Re: Why are VSI so focused on Sweden ?

In article <vqo16d$1kg3u$1@dont-email.me>,
Arne Vajhøj  <arne@vajhoej.dk> wrote:

On 3/10/2025 7:46 PM, Dan Cross wrote:

The reality is that _most_ Americans can't stand the guy.  It's
just that the way that our weird (and arguably messed up)
electoral system works that allowed a minority to vote him into
office.

>
In 2016 he did not get the most votes (he got 63M
while Hilary got 66M).
>
But in 2024 he did get the most votes (he got 77M while
Kamala got 75M).
>
Mr. sofa got 91M and 87M respectively in those two elections.

And that's the fundamental problem.  More people voted for their
couch than for either candidate in 2024.

Like I said, most of us really can't stand the idiot, but not
enough bothered to show up to the polls in Pennsylvania,
Wisconsin, or Michigan and make their voices heard.  Some tried
but were turned away by, denied by to the success of right wing
voter suppresion efforts to purge voter roles and hobble voting
infrastructure in majority democrat parts of red states: if you
know you can't win because your ideas are unpopular, cheat by
kneecapping your opposition: you don't need to outrun the wolves
you just need to outrun the guy next to you.  Others were
sufficiently dissatisfied with the Democrats as the opposition
party that, even though they didn't vote for Trump themselves,
they chose not to vote for Harris, and either stayed home or
threw their vote away on a third party vanity candidate like
Stein or whoever the libertarians put up (or the evergreen
Vermin Supreme), out of a desire for Trump to get et elected and
burn it all down so that it can be rebuilt from the ground up.
Bluntly, those people are fools.  They think revolutions are
romantic and imagine themselves attop the Parisian barricades
or storming the Bastille,  but I can guarantee you that they've
never seen a revolution or its aftermath up close and personal.

But even if a few million more in California, New York, and
Massachusetts had showed up and voted, giving Harris the popular
vote, it wouldn't have made a difference: those states were
going to go for her regardless.  Similarly a few hippies in
Missoula, Montana or Laramie, Wyoming voting for her just aren't
enough to flip either of those states blue.

In the end, the only thing that matters for electing the US
president is the electoral college.  Unfortunately, this sad
reality disincentivizes voting for lots of people outside of
swing states: adjusted for population, a vote in Idaho (pop ~2m,
4 EC votes) has almost almost twice as much impact towards the
eventual outcome as a vote in California (pop ~40m, 54 EC).
Combined with our winner-takes-all, first-past-the-fence-post
election formats, this leads to extreme outcomes at the margins
in the presidential and senate elections, while ridiculous
levels of  gerrymandering mean that the political makeup of the
House of Representatives does not accurately reflect that of the
population.  And don't get me started on Biden not honoring his
pledge to be a one-term president and not seek re-election.

When it comes to the electoral college specifically, the unquiet
ghost of America's original sin, slavery, continues to cast its
long, hideous shadow more than 400 years after the first
enslaved Africans were dragged to these shores through the
middle passage.

- Dan C.