Kamala Harris’s running mate urges popular vote system but campaign says issue is not part of Democrats’ agenda

  • kandoh@reddthat.com
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    27 days ago

    By 2032 Texas will be a solid swing state and the EC becomes near impossible for the GOP to ever win again

    We can wait them out, and reap the benefits

    • Zaktor
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      27 days ago

      People argued this idea of a permanent Democratic majority in the 2000s and then again after Obama’s election but it never materialized. GenX, with its liberal sensibilities, the rise of college educations, and increased diversity among the population will make it impossible for Republicans to win. Then GenX got older and more conservative and people realized that minorities and college grads could also be made to hate immigrants and queer people.

      This idea that “just waiting” is all it will take to end conservatism and other bigotries is a fantasy.

      • Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.org
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        25 days ago

        could also be made to hate immigrants and queer people.

        Less that and more that it turns out a lot of people don’t vote based on how their candidate or his party feels about immigrants and queer people. There are even a lot of single issue voters whose single issue isn’t immigration or queer people.

      • kandoh@reddthat.com
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        27 days ago

        Regardless, the only feasible way to go from the EC to the Popular vote will be if Republicans think they’ve lost the advantage the EC gives them.

    • MouseKeyboard@ttrpg.network
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      26 days ago

      There are two issues:

      • Parties aren’t set in stone, Republicans will shift some positions to appear more palatable and move some states redder

      • If they take power now they are likely to increase Gerrymandering and voter suppression to give themselves an advantage.

    • njm1314@lemmy.world
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      27 days ago

      I’ve been hearing that for a while. Of course then again the people that said that don’t seem to have an answer for the fact that in 2022 Republicans swept the entire state by like 10 points. So maybe we should stop counting on that.

      • kandoh@reddthat.com
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        27 days ago

        Here’s a comparison of Barack Obama’s, Hillary Clinton’s, and Joe Biden’s election results in Texas:

        Election Year Democratic Candidate Vote Percentage Republican Candidate Vote Percentage Margin
        2012 Barack Obama 41.4% Mitt Romney 57.2% 15.8%
        2016 Hillary Clinton 43.2% Donald Trump 52.2% 9.0%
        2020 Joe Biden 46.5% Donald Trump 52.1% 5.6%

        This is the trend

        • Zaktor
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          26 days ago

          Here’s a comparison of Bill Clinton’s, Al Gore’s, and Barack Obama’s election results in Florida:

          Election Year Democratic Candidate Vote Percentage Republican Candidate Vote Percentage Margin
          1992 Bill Clinton 39.0% George H. W. Bush 40.89% -1.89%
          2000 Al Gore 48.84% George W. Bush 48.85% -0.01%
          2008 Barack Obama 50.91% John McCain 48.09% +2.82%

          Florida is reliably blue now, right? Since 2010, the Hispanic proportion of the state has grown by 5 percentage points while the white proportion has shrunk by a similar number. It’s gotta be like Dem +8 by now.

          • kandoh@reddthat.com
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            26 days ago

            Florida is different because conservatives move there when they retire or to escape COVID restrictions. And don’t forget, those Latinos in Florida are Cuban, so race isn’t as good an indicator.

            Texas is really opposite. It’s getting large influxes of left-wing voters each year.

            • Zaktor
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              26 days ago

              Yes yes, we all have our post hoc excuses for why a state with a historical trend toward the Democrats didn’t continue on. All of those excuses were happening when Florida was getting bluer. It’d be great if all we needed to do was kick our feet up and demographics would solve our political problems, but this isn’t a new idea. People in 2000s thought the Democrats would have a permanent majority by now. Turns out the money behind the Republican party isn’t going to just sit back and let them wither into nothingness.

              In 10 years we’ll have a good excuses for Texas too. It will be obvious that some Hispanic group was going to turn conservative because they were fleeing failures in nominally left wing states, or were very religious, or had a machismo culture or something. The young people moving to Texas for economic opportunities will be scared away by the abortion bans. Or they’ll crank their media propaganda to 11. Or maybe Texas really will go blue and we’ll have an entirely different set of turning-point states. The Democrats weren’t doomed to be unable to win the presidency because Florida is no longer a swing state and somehow after all the Republican’s failures and odious behavior we’re still in a toss up now.

              If it was a simple matter of waiting for Democrats to break the cycle and win forever, it would have happened by now. People have been predicting the impending collapse of the Republican party for decades.

            • njm1314@lemmy.world
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              25 days ago

              Actually a lot of people moving to Texas tend to be conservative from other states moving explicitly for the politics. Conservatives from California in particular.

              For instance in Ted Cruz’s last election he got a higher percentage of Voters from new residents than he did from native Texans and of course the inverse.

              https://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/2018/11/09/native-texans-voted-for-native-texan-beto-o-rourke-transplants-went-for-ted-cruz-exit-poll-shows/