The only explanation is that for enough white people (white men, mostly) voted for him because of those shitty things, and not in spite of them.

Problem is we can’t. They’ll get rid of the filibuster, because they’re not stupid, and don’t need it for budget reconciliation anyway. The only thing they can do is stall a little.

Except that can’t be it. Clinton disproportionately lost counties that bounced back the most since the recession. There was no correlation between Trump support and areas hurt by trade. He’s anti-union, so not sure where you got that part. Literally the only part of the message they got was pro-white identity…

What gridlock? Trumps party controls every branch of government. They’ll do whatever they want.

So your problem is that liberals aren’t PC enough? What euphemism should we use when talking about racists?

America doesn’t mean anything anymore. We stand for nothing. It kills me to say it, but we just saw millions of white voters troll the country an elect an explicit white nationalist.

The hilarious thing is that you could solve both problems the same way. More construction of housing equals both more upfront revenue and a stronger tax base, as more people live within city boundaries instead of commuting in. That revenue can pay for more transit to offset the extra demand, plus shore up the long…

You could head to Idaho to confirm that those NYC Filming ads that were all over the subway a while back about making the Bronx look like Boise are full of shit.

Sure, but the Senate doesn’t act as a brake on federal control, it just changes the relative distribution of power for how that federal control is asserted. We get more (relative) action in support of smaller state issues and less for larger. the problem is that large state voters deserve to be heard just as much as…

Sorry, I was overbroad. The question isn’t whether federalism or state government matters; it does in any case for exactly the reasons you’ve described. We agree there. The point I was trying to make is that in the sphere of federal influence, why states should be the relevant bargaining units instead of people. …

Right, but we’re going around in circles. Why do the state units even matter? Why should we reduce the political power of millions of people so that a smaller group that happens to live in another part of the country can have more power? I think political equality is well established as an ideal worth striving for.…

I just got in for the first time a few months ago with Civ5 and recommend going with that option, mostly because (a) it’s much cheaper, so you’re out less if you don’t enjoy, and (b) it had a fully fleshed out set of bug fixes, tweaks, mods, and expansions. That game is already perfected, while it sounds like 6 will…

The thing is, by your own argument federalism exists regardless of how federal representation is allocated. We just have a system now that’s slightly more inclined to interfere in a pro-rural way compared to an equal baseline. The Senate does nothing to encourage local rule, it just (by design) prefers rural local…

They absolutely count less. That’s just math. I’m still waiting for a reason that the government should intentionally devalue individuals living in urban areas to give excess power to those in small states. Your logic also holds for assigning senators based on age, gender, race, religion, or any other demographic…

That just avoids the point. You’re choosing a system that reduces the influence of one group of people to prop up the influence of another group. The relative strength of federalism is irrelevant.

But “states” aren’t really political players, people are. New York and California have plenty of rural districts. And just think about what you’re actually saying to see how weird it is: “Group of people A should have their votes count for less than another because otherwise the government would care too much about…

The Proposition may do that too, and it’s certainly dumb, but the effects of term limits are well studied. In a legislature where no one is an expert and everyone’s a lame duck, the only people who know how to write legislation and do the work of governing are the lobbyists who’ve been around for years. You…

And the answer is that the relevant fundamental building block of a democracy is the actual human beings. Wyoming should have less influence because it has fewer people. If we were designing from scratch, it would make no sense to apportion otherwise.

They’d never be ignored; people living in Rhode Island and Wyoming would just have an equal voice as those in California. Why should they have more political power?

Yes, we all know that the Senate exists. But why should it exist? Why should I have more political power when I live in Wyoming than when I live in New York? America in the 21st century is different than it was in the 18th. The Senate was a kludge designed to appease a few small states. It’s outlived its…