics, to “air our dirty laundry”. I’m not really disagreeing with your points but the differences in real life might be smaller than you’d think from some of these discussions
Massachusetts has that, or as far as we can. You’ll find a range of policies with each state being different but “blue” states leaning in one direction and “red” states leaning in another. There are several states with variations in at least some free college, and some states with much better health insurance coverage
We have “universal” coverage, building on Romneycare, but are still subject to the same framework as everyone else. We still need to honor everyone else’s insurance providers, the whole patchwork of profit takers and inefficiencies. By ourselves we can only do the same thing better, but we can’t change the paradigm
It’s been a long time coming but tuition is finally free at state universities and colleges. It was even retroactive for the school year: in April 29, I got a refund of all the tuition i had paid for my kid for last school year
The Commerce Clause is one often cited by conservatives. I am not a lawyer but if they can abuse it you bet they will even if that's not what it was meant for.
Honestly, I think shifting the fed to a more Confederate model would be a good idea. A large number of problems we're running into is the attempt to control the whole nation over local interests. It might be possible to diffuse a large number of contentious points just on that alone.
That was the ideal, but every ounce of freedom given to the south has been used to torment the vulnerable, so they kept losing supreme court cases and having amendments added to the constition that give the federal govt. more power because its needed their state governments from being evil.
See slavery, the black codes, jim crow laws, womens rights, religious freedom, environmental protectionism, coal mining in appalaicha, etc.
You still cant hold office in 7 states in the south if youre an athiest btw.
The traditional map is more reflective of electoral power. This one is by population which would be critical in a republic, but traditional map where each count is colored by their majority shows how being the majority in lightly populated areas gives outsized power.
Cities tend to be Blue, but cities don’t get a unified vote, plus are subject to state laws. Look at Houston: they don’t have a chance
But yes, we do federalism. Speaking for Massachusetts:
as close to universal healthcare as you can get in the us
healthcare “sanctuary” state
consistently the best or near the best education system
free tuition at state universities
minimum wage over $15, among the highest
strong emphasis on transit, walkable cities
strong anti pollution and anti climate change laws
strong wetlands and coastal protection
among the first states to be entirely rid of coal
immigrant protections
first state to legalize gay marriage
among the first to legalize marijuana
by some reviews, highest quality of life in the US
But we’re affected by everyone else:
not allowed to make air pollution rules. All we can say is we agree with California
we had forced EPA to regulate Midwest polluters where downwind pollution affected us. Worked for a few decades but recent Supreme Court ruling says EPA can’t regulate interstate pollution, wtf
strong gun control laws, partly invalidated by recent Supreme Court. I know I’m not surrounded by “good guys” with concealed weapons ready to blast away when they get uncomfortable
When I read about some places attempts to prevent voting, I am so happy none of it is relevant. My state has good outreach to make it easy to register, easy to vote in whatever manner you choose, and has sufficiently funded voting center ps that everyone has a convenient one with little to no waiting. I can walk to mine. When there’s been a line, it’s short and in air conditioning. There’s always a school fundraiser bake sale if I want a treat
So yes, believe me, we look down on all those dystopias between free cities as we fly over. They may have been misled and manipulated but they chose their poison
Good luck trying to get an American conservative to understand what the second map represents. I means shit, they refuse to grasp the concept of "per capita" because they know it makes them look bad.
Normally, in a democracy, you have two chambers for the legislature so that one of them is filled by popular vote from all over the country and the other by representatives allocated for administrative divisions.
In the US both chambers are allocated for predefined divisions, just on different scales (state vs slice of population), so the principle of the popular vote is not represented.
It does serve (in theory) to make up for a state that had lower population, but since the slices are subject to manipulation it's debatable.
never considered online service maps much as political maps, but of course they are. What gets mapped as POI tells people what they are to find interesting and what not vice versa.
And if you want to see the actual tweet in question but twitter (I refuse to call it "X") is a huge asshole about it, here's a link to the tweet Trump retweeted on Archive.org:
As others have said, yes it is. Unfortunately it's also a strong representation of how the voting process operates in the US. At the local level (towns and cities), individual votes matter. However, for something like the presidential election (for example), then the votes are averaged by county and state.
So what happens is everyone from a county votes, and if that county is more of one side than the other, that entire county is "voting x/y". Then the counties across the state are compared, and that state is declared as "voting" for either side. Then nationally, each state is counted as either/or, so even if the more populated cities vote one way, if enough of the rural population votes the other way, the rural side wins, and the urban side loses.
It's almost as if the system urgently needs reform. Too bad the powers in charge of that were elected specifically because of it.
What's your point, though? I'm not sure if you're pointing out that this is basically a population density map in order to argue something in particular? Because it seems like OP's entire point was that while the majority of Americans are not conservative, people disguise this fact by NOT using population density maps to demonstrate political spreads.
So, yeah, people live in cities. And most Americans swing left. Glad we can both read the map and agree on its message 👍
Probably why when the slaver’s college was being debated the “let’s not concentrate political power in a few northeastern cities” argument held more sway.
