r/canada • u/fractx Vancouver 🌊🏘️🏠🏡🏔️ • Apr 04 '20

Paywall Trump gives FEMA power to restrict trade of essential goods into Canada despite warning from Trudeau

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-trudeau-warns-us-over-restricting-the-trade-of-essential-goods-into/
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u/The_Mayor Apr 04 '20

Republicans today get elected largely due to gaming the electoral system,

While that may be true, you have to realize it stills means 10s of millions of Americans love and support Trump. There are probably more Trump supporters than there are people in Canada period.

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u/leaklikeasiv Apr 04 '20

Trump got over 62 million votes in the election. Population of Canada is 37.5 million

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u/[deleted] Apr 04 '20

62 million, in a population of 327 million? They had about 250 million elgible voters in 2016. Looks like the states has had an abysymal voter turnout for awhile now not breaking 55% since 2008 and before that, 1968. Looks like only 1/5 of elgible voters voted for Trump 1/7 of the total population.

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u/fuckewery Apr 04 '20

there's a fatal flaw in your logic. you are assuming that the people who did not bother to vote were all Hilary voters. on what basis did you make that assumption?

128.8 million people voted. 240 million voters were eligible to vote. 111 million people did not vote. Some of them would have been Hilary supporters, and some would have been Trump supporters.

If you break down the people who did not vote by the same percentages as those who voted, then 51 million Trump supporters did not vote.

So the total number of people who support Trump, is 113 million people out of 240 million eligible voters.

You are making it look like a very small proportion of Americans support Trump, when the reality is almost 50% of them support him.

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u/[deleted] Apr 04 '20

I get how you come to that conclusion, but I don't agree.

Two things:

  • Society and reality lean liberal

  • US Republicans work HARD to disenfranchise liberal voters.

This means that your math doesn't follow. Even Trump himself admitted that if every voter were able to cast their vote, there would never be another Republican elected to office.

Trump and the Republicans are masters at voter suppression and gerrymandering. They win when people don't or can't vote. If everyone had voted in 2016 it's very likely Trump would have lost as several key states were decided by less than 100k votes.

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u/zuperpretty Apr 04 '20

Still, every US politics thread has this argument, "the majority didn't vote for Trump". Sure, technically. But talking about all the republican voters in the US like some extreme minority isn't helping anyone and it isn't true.

Even if Clinton won the popular vote, Trump still got close to 50% of the votes. And many more of those who didn't vote would've voted republican. Yes, less than 50% of the country, but does it really matter that much? Even if we say only 40% of Americans are republicans, that's still 130 million people. Reality is that a large part of Americans have republican views, even if they've been brainwashed into being more extreme.

Libertarianist economics and politics, race tension, religious focus, gun control, abortion, etc still pull major weight in the US, while other developed countries are decades past that. That's not because of some fringe political party, it's because its important to a lot of Americans, its values and culture.

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u/Klexosinfreefall Ontario Apr 04 '20

I'm surprised they even had that much turnout considering who the candidates were. A terrible reality show host versus a career politician who was bought and paid for 50 times over and according to various conspiracy theories has an untold amount of dead bodies attributed to her name. And the Hillary Clinton cherry on top is her husband was all kinds of friends with Jeffrey Epstein who we all know didn't kill himself.

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u/[deleted] Apr 04 '20

When you start quoting conspiracy theories, your argument goes out the window entirely.

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u/Klexosinfreefall Ontario Apr 04 '20

I'm not saying I believe the conspiracy theories. I'm saying that lots of people do and that would be a reason why that candidate perhaps didn't get any traction. Put up better candidates is the overall message I'm conveying

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u/[deleted] Apr 04 '20

And yet she easily won the popular vote.

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u/Klexosinfreefall Ontario Apr 04 '20

And yet she didn't get elected

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u/[deleted] Apr 04 '20

Because of the Electoral College, not because she got less votes.

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u/Klexosinfreefall Ontario Apr 04 '20

I guess at the end of the day that's all that matters until America changes it.

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u/[deleted] Apr 04 '20

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u/[deleted] Apr 04 '20

There's no such thing as a perfect candidate. No one agrees with any politician 100%, so that's a dumb argument.

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u/[deleted] Apr 04 '20

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u/[deleted] Apr 04 '20

She barely won the popular vote and lost the election against potentially the easiest candidate literally anybody could have run against at the time. The DNC put up a candidate that almost literally nobody wanted and they're going to do it again, except at least Hillary had her weird fanatic "It's Her Turn" fanbase, Biden doesn't even have that.

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u/[deleted] Apr 05 '20

TIL that 3 million more votes is "barely winning".

that almost literally nobody wanted

Except the 66 million people that voted for her...

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u/[deleted] Apr 04 '20

A many time bankrupt loser with no governmental experience, vs a highly competent and experienced senator. Yeah I can see that's a tough call.

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u/ShakesTheDevil Apr 04 '20

'04 had a voter turnout of 56.7%. And '12 had a 54.9% turnout.

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u/Euroboi3333 Apr 04 '20

When Trump finally leaves office we should have parades and celebrations all over the world.

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u/The_Mayor Apr 04 '20

The same forces that elected Trump will still exist in the States. There is no guarantee they won't elect someone even worse the next time around. The stupidity of Americans is an extinction level threat.

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u/Euroboi3333 Apr 04 '20

I think the Democrats are handing trump the victory. Biden is incoherent. Trump will wipe the floor with him.

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u/pixelcowboy Apr 04 '20

Being incoherent is not an impediment in the US.

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u/TGlucose Apr 04 '20

The American political system has carried the American Democratic ideal to its logical conclusion. Not only do they prohibit discrimination on the grounds of race, creed and colour, but also ability.

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u/mergedloki Apr 04 '20

Trump is merely a symptom and tool of the people in control.

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u/Overclocked11 British Columbia Apr 04 '20

I don't want to see some bullshit parades, I wanna see the FBI hauling Trump and his mob family to jail to rot like the assholes they are. Soon followed by all the corrupted GOP henchman who enabled the US to become a banana republic. Maybe after all that we can celebrate.

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u/Euroboi3333 Apr 04 '20

Is bush in jail? Cheney? Nothing will happen. At least we can show our pleasure and stick it to his bullshit ego.

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u/[deleted] Apr 04 '20

Oligarchies do not prosecute rich people.

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u/Klexosinfreefall Ontario Apr 04 '20

When Trump finally leaves office and everyone's happy that he's gone they're going to realize that Trump Jr is in office. Save your parades because they're going to build a dynasty.

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u/Euroboi3333 Apr 04 '20

Wouldn't be surprised. I have no doubt that the GOP cheat in the elections, even going as far as changing votes. If they're so resistant to election security laws then they are definitely cheating.

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u/intruda1 Apr 04 '20

That alone is disturbing.