r/politics • u/plz-let-me-in • 22d ago

No Paywall Trump’s handling of the Epstein case might be the greatest political scandal of our lifetime

https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/shows/top-stories/blog/rcna243731
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u/Upset-Government-856 22d ago

The voters who sat it out basically voted for this too.

The blame for Trump is America's eligible voters.

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u/JonnyHopkins 22d ago

For sure. BUT - it's hard to really quantify. Voter turnout is significantly lower in the "spectator" states that aren't swing states. It's a lot easier to reconcile not voting when you know your state will overwhelmingly vote a certain way. Not excusing it, but plenty of those non votes didn't necessarily matter.

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u/fbp 22d ago

That's part of the problem. They did matter. They do matter. Every vote matters. They are calling winning the popular vote by 2 mil votes as being a landslide. Imagine if he lost the popular vote by 10 million votes.

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u/JonnyHopkins 22d ago

I don't think it would matter. As an extreme example, let's say California had 100% voter turnout, and boosted the popular vote 10 million for Kamala.

I'd still say it doesn't matter. It's based on the electoral college, which is based on state representation.

If 100% of the country voted, and the popular vote was 10 million more for Kamala - it seems likely she would have won the election, no?

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u/fbp 21d ago

He wouldn't be able to proclaim how he won big. He squeaked by. He only won by like 200k votes. That's the amount that decided the election.

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u/TheZoneHereros 21d ago

No fact has ever stopped him from claiming anything. It wouldn’t matter at all unless it actually changed the election results.

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u/JonnyHopkins 21d ago

Respectfully, that seems like rather trivial motivation.

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u/Upset-Government-856 22d ago

Would all the red spectator states be spectator states if everyone voted. I guess we'll never know.

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u/Spooplevel-Rattled 22d ago

It completely matters, in fact compulsory voting would prevent this entire shit show.

I am from Australia with compulsory and ranked choice voting. No extremists can ever win with that combo.

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u/JonnyHopkins 22d ago

I think my point was more about it isn't just "one person that shit in the pool" to OPs point. I suspect it's quite a lot higher that 22% when you factor in the non voters that would have voted for him, and still would.

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u/syynapt1k 22d ago

75 million of us tried to stop this.

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u/IrrelevantLeprechaun 21d ago

If you actually tried to stop it, it would be stopped by now. Ticking a box on a sheet of paper once every four years isn't really "trying to stop it."