I mean if by very recent you mean around the 60’s sure. But that’s still for like 20% of this country’s existence. Early in the country’s history New York/Boston/Philadelphia also had a lot of power in deciding who became president.
I'm ancient times, people outside city walls weren't even allowed to vote. Add in the fact that humanity is tribal in nature, and your statement holds even less true.
You think the peasants outside city walls were even allowed to vote on anything? They were literally outsiders that knew little to nothing about the inner (more populated) parts of cities.
A city's overall opinion is literally more important than rural mud slinging opinion, if for no other reason than because more people live there, and are affected by policy.
Sorry, I wasn't trying to create polemic. I'm well aware that for most of history democratic voting wasn't a thing.
Just wanted to add a bit of context, yes, by population city opinion is more important NOW, but until very recently, considering strictly population, it was not, and the current political tensions are in part caused by this change.
I wish respectful conversation, sorry if I seemed rude.
Sorry if I seemed rude. Ignoring life problems, I'm not great at talking to people or voicing my thoughts, I just get really angry over things since a car wreck a couple years ago. Like all my feelings towards anything at all have been amplified. I do genuinely hope you have a good rest of your day.
I do still feel that your statement on the matter excludes the fact that, since the dawn of history, the town/city has been infinitely more relevant to voting matters than rural could ever be. As I said, the people living outside the city walls were irrelevant to practical sociopolitical matters.
Certainly, but in the context of democracies, the rural people were made very relevant, being the majority, but now are being pushed back into being irrelevant, and are angry about it.
I too wish you a good rest of the day, and a wonderful weekend, and may you come across people that stand with you so you can feel better.
I remember a coworker from Utah once telling me that farmers are the most disadvantaged minority or something. Basically his argument was it is better that rural areas get more representation and people in the cities don't need to be represented as much. For him it was an easy argument to make since it is the status quo and serves his interests.
The people who want to change things are who need to come up with either strong arguments to win public opinion or increasingly evident win their rights by direct action. No one who benefits from the current system will give up anything.
It's a variant of state's rights. Basically up until a generation or two ago a lot more people lived in a medum-to-small town. For a lot of those people, the cities were strange places of violence and grossitude. Full of corruption, and evil.
The idea that they would also make all the laws was unthinkable. "Why - they'd let the gays marry! We know there's no such thing as gays!" and so on. (Although practically speaking - where the political rubber met the road so to speak - it was about being allowed to keep humans in concentration camps for money.)
So, back before we knew how conception worked or what an automatic rifle was or even that we were one small part of a larger group of stars called a galaxy - they developed the Electoral College to ensure that everyone had an equitable say. That, and the Senate having exactly two representatives no matter how many people lived there. From a political point of view, it was reasonable at the time.
Fast forward to 2016 and batshit insanity is literally trying to topple the government in a demented coup attempt and it starts to look less like a good idea.
The farmer argument is such BS though, believe in some past that is long past and may never have happened.
My grandparents were one of those farming families it would apply to. They had it tough, it was hard to make any money and people relied on them for food. They also were forced out of business half a century ago. Currently farmers are much more likely to be large businesses and definitely not in need of special treatment
Fear... Humans have an evolutionary and natural fear of the unknown... If you live way out in the middle of nowhere, pretty much everything outside your tiny bubble is unknown, and therefore scary. Then assholes come in and use that fear to their advantage. "Everything you're afraid of IS horrible and out to get you! Vote for me and I'll protect you"
Thank you for actually understanding what the second map says. It's shocking how many people in these comments were so easily fooled into thinking that is where the people live in the second map.
The other complication is that the second map is so potato you can't see what color the smaller dots are and I think it gives overall a bluer impression than it would at higher quality.
Keep in mind both of these maps are grossly misleading. Or at least one is being presented in a misleading way.
One is just coloring an entire county the way the majority voted. This is why those huge (land) counties are all red, because at least 1 more person in it votes for trump than Biden (presumably, I don't know what the map is actually based on but it's a safe bet). So that's why "the sand" is regularly colored red. Although saying noone lives these is misleading.
Which leads me to the second map is probably a noble effort to show some population scale, by reducing all of the counties to a circle the relative size of their population, but it's being misrepresented here as if that's where all of the people in those counties live, which is certainly false. Just look at the center of the country, it's basically a grid of small dots. Do people honestly think the population is distributed like that?
The most frustrating thing about this is everyone in this thread is complaining about how Republicans are too stupid to understand why the map is colored the way it is...while being absolutely fooled as to why the other map is the way it is.
The most frustrating thing about this is everyone in this thread is complaining about how Republicans are too stupid to understand why the map is colored the way it is...while being absolutely fooled as to why the other map is the way it is.
Fwiw I don’t think anyone’s “fooled” by the first map. Or (again, imo) that all republiQans are too stupid to understand why sand doesn’t vote.
I do think the first map is regularly used as a right-wing talking point by individuals and corporate news to “explain” how republiQans must be winning elections, and that explanation is false. Presumably many of the individuals and all corporate news organizations know that. Which is why it’s just straight-up propaganda.
