And so it begins. Nine months still to go before the next US presidential election and already the Republican party favourite and former President Donald Trump is sending eyes rolling skywards with his seemingly outlandish statements.

And yet they will delight many of his supporters.

Suggesting at a rally in South Carolina that he would “encourage” aggressors (for example Russia) “to do whatever the hell they want” with Nato countries that fail to pay their dues has prompted an immediate slap down from the White House. A spokesman called the comment “appalling and unhinged”, saying it was “encouraging invasions of our closest allies by murderous regimes”.

Nato Secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg has also responded forcefully, saying: “Any suggestion that allies will not defend each other undermines all of our security, including that of the US, and puts American and European soldiers at increased risk.”

  • spider@lemmy.nz
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    10 months ago

    You forgot this:

    How Clinton lost Michigan — and blew the election

    “They believed they were more experienced, which they were. They believed they were smarter, which they weren’t,” said Donnie Fowler, who was consulting for the Democratic National Committee during the final months of the campaign. “They believed they had better information, which they didn’t.”

    Rollins doesn’t need a recount to understand why Clinton lost the state. “When you don’t reach out to community folk and reach out to precinct campaigns and district organizations that know where the votes are, then you’re going to have problems,” she said.

      • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        10 months ago

        Everyone also likes to forget that she won the poplar vote. She lost the electoral college, an anti-democratic institution that Democrats seem to think is really important to keep, despite the fact that keeping it often makes them impotent.

        • MagicShel@programming.dev
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          10 months ago

          It frankly doesn’t matter whether they want to keep it or not. It would take a constitutional convention to change and in the current climate that’s going to go make things worse, not better.

          • FaceDeer@kbin.social
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            10 months ago

            There is one interesting workaround I’ve heard about from time to time, the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. It’s a state-level agreement where all the participating member states commit to allocating their electoral college votes to whomever won the popular vote nationally. No need for a constitutional convention since the allocation of electoral college votes is in the hands of state governments, they can decide to do this under the existing constitution.

                • jj4211@lemmy.world
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                  10 months ago

                  However the states likely to agree are the ones that reliably vote Democrat, and the GOP has only won one popular vote in the last 30 years. So again, it won’t make a difference.

                  • Bumblefumble@lemm.ee
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                    10 months ago

                    It will. To change the constitution you need 2/3 of the states. For this plan to work, you need only 50.1% of the electoral votes to agree. Doesn’t matter if they primarily swing democrat, it just has to be a majority.

                  • FaceDeer@kbin.social
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                    10 months ago

                    The comment I was responding to at the root of this said:

                    It would take a constitutional convention to change

                    And my response was to point out that no, it wouldn’t. It doesn’t. It’s still difficult, sure, but it doesn’t require a constitutional convention to change.

                    Also, if you actually look it up, there are enough states that have already enacted the compact or are “pending” to get it done. So it’s closer to being done than you are implying.

            • frezik@midwest.social
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              9 months ago

              We can also double the size of the House (if not more). Electoral college votes are distributed according to the number of House districts (plus 2 for the senators of each state). Congress can simply pass that law. This is a good idea, anyway, since it was last set in 1911 with a total US population that’s less than a third of what it is today. It becomes harder gerrymander lots of smaller districts, as well, and it dilutes the effect of small states having outsized influence with their guaranteed 2 senate seats.

              Would probably need to build new chambers for the House. The current one has 450 seats on the floor, plus 500 in the gallery that are normally for staff and guests, not elected members.

              It’d be nice to ditch the electoral college system altogether instead of coming up with these workarounds.

        • rambaroo@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          So what? The popular vote means nothing. Her campaign was incredibly arrogant. She took the entire rust belt for granted and lost because of it.

      • spider@lemmy.nz
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        9 months ago

        She ran a shit campaign. Everyone likes to forget that part

        And then used Russia as an excuse and got away with it, as evidenced by the downvotes here.