neptronix said:
Multiple presidents have been elected outside of the opinion of the public vote. And even still, the electoral college can be wildly out of sync with the public vote when the electors agree with the public ( see the result for Bill Clinton )
You'll have to explain that one. Clinton won the popular vote, the polls were coming in at nearly 60% before Ross Perot rejoined for the last month. That made it possible for Bush to win states he'd have lost, but he was still around 3 votes for every 4 Clinton had.
neptronix said:
Donald Trump and George W. Bush are the most recent examples of the electors choosing a president despite the public's wishes.
Again, how do you figure? The public wishes California didn't matter, that was sure reflected in the electoral college. Meanwhile the individual states offered electors for the winner in their state. As they wished. 2016 was an anomaly, there's not usually so many voting off kilter, it'll be well under 1%. The purpose of the electoral college at the time it was formed was that they didn't know HOW to let everyone in each state vote. They would cast 2 votes, the one with the most was president and the second most vice president. Until Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr tied in 1800.
There then arose a need to keep a few large states from pushing around the smaller states. Hence the House representation by population and the Senate two per state, large or small. Because the interests being different and the smaller states would have always been second class citizens. It was the intent that there would occasionally be exactly what you saw in 2016, the assurance that California, New York and Illinois could not gang up and provide a quarter or more of the votes needed and only one third of states would push all the presidents onto the other two thirds. If you don't think that's important, you just don't see the full picture. Even with this there was a time when Virginia elected president after president.
But there could be a system such as Maine and Nebraska where it's not winner take all. They might prefer that in Minnesota, where they were not happy with Hillary taking all the electors because less than 10% of the counties said so.
neptronix said:
. . . . technically an ogliarchy.
I mis used the term autocracy, sorry.
These terms are concepts, countries mostly don't fit well into one of them. Or even people. Henry Ford was the ultimate capitalist, right? Actually he's called a Socialist Capitalist. When he handed out a raise one day that doubled the income of his employees, there were riots as employed people mobbed the plants demanding to take jobs by force if necessary. His bonus plan was demanding, you had to be the kind of person in society that reflected well on his company. But he fought tooth and nail when the unions showed up. His number two in the company was later that crazy mayor of Detroit. If he wasn't a socialist himself, would he have put up with that guy?
So people say the U.S. has a capitalist economy, but not really. It's easier to be a capitalist here than many other countries, but. . . .
In a real oligarchy Trump would have been more powerful staying out of office. Soros would be able to do far more harm. Russia was becoming more and more an oligarchy in the 90's, until Putin took the reins. He made an oligarchy impossible.
There are a lot of paths to power. Some work better than others. But it's never so one sided if you can stop the Obamas from issuing their executive orders or letting them stand.