My point is that the second map, at least the way it is being framed in this meme, is equally misleading.
What it is presumably showing is dot in the middle of each county (although clearly not in middle for places like the NE that are being pushed apart, but I think it's true for like kansas/nebraska) that is scaled relative to the population of that county. It's not necessarily where the people in that county live.
I get that Republicans use the former map to deceive and spread propaganda. What I'm pointing out is that is exactly what is happening with the way the second map is being framed in this meme. It's pure absurdity for people to fall hook, line, and sinker for it. . .while shitting on the intelligence of people who fell hook, line, and sinker for another map being presented in a misleading way.
It's funny because my point was based off of what you actually said, your's was just a mindless childish insult... ironically accusing me of making childish retorts.
It's funny how much you see what you hate about yourself in other people.
Invariant of the day: In any square mile of the USA, there are 25 Republican voters, the rest of them either vote Democrat or not at all.
It doesn't work of course. Suffolk County, MA (Boston) has a partial pressure of about 1kGOP/mi^2^. Nevertheless, it's closer than you might expect considering how many square miles don't even have 25 human beings.
The way they are so evenly situated, I think they are just putting a population-proportioned dot in the center of each county. In meant states, counties are pretty much equal sized squares with varying amounts of people in them.
Issue with this (because of first past the post) there are still a significant number of people voting the opposite way of who wins in their electorate, for the most part.
So the NYT wants to tell us we're not as polarized as the maps may show?
Of course they do. Both Sides, you know. Other than that, the points about colors are well taken, it's just so on-brand for NYT to have the editorial POV that everything's normal, it's fine.
All I know was the last time I was in Kansas City, MO, which was many years ago, the people I was with would yell, get back to Kansas if a car drove by with a Bush Jr. bumper sticker.
Having only ever been to Kansas City and Fulton, I couldn't say. But I did read What's the Matter With Kansas? years ago. I'm sure it hasn't substantially changed since that book came out.
What's the medium sized red dot just north of LA? I live around there and it makes sense but there's a lot of small-ish towns around here and I don't know what it represents. What population patterns do these dots represent? I'm guessing the red dot is either Visalia, Tulare County, San Joaquin Valley in general, or Fresno.
The dots are counties - the largest red one above LA is Kern county - Tulare county is the smaller red dot above it to the right
This is a clearer version of that map. The other two much smaller red dots above LA are Kings and Inyo counties - this map is based on 2016 presidential results, as Inyo went blue in 2020 (by only 14 votes though)
Yeah and that's only because they lean that way by slim majorities. There's still mid 40s percent democrat affiliation here in both counties. I'd like to see a version of this map that shows the purple continuum. That would reveal even more.
Presidential? Yea you would think. But seeing this map overlayed with districting lines would help explain how we get some of our senators representatives we have.
Districting lines have nothing to do with Senate elections - senators are whole state affairs. Districting lines only affect two things at the federal level - House elections and presidential electors in two particular states that grant one elector based on the results within each House district and two based on overall state vote.
Fair fair, I am not even a armchair expert. And yea a moment of thought about senator I ever voted for would have reminded me thay. But at least I wasn't crazy about the house.
Now, I still think any election however local, does affect stuff up the ladder.
Luckily for the red side, the system’s designed so that sand can vote
I can hear their goddamned chants...
Every square yard counts!
Every square yard counts!
When it suits them. That is basically how it does work, to their benefit. If it benefitted Democrats, well then... "that's entirely different, see?", they'd be screaming to high heaven at the "unfair librul conspiracy to take over the government!"
“Never fight uphill me boys!”
Trump comes up with the strangest lines, I swear.
Despite the constant negative press covfefe
It was a Perfect phone call
We're going to win bigly
But it was too late.
Gettysburg. Wow.
It helps people, it's unconstitutional!
Yep. Thanks slavery! A great idea that just keeps givin’
I hate that.
Wait, so the US Votes by area and not by head count?
This country was founded on the idea that land is power and land owners get to vote.
We need to change that. Peacefully first. But if that doesn't work...peaceful protesting only works for so long.
¡VIVA LA PROLETARIAT! DEATH TO THE RICH!
Relevant xkcd:
https://xkcd.com/1138/
I don't think it is relevant.
The xkcd points out distribution and population.
The second map highlights how much more democratic the us is than republican and that is it obviously a broken system that republican's have a chance of winning
agreed - love xkcd, happy to see it anytime, but it's very specifically out of context here.
Population maps are what it's about.
2nd map only shows full red or blue dots, whereas in reality each dot would be a pie-chart of red and blue.
I doubt anyone will disagree with me but "look at how red this map is" is the stupidest arguement.
Last year after ana election my dad reposted a map on Facebook like this but for the single issue on our states ballot. The comment from the original poster was something like liberal cities decided this all counties need representation. Of course the counties that weren't blue were mostly populated by cows.
But like seriously this was a direct popular vote on a single issue you can't get a more representative election than that one.
