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Cake day: June 20th, 2023

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  • Or we can just implement a wealth tax like any reasonable nation.

    Yeah, the problem here is the implementation: you and I and most people here would benefit a little from a higher tax on billionaires, enough to motivate us to send a letter to our Congressional representatives and send a few bucks to whichever campaigning politicians promise to do it.

    Billionaires, in the meantime, stand to lose millions, or even tens of millions of dollars. Enough that it makes sense for them to start PACs, schmooze, and even bribe the Congressional representatives who’d be in charge of raising taxes. So even though there are hundreds of them and millions of us, they have greater means and motivation.










  • As it stands, there’s this notion that a candidate has to try and have broad appeal; they need to spread their campaign out a bit in order to “capture” the electoral votes of a state.

    That’s currently not the case: in most states, the vote isn’t close, so we know before the campaign even begins how most states will vote. There’s no reason for Republicans to appeal to Kansans, because Kansas will vote R no matter what. Likewise, there’s no point for Democrats to appeal to Kansans because it won’t do them any good.

    Sans the electoral college, I see presidential campaigns becoming even more polarized and exclusionary. The Democrat campaign will become the “big city loop.” Continually visit Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, NYC, and Miami.

    There’s a word in politics for a candidate who wins in big cities, and nowhere else: “loser”.

    Check the demographics. Get a list of the 20 biggest cities in the US and add them up. You’ll see that’s only about 30% of the vote. So even if you somehow managed to get everyone in the big cities to vote for you, including children under 18, felons, and people on student visas, that still wouldn’t be enough to determine the election.

    Maybe they slide in a few secondary metros if it’s convenient. The candidate won’t have to worry about any non-urban messaging, and if they’re particularly incendiary could even preach “dumping those hicks in the sticks.”

    Just in passing, there are more Republicans in the California sticks than the total population of several other states. If the president were elected by popular vote, candidates could no more ignore those voters than California gubernatorial candidates can, today.


  • Fun bit of trivia: which state had the most Republican voters in the 2020 election? Answer: California had more R votes than Texas or Florida or any deep-red state. But neither party gave a shit what California Republicans wanted: Democrats knew that the Electoral votes would go for Biden no matter what, so they didn’t need to campaign there or court anyone’s vote. And Republicans knew that there was no way to get even one of those Electoral votes, so their time and money was best spent campaigning elsewhere.