#america: 50 small countries in a trenchcoat etc

[qqueenofhades]

I hope this doesn’t sound too ignorant, but as a non-American (South African here!), everyone is saying that this election is very incredible and different than others? Something about how the democrats have managed to hang on to power and it’s very close? What makes that so unique, and why is it so surprising that the democrats still (likely) have the senate? Shouldn’t you have a democratic congress because you have a democratic president? Here we do have a bunch of different parties, we don’t really have to main ones that always win, except the same corrupt party keeps getting elected again and again because it’s a very unfair system. While I do personally view Nelson Mandela as a hero to our country, his party has fallen so far from his beliefs and everyone is still so obsessed with him, and that seems to be much the case with America and the founding fathers, if I’m not mistaken?

I’m really sorry and I hope this doesn’t come across as sarcastic or dumb, I just don’t fully understand American politics and am a bit confused about your elections, and are they genuinely as bad and messed up as ours? Thank you so much!

Oh Jesus. Asking for a beginner-level crash course on American politics is a bit like asking for a beginner-level crash course on nuclear physics, but I'll do my best. Short answer: yes, American elections are fucked up to such a cosmic degree that it's truly astonishing that they still work at all, and yes, as many of my recent posts have discussed, it's shocking that the midterms went as well for the Democrats as they did. Because:

There are 50 states. Every single state has a considerable degree of autonomy over their own voting laws, voter eligibility, whether voters can register online, vote absentee, etc etc. Thus, the states run by Republicans have been rushing to enact as many restrictive voting laws as possible, meaning that this impacts who is able to actually cast a ballot (and indeed, have that ballot counted).

Each state is also very often "gerrymandered," aka divided into districts where one party has a better chance of winning than the other. Republicans, because they suck, also draw districts that erase or severely reduce Black voting power. For example, if you have District 1 that is 80% Black and therefore something like 80% Democratic, you cut little bits off the edges and put those in red districts, so you turn one safe-Democratic seat into multiple swing or Republican-leaning seats. It sucks.

The Supreme Court, after Trump got three picks with lifetime appointments, has 6 conservatives and 3 liberals, which means that if the conservatives vote as a bloc (as they often do), they can overrule pretty much anything they please (as long as it is a pending case before them). This has been especially notable with voting-rights cases this cycle, and was also the reason that Roe vs. Wade (the right to an abortion in all 50 states) was overturned this summer, capping 50 years of Republican efforts to do just that.

Every election, with the big exception of one, is won the old-fashioned way (whoever gets the most votes wins). The exception is the presidential election. There, it doesn't matter if you win the popular vote, as long as you win the Electoral College. Because of racism, each state in America has a certain number of electoral votes that reflect its population. California, with 40 million people, has 55 electoral votes; Wyoming, with 300,000, has 3. (And yet, they both also get two senators! This seems fair). Therefore, winning the popular vote in blue California is more important than winning the popular vote in red Wyoming.

This is also where we get the term "swing states." These states don't consistently vote Republican or Democratic, so whoever can win those has a better chance of winning the presidency. For example, Pennsylvania voted for Trump (red) in 2016 and for Biden (blue) in 2020, by relatively small margins each time. Yes, the Electoral College is a horrible system and we all know it. It's why Trump became president in 2016 despite losing the nationwide popular vote; he eked out just enough votes in key states to win the Electoral College (you need 270 electoral college votes to win; there are 538 up for grabs overall).

Likewise, the midterm elections are, almost without exception since 1934, used to punish the incumbent president's party for the perceived fuckups of the last two years. So if the president is Republican, the midterms lean Democratic; if the president is Democratic, the midterms lean Republican. The reason that everyone is so surprised at the Democrats doing well is because of 80+ years of historical precedent dictating that they would take a beating. But because Republicans have gotten so crazy, people shied away from voting for them. The Republicans were projected to win up to 5 Senate seats and up to 40+ House seats. As of this writing, they have won... zero and 8, or thereabouts, and it's still not clear who will secure 218 of the 435 seats in the House, which is the amount needed for a majority. Some of those House wins are also offset by the Democrats winning Republican seats back from them, hence why overall control is still up in the air.

So in other words, Congress is LESS likely to be Democratic when the president is Democratic, rather than the same party.

Trump's big thing after he lost in 2020 was to yell to the high heavens about imagined "voter fraud," which was clearly the only reason he could possibly have lost. This is why he tried to launch a coup and sent the January 6 mob to attack the Capitol during Congress's certification of the 2020 election results.

There are probably a ton of other factors I am forgetting, but yes, once again: I cannot possibly emphasize enough what a shitshow it is, and the fact that despite all of the above, the Democrats are guaranteed to keep the Senate and are still in the running for House control. Even if the Republicans do win the House, it will be by such a tiny margin that they will have trouble doing anything except wasting everyone's time with pointless revenge investigations. Democrats will still control the Senate and the Presidency until 2024, and thus can block House GOP nonsense and continue to confirm judges, which is very important after the number of unqualified right-wing hacks that Trump stuffed onto the bench with lifetime appointments.

#anonymous #ask #politics for ts #america: 50 small countries in a trenchcoat etc