My favorite thing to do with these people is to ask them "okay, would it be alright if these issues were decided on a per-county basis then?", if they say no they've outed themselves as just wanting to hold as much control over others as possible from a minority position, if they say yes ask again but with individual towns, if they say yes to that, then you narrow it down to individual people, then they tend to get mad when they realize what you've done
That's anarchocapitalism...
Yep. There are currently three heavy biases favoring the rural population. -senate (by design) -the house --not by design, but because the representation was capped at 435. It hasn't grown with population and thus a citizen in Wyoming gets more representation than a citizen in California (or Texas for that matter) -the presidency by virtue of the above two being biased.
Fix house apportionment, let the Senate be the safeguard, and the presidency will have a very slight protection by nature of the electors via what matches the Senate.
This is all in line with the framing of the Constitution, but it gives up power to "the bad guys" (aka the actual majority)
Why don't the Blue states just enact social democratic policies and let the Red ones rot in their ancap dystopias?
Americans seem to have forgotten about federalism. You don't need the same laws governing all 340 million of you.
The EU is a patchwork of rights for example. Poland doesn't have marriage equality and only permits abortions in case of rape, incest, or danger to the mother. The Netherlands has marriage equality and abortions on demand up to 24 weeks. The union is not endangered by this.
Hell, Canada does federalism better than you, with a relatively weak federal government that needs to be always consulting with the provinces. Provinces retain much of the income-tax revenue and get to experiment much more meaningfully with different policy mixes, under a multi-party system.
Because there will be a lot of people in those areas who are not happy living under an ancap dystopia. Those states may even try to trap them there like Texas wants to do.
Imagine a couple moved to one of these ancap dystopias and have a kid. That kid turns out to be a big leftist and they hate not having rights.
We can't just forget about the other states and only care about some. At that point, you can consider the United States to have fallen.
So long as there is free movement of people and basic democracy, if people hate it they can leave it or change it.
That also supposes that everyone can afford to move to somewhere they would like to be. There's a reason the right wants people to stay where they are regardless of political affiliation. Those states tend to be full of poor folks living where they can afford to live. Not everyone has the privilege of living in a place that treats them they way they'd like to be treated.
No, I said freedom of movement AND basic democracy. It assumes that people have enough democratic rights that they can organize to change the laws in their own community.
It is a truism that oppression exists and that it affects exactly the people who can't escape it. There are no shortcuts to freedom unfortunately. The American solution has been that some external authority, the federal government comes and resolves this. For the big things, slavery, apartheid, I get it. But for things below the threshold of crimes against humanity, it becomes trickier because then control of the Big Saviour starts being a critical battleground, it can turn into the Big Oppressor, and basically you might end up with the unworkable federalism you currently have.
Because the red states have outsized influence over federal law, and they can outlaw the social democratic policies at a national level.
If we assume that the Democratic Party actually wants to do good and not just what their donors want. They still have to contend with a Senate that's is biased towards the empty states, and even the House of Representatives is somewhat biased but not as bad.
Now if the Blue States (or even Counties) form some kind of union to transcend the USA, things might begin to happen.
The EU is a confederacy. It has a much weaker central government and much stronger states. The US could go back to a confederacy model.
What's stopping California or Vermont or whatever from enacting state-level Universal Health Insurance programs or free university or whatever else?
Nothing other than cost and logistics. Massachusetts had "RomneyCare" before ObamaCare existed for the country as a whole.
The fact that now state-level reforms and policies aren't pursued is partially a symptom of the American people become national-authority simps.
And it's partially because Democrats and Republicans seem determined to make everyone follow their interpretation of the rules. Most of American politics at this point seems to be about "hurting the right people."
Lastly, most key wedge issues in the United States are often fundamentally moral questions that relate to constitutionality, making it impossible to allow some states to, for instance, hold slaves, allow child labor, allow abortion, allow religious fascism in public schools, allow racial discrimination, etc., without other states prevailing on the bedrock morality of the constitution.
I.e., the United States does not, as a singular country, remotely agree on fundamental ethics that can form a foundation for a coherent nation that would then allow for more state-level experimentation. The are certainly "different" states though. Look at Vermont vs. New Hampshire for instance. They're quite different despite being bordering states.
Yes, I agree. That's why I wrote that Americans have forgotten how to do federalism. Like, I get that states rights used to mean fucking slavery and you needed a strong central government to keep the southern racists from lynching people, but how else are you going to manage such a vast space and remain a democracy in the 21st century?
The moral issues you guys are culture warring over are nowhere near as grave as slavery or segregation now.
Not only that, but you have also concentrated the arbitration of these cosmic moral wedge issues on like what 10 people? President, SCOTUS, and whatever Manchin figure is the Senate kingmaker of the year. No wonder it's breaking at the seams.
Yeah, that's why I mentioned that the United States has basically become national authority simps. "Voting" these days for most people is synonymous with presidential elections.
That being said, for many people, issues like abortion, trans and gay segregation/discrimination, legal slavery of prisoners, mass and school shootings, and the rates of violence and murder against: Indigenous, black, etc men and women are fairly serious and important issues that are, if not equal, relatively close in terms of moral outrage to lynching and slavery. I can understand that you don't see it that way though.
