Somehow the rhetoric just keeps getting more extreme...

Soon...

Perhaps the problem is simply that people aren't stupid. And I don't just mean the Trump supporters. They are extra stupid, but plenty of Democrats are idiots too. 

The system is setup to ensure a couple of states don't rule the country, which is quite an intelligent system.

Winning the PV, while losing the EC, means liberals do well on the east and west coast, while doing poorly in middle America.  Middle America is the average person.  

Meaning their messaging is complete shit via limited appeal.  

Also, and I'm baffled people don't see this, change the rules and voting behavior changes...   so the whole PV argument is nonsense. 

Good luck folks, hopefully I'm wrong, but I think Trump takes the WH and GOP takes the senate....  which would mean liberals aren't connecting with middle Americans, like I said 100 pages ago.  🤔 

It was an intelligent system insomuch as it enabled the 13 states to unite together in an era where it would take two weeks to get from Boston to Philadelphia. In the modern age, it has long outlived its usefulness. Especially when the Senate serves as a check on large state power as South Dakota and North Dakota with a combined population of under 2 million have as much power in the Senate as the 50 million people in North and California. Really indefensible. And unnecessary that 1/2 of the legislature and the presidency should both be shifted towards smaller states.

Voting patterns would change if you switched to a popular vote, as people's votes would matter, more people would go out to vote especially in non-swing states. I suspect this would be a net win for democrats, but even if it wasn't, it would be a fairer system, so it should be done. 

The argument that their message is shit cuts both ways. One could also say the message of the republican party is shit because it doesn't appeal to voters on the coasts. But it really isn't a coastal thing. Democratics tend to perform well in any area with high population density. That is the main reason they are competitive in Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, and even recently Texas and Alaska. Because those states have populations that are heavily centralized in certain locations. 

You could say it is shit because it doesn't appeal to rural voters or Trump voters... but that may just be inevitable. A large portion of Trump's voters are Chrsitian nationalists who believe that their religion should be imposed on others. You kind of can't meet them halfway on that. Likewise if there are people who think abortion should be banned in all cases and a ten year old rape victim should be forced to carry a child to term... there just isn't any middle ground. 

Beyond that, some of Trump's voters are just so far gone that any appeal is going to fail. Of those rural American voters, how many are believe that Hatiians are eating cats and Democrats are making hurricanes? How do you reason people out of that? And what about people who are legitimately just hateful towards certain groups such as immigrants, Jews, Muslims, or whatever? You just can't find a position that's going to reach them without alienating more people on the other side.

Personally, I think Harris is running her campaing about as well as I can expect. Honestly don't know what I would suggest she do differently. She may not win. But, at the end of the day, maybe we've just gone too far down the rabbit hole for someone to win with sane policies and common sense. That is the flaw of any democracy, particularly one with our fucked electoral system. Some people want a spray tanned fascist. If there are enough of those, the messaging won't matter. 

Maybe that was the original intent and worked well for a long time but it’s an outdated system that allows for a minority of the country to have majority rule as seen in 2000 & 2016. Add in things like partisan gerrymandering in the House & the Senate filibuster and we have a very broken system that leads to gridlock.

What does coast vs non-coast have to do with anything? Are people in Wyoming, Kentucky & Nebraska somehow more “average” than people in Virginia, Oregon & Massachusetts simply because their state doesn’t touch the ocean? America is an extremely diverse country, there is no such thing as an average American.

It’s not that Democrats messaging has limited appeal, it’s the fact that they are a diverse coalition of people from many different backgrounds including race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, etc. while the Republican Party are a much more homogeneous group primarily consisting of white Christians. These low population rural states that are over represented in the EC are predominantly white Christians, therefore white Christians have more voting power than the more diverse higher population states.

Democrats messaging appeals to many different types of demographics while Republicans messaging appeals to a more specific demographic that is over represented.

And yes, changing to a popular vote system will change voting behavior and that’s good. I have conservative coworkers who don’t vote because Illinois is a deep blue state and think their vote doesn’t matter. This is true of people all over the country and if we changed to PV then these people will be more likely to participate. It will also end the bullshit of candidates solely focusing on a handful of swing states rather than the nation as a whole.

You think Trump is terrible well guess what? With a PV system, Trump never gets into power and you would have your more moderate Conservative Party that you wish for.

Republicans have spent the better part of like 4 decades convincing people that up is down and black is white.

We have right wing radio, Fox News and other Murdoch "news", Sinclair Broadcast Group operating extensively at the local media level.

Even a lot of "left wing" news outlets are pushing plenty of right wing biases, sometimes maybe accidentally, sometimes because they think it makes them look more unbiased, sometimes because the conflict drives up attention.

A lot of social media benefits right wingers, even though they don't believe that to be the case.

The fact that people are voting for the party that believes that there are manmade hurricanes, doesn't tell me that the message is bad. It tells me that a lot of people are just gone from having any kind of reasonable discussion. 

Similarly people believing that dinosaur bones are placed by Satan to trick people, doesn't tell me that evolution's message isn't good enough either. 

The problem is that people are dumb, and there's basically too many things to know. And to be clear, I'm not saying liberals/left wingers/ anyone else is smarter. They're just driven by different things. I think nonconservatives are more comfortable with accepting answers they don't fully understand, the world is complex. Whereas conservatives tend to view things more black and white, which the world isn't. 

There's all these notions that might sound good to people; and they just take them as true because they sound good. 

Just because something might sound logically good to someone, doesn't make it true. 

1776 America was more divided by states. 2024 America is more divided by rural and urban.

The irony is the current system has ensured a couple of states rule the country. Swing state votes matter a lot more than Texas votes. 

Middle America definitely isn't the average person.

Rural vs. urban is an observation that can be made in plenty of countries, with urban voters being more reasonable in general. This is likely due to a higher percentage of people with a high level of education living there in comparison to rural regions. But it's also interesting that xenophobia tends to be at its highest in the areas where the percentage of immigrants in the population happens to be the lowest. The far-right always gets the most support from voters who have the least to do with immigration.

Middle America is especially funny because hardly any of the states have a border to Mexico. I've never heard of Canada being a problem, but that probably goes beyond skin color and has a lot to do with Canada being a better place to live in than the USA. It's also pretty apparent to me that the American south has a large amount of people who could never get over losing the civil war. These people's definition of patriotism is actually anti-patriotic, so it's no surprise that they vote Republicans.