Don't get me wrong, I am passionate about civil and economic rights in Quebec. But I accept that certain rules change at the Vermont border. The question even the most ardent internationalist must ask is at what threshold do things in another jurisdiction become so intolerable that they would need to get personally involved and intervene in another People's business. In international law, which we can take as the base rate, that threshold is pretty high, at crimes against humanity-ish. From there it goes down. How far down? Depends on the balance different communities are willing to strike. Inter-community intervention also has its own catastrophic consequences. There is no right answer of course but I strongly suspect the contemporary American one is not it.
Yeah, well put. I generally agree.
You must also recognize you’re not getting an unbiased source here online. What are the true differences? I suspect us Americans are more likely than most to complain about politics, to “air our dirty laundry”. I’m not really disagreeing with your points but the differences in real life might be smaller than you’d think from some of these discussions
Massachusetts has that, or as far as we can. You’ll find a range of policies with each state being different but “blue” states leaning in one direction and “red” states leaning in another. There are several states with variations in at least some free college, and some states with much better health insurance coverage
We have “universal” coverage, building on Romneycare, but are still subject to the same framework as everyone else. We still need to honor everyone else’s insurance providers, the whole patchwork of profit takers and inefficiencies. By ourselves we can only do the same thing better, but we can’t change the paradigm
It’s been a long time coming but tuition is finally free at state universities and colleges. It was even retroactive for the school year: in April 29, I got a refund of all the tuition i had paid for my kid for last school year
Who is going to fund it?
In many cases, republiQans have pre-empted any progressive actions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Legislative_Exchange_Council
The Commerce Clause is one often cited by conservatives. I am not a lawyer but if they can abuse it you bet they will even if that's not what it was meant for.
The commerce clause doesn't apply to in-state systems unless they interact with a foreign nation, native tribe, or another state.
What kind of abuse is even possible here?
I saw it brought up against states setting their own emission standards. I don’t agree with it but it is something I have seen them argue.
Fair enough - but, emissions can be argued (with evidence) to be an interstate issue, particularly with large cities being contributors.
Honestly, I think shifting the fed to a more Confederate model would be a good idea. A large number of problems we're running into is the attempt to control the whole nation over local interests. It might be possible to diffuse a large number of contentious points just on that alone.
That was the ideal, but every ounce of freedom given to the south has been used to torment the vulnerable, so they kept losing supreme court cases and having amendments added to the constition that give the federal govt. more power because its needed their state governments from being evil.
See slavery, the black codes, jim crow laws, womens rights, religious freedom, environmental protectionism, coal mining in appalaicha, etc.
You still cant hold office in 7 states in the south if youre an athiest btw.
End Blue to Red state subsidies.
The traditional map is more reflective of electoral power. This one is by population which would be critical in a republic, but traditional map where each count is colored by their majority shows how being the majority in lightly populated areas gives outsized power.
Cities tend to be Blue, but cities don’t get a unified vote, plus are subject to state laws. Look at Houston: they don’t have a chance
But yes, we do federalism. Speaking for Massachusetts:
But we’re affected by everyone else:
When I read about some places attempts to prevent voting, I am so happy none of it is relevant. My state has good outreach to make it easy to register, easy to vote in whatever manner you choose, and has sufficiently funded voting center ps that everyone has a convenient one with little to no waiting. I can walk to mine. When there’s been a line, it’s short and in air conditioning. There’s always a school fundraiser bake sale if I want a treat
So yes, believe me, we look down on all those dystopias between free cities as we fly over. They may have been misled and manipulated but they chose their poison
Good luck trying to get an American conservative to understand what the second map represents. I means shit, they refuse to grasp the concept of "per capita" because they know it makes them look bad.
gasp Are you suggesting, good sir, that republiQans may in fact not be arguing a particular point in good faith???
NO! I cannot believe it.
That huge red circles Phoenix right?
Why would a popular video game character get his own spot on this map?
Ace Attorney is just that popular in Arizona
Eat your hamburgers, Apollo....
Oh, I thought he was talking about 7-11's Cool Spot Video Game.
Hey, that's not fair. Some of that is also sagebrush and pine trees. And some of it is cool rocks.
I’ll allow it.
Land doesn't vote. People vote.
**Land SHOULDN'T vote.
Why does the Senate exist then?
I'm not sure what you're asking. The Senate isn't based on land. Texas gets just as many votes in the Senate as Rohde Island.
Normally, in a democracy, you have two chambers for the legislature so that one of them is filled by popular vote from all over the country and the other by representatives allocated for administrative divisions.
In the US both chambers are allocated for predefined divisions, just on different scales (state vs slice of population), so the principle of the popular vote is not represented.
It does serve (in theory) to make up for a state that had lower population, but since the slices are subject to manipulation it's debatable.
State governments, which represent the people, vote.
Why does land determine who tells me what to do then?
Because the US electoral system is fundamentally broken?
What? It's a worldwide thing, not just the US
Yes, to some extent it happens everywhere but the US has reduced the phenominon to its grotesque final form.
No, it happens to the same extent in basically anywhere that's populated and can afford to enforce it
Ya...ok...
there's no lying like lying with maps
(for those ggr nerds, yes, "the map was a lie")
Especially Google maps, they persuaded my friend to turn right and now he thinks corporations are people.
never considered online service maps much as political maps, but of course they are. What gets mapped as POI tells people what they are to find interesting and what not vice versa.
Is the top image a map someone tried to push as the ratio of red vs blue counties?
That’s often how it gets portrayed, yes.
I was just checking to see if this was a specific instance or if there was a certain news outlet that did so recently.
I don't know of any news outlets doing so. But apparently Trump made that particular misrepresentation by retweating a meme in 2019.
The meme in question was basically an electoral college map like that top image in the OP with "Impeach This" or "Try To Impeach This" across the top.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/10/01/four-simple-reasons-that-trumps-impeach-this-map-doesnt-make-any-sense/
And if you want to see the actual tweet in question but twitter (I refuse to call it "X") is a huge asshole about it, here's a link to the tweet Trump retweeted on Archive.org:
https://web.archive.org/web/20191001002653/https://twitter.com/LaraLeaTrump/status/1178030815671980032
As others have said, yes it is. Unfortunately it's also a strong representation of how the voting process operates in the US. At the local level (towns and cities), individual votes matter. However, for something like the presidential election (for example), then the votes are averaged by county and state.
So what happens is everyone from a county votes, and if that county is more of one side than the other, that entire county is "voting x/y". Then the counties across the state are compared, and that state is declared as "voting" for either side. Then nationally, each state is counted as either/or, so even if the more populated cities vote one way, if enough of the rural population votes the other way, the rural side wins, and the urban side loses.
It's almost as if the system urgently needs reform. Too bad the powers in charge of that were elected specifically because of it.
https://i0.wp.com/demcastusa.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/TryToImpeachThisUpdated.gif?resize=800%2C505&ssl=1
Fascinating.
I hate sand
It’s coarse and rough, and it votes Republican
People live in cities
What's your point, though? I'm not sure if you're pointing out that this is basically a population density map in order to argue something in particular? Because it seems like OP's entire point was that while the majority of Americans are not conservative, people disguise this fact by NOT using population density maps to demonstrate political spreads.
So, yeah, people live in cities. And most Americans swing left. Glad we can both read the map and agree on its message 👍
Mostly only recently
Yes. I’m not sure why that needs to be pointed out?
Probably why when the slaver’s college was being debated the “let’s not concentrate political power in a few northeastern cities” argument held more sway.
Political voting power shifting to cities is only very recent?
I mean if by very recent you mean around the 60’s sure. But that’s still for like 20% of this country’s existence. Early in the country’s history New York/Boston/Philadelphia also had a lot of power in deciding who became president.
I'm ancient times, people outside city walls weren't even allowed to vote. Add in the fact that humanity is tribal in nature, and your statement holds even less true.
You think the peasants outside city walls were even allowed to vote on anything? They were literally outsiders that knew little to nothing about the inner (more populated) parts of cities.
A city's overall opinion is literally more important than rural mud slinging opinion, if for no other reason than because more people live there, and are affected by policy.
Edit: sorry for being mean
Sorry, I wasn't trying to create polemic. I'm well aware that for most of history democratic voting wasn't a thing.
Just wanted to add a bit of context, yes, by population city opinion is more important NOW, but until very recently, considering strictly population, it was not, and the current political tensions are in part caused by this change.
I wish respectful conversation, sorry if I seemed rude.
Sorry if I seemed rude. Ignoring life problems, I'm not great at talking to people or voicing my thoughts, I just get really angry over things since a car wreck a couple years ago. Like all my feelings towards anything at all have been amplified. I do genuinely hope you have a good rest of your day.
I do still feel that your statement on the matter excludes the fact that, since the dawn of history, the town/city has been infinitely more relevant to voting matters than rural could ever be. As I said, the people living outside the city walls were irrelevant to practical sociopolitical matters.
Certainly, but in the context of democracies, the rural people were made very relevant, being the majority, but now are being pushed back into being irrelevant, and are angry about it.
I too wish you a good rest of the day, and a wonderful weekend, and may you come across people that stand with you so you can feel better.
Who’s read an argument that’s something like “if we change this, then elections will always go blue, and red areas will feel unheard and _____”
It’s argued the blank is something bad but I can’t recall what it was 🤷♂️ IDK if it was civil war/secession bad or what
I remember a coworker from Utah once telling me that farmers are the most disadvantaged minority or something. Basically his argument was it is better that rural areas get more representation and people in the cities don't need to be represented as much. For him it was an easy argument to make since it is the status quo and serves his interests.
The people who want to change things are who need to come up with either strong arguments to win public opinion or increasingly evident win their rights by direct action. No one who benefits from the current system will give up anything.
It's a variant of state's rights. Basically up until a generation or two ago a lot more people lived in a medum-to-small town. For a lot of those people, the cities were strange places of violence and grossitude. Full of corruption, and evil.
The idea that they would also make all the laws was unthinkable. "Why - they'd let the gays marry! We know there's no such thing as gays!" and so on. (Although practically speaking - where the political rubber met the road so to speak - it was about being allowed to keep humans in concentration camps for money.)
So, back before we knew how conception worked or what an automatic rifle was or even that we were one small part of a larger group of stars called a galaxy - they developed the Electoral College to ensure that everyone had an equitable say. That, and the Senate having exactly two representatives no matter how many people lived there. From a political point of view, it was reasonable at the time.
Fast forward to 2016 and batshit insanity is literally trying to topple the government in a demented coup attempt and it starts to look less like a good idea.
The farmer argument is such BS though, believe in some past that is long past and may never have happened.
My grandparents were one of those farming families it would apply to. They had it tough, it was hard to make any money and people relied on them for food. They also were forced out of business half a century ago. Currently farmers are much more likely to be large businesses and definitely not in need of special treatment
You know what it's going to be 100 years from now?
IT'S GONNA BE SAND!!
-- RIP Sam Kinnison
How come they always color the places that don't have anybody there as red?
Why can't blue take it?
It’s the same reason all around the world: India, China, Australia, Venezuela, Romania, Kenya: Hicks.
Hicks are everywhere. And they vote for regressive authoritarians for any number of reasons, most of them wrong.
Fear... Humans have an evolutionary and natural fear of the unknown... If you live way out in the middle of nowhere, pretty much everything outside your tiny bubble is unknown, and therefore scary. Then assholes come in and use that fear to their advantage. "Everything you're afraid of IS horrible and out to get you! Vote for me and I'll protect you"
I love classism
Oh there you go bringing class into it again
Again?
https://inv.tux.pizza/watch?v=-8bqQ-C1PSE
Oh, xd
They are probably coloring whole counties, where the second map just makes a dot for each country proportional to population.
Thank you for actually understanding what the second map says. It's shocking how many people in these comments were so easily fooled into thinking that is where the people live in the second map.
The other complication is that the second map is so potato you can't see what color the smaller dots are and I think it gives overall a bluer impression than it would at higher quality.
Probably because 40 out of the 50 voters in those counties voted red.
Because of the way the US handles elections.
Here's a link to my other comment that explains it as I (a laymen) understand it as I was taught in school.
https://lemmy.world/comment/11291037
Keep in mind both of these maps are grossly misleading. Or at least one is being presented in a misleading way.
One is just coloring an entire county the way the majority voted. This is why those huge (land) counties are all red, because at least 1 more person in it votes for trump than Biden (presumably, I don't know what the map is actually based on but it's a safe bet). So that's why "the sand" is regularly colored red. Although saying noone lives these is misleading.
Which leads me to the second map is probably a noble effort to show some population scale, by reducing all of the counties to a circle the relative size of their population, but it's being misrepresented here as if that's where all of the people in those counties live, which is certainly false. Just look at the center of the country, it's basically a grid of small dots. Do people honestly think the population is distributed like that?
The most frustrating thing about this is everyone in this thread is complaining about how Republicans are too stupid to understand why the map is colored the way it is...while being absolutely fooled as to why the other map is the way it is.
Fwiw I don’t think anyone’s “fooled” by the first map. Or (again, imo) that all republiQans are too stupid to understand why sand doesn’t vote.
I do think the first map is regularly used as a right-wing talking point by individuals and corporate news to “explain” how republiQans must be winning elections, and that explanation is false. Presumably many of the individuals and all corporate news organizations know that. Which is why it’s just straight-up propaganda.
My point is that the second map, at least the way it is being framed in this meme, is equally misleading.
What it is presumably showing is dot in the middle of each county (although clearly not in middle for places like the NE that are being pushed apart, but I think it's true for like kansas/nebraska) that is scaled relative to the population of that county. It's not necessarily where the people in that county live.
I get that Republicans use the former map to deceive and spread propaganda. What I'm pointing out is that is exactly what is happening with the way the second map is being framed in this meme. It's pure absurdity for people to fall hook, line, and sinker for it. . .while shitting on the intelligence of people who fell hook, line, and sinker for another map being presented in a misleading way.
Oh right - well, again fwiw, I doubt people are lead to believe that midwest populations are laid out in perfect order like that.
Hm. That said, most midwest towns are laid out in some kind of grid. But that’s more about transportation than politics.
Both the title of the submission and the wording on the graph indicates otherwise.
Possibly because unless you have an eight figure trust fund the GOP doesn’t help you, so if you vote Republican you are stupid?
Apparently, hating dumb Republicans doesn't preclude you from being dumb yourself. Imagine that
Oh man, you got me so good. You forgot to tell me how your dad can beat up my dad.
It's funny because my point was based off of what you actually said, your's was just a mindless childish insult... ironically accusing me of making childish retorts.
It's funny how much you see what you hate about yourself in other people.
Blue has abandoned anything outside cities. Their outreach is basically move to a city, which unsurprisingly isn't popular there.
Question: do you think the MAJORITY of people should decide how they're governed?
And that's aside from the obvious fact that red team is currently pushing a convicted felon seditious child raping traitor as their defacto king?
According to you: they abandoned things outside cities, so they're not popular inside of cities?????
Lol tell me you're ignorant without telling me you're ignorant.
Voter turnout is important, then
🤔
Well Biden just stepped down from the elections
I loved finding this out from a random comment on Lemmy. The interweb’s still got it!
VOTE, volunteer to give rides to those that can't make it otherwise if you can
Sam Kinison reference. You are a gentleman and a scholar.
"We have deserts in America. We just don't fucking live in them!"
Invariant of the day: In any square mile of the USA, there are 25 Republican voters, the rest of them either vote Democrat or not at all.
It doesn't work of course. Suffolk County, MA (Boston) has a partial pressure of about 1kGOP/mi^2^. Nevertheless, it's closer than you might expect considering how many square miles don't even have 25 human beings.
In my head I read that as "one kiloGOP per square mile"
Just a few hundred miliGOPs is enough to fuck up a city council.
We need to get the EPA on this. It’s pollution.
Must determine the hazardous ppm of GOPs in the water
Zero tolerance
That's what he wrote.
Why he had to mix metric and freedom units, though, I don't understand.
You can read it out loud that way too. KiloGOP has three syllables.
When this baby hits one point one kiloGOPs we're gunna see some serious shit
This is heavy
This map is fascinating. Would be cool to have a mini legend for all those blue dots, as in what cities they are and why did people gather there.
The way they are so evenly situated, I think they are just putting a population-proportioned dot in the center of each county. In meant states, counties are pretty much equal sized squares with varying amounts of people in them.
Issue with this (because of first past the post) there are still a significant number of people voting the opposite way of who wins in their electorate, for the most part.
Thank you
Cartography is super cool.
Oh shit
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/10/30/opinion/election-results-maps.html
https://purplestatesofamerica.org/
Yall should read How to Lie with Maps.
So the NYT wants to tell us we're not as polarized as the maps may show?
Of course they do. Both Sides, you know. Other than that, the points about colors are well taken, it's just so on-brand for NYT to have the editorial POV that everything's normal, it's fine.
I don't know that there's a lot of sand in Kansas.
There's a whole lot of dumbass rednecks though.
Hey now, the KS governor just vetoed some bullshit anti-abortion stuff. Somehow.
But yes, KS is a poster child for letting right-wing idiocy run rampant.
All I know was the last time I was in Kansas City, MO, which was many years ago, the people I was with would yell, get back to Kansas if a car drove by with a Bush Jr. bumper sticker.
Missouri is even more fukt than Kansas, ironically.
Having only ever been to Kansas City and Fulton, I couldn't say. But I did read What's the Matter With Kansas? years ago. I'm sure it hasn't substantially changed since that book came out.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What%27s_the_Matter_with_Kansas%3F_(book)
I think it actually has. My understanding is the KS GOP so thoroughly fucked the state that they started to lose support from generational voters.
All the hospitals closed, economics got worse, big agri bought everyone, etc.
But they still run most of the state, so, that’s not saying much.
Any improvement over what's in that book is good.
Protect your water, seems to be in important proximity most of the larger dot clusters?
What's the medium sized red dot just north of LA? I live around there and it makes sense but there's a lot of small-ish towns around here and I don't know what it represents. What population patterns do these dots represent? I'm guessing the red dot is either Visalia, Tulare County, San Joaquin Valley in general, or Fresno.
The dots are counties - the largest red one above LA is Kern county - Tulare county is the smaller red dot above it to the right
This is a clearer version of that map. The other two much smaller red dots above LA are Kings and Inyo counties - this map is based on 2016 presidential results, as Inyo went blue in 2020 (by only 14 votes though)
Yeah and that's only because they lean that way by slim majorities. There's still mid 40s percent democrat affiliation here in both counties. I'd like to see a version of this map that shows the purple continuum. That would reveal even more.
Ah so elections should be a piece of cake then!
Presidential? Yea you would think. But seeing this map overlayed with districting lines would help explain how we get some of our senators representatives we have.
Districting lines have nothing to do with Senate elections - senators are whole state affairs. Districting lines only affect two things at the federal level - House elections and presidential electors in two particular states that grant one elector based on the results within each House district and two based on overall state vote.
Fair fair, I am not even a armchair expert. And yea a moment of thought about senator I ever voted for would have reminded me thay. But at least I wasn't crazy about the house.
Now, I still think any election however local, does affect stuff up the ladder.
Guess i am no one. I live in one of those red areas. Oh and aint no sand out here just lots and lots of clay
If you live there then not no-one lives there. A higher resolution image would show you on there, waving.
8,000,000K
Id more be shooting the bird at nosey nellies snooping round my proppity
Consarn it!
If like 200,000 move to Wyoming it could flip. I have seen people bring it up numerous times but no one acted on it.
Because it would mean living in Wyoming.
Don't threaten me with a good time.
Good to know: blue doesn’t need to worry about voting