The first act of WW3 ?

[Mortblanc]

Here's a thought for you Mitch.

I am 70 years old and have been watching and studying American politics for 60 of those years. I have an advanced degree in History and a minor as an undergrad in political science as well as teaching degrees in civics and economics.

The divisions used to be a rural/urban distribution, but shifts in our population have changed that. Even the rural folk tend to work in the nearby urban centers now. And our population is aging, so the retired vote is an influence, and over here retires migrate for economic benefits, to low cost, warm areas.

The political map you posted can be seen as a change in the migration patterns of the US, or as proof that our last election was rigged, whichever you prefer.

Our upper northeast has always been liberal. A couple of states will swing but most of the population center will go liberal. We have a Megalopolis in that area. It is a single city that runs from Boston Mass all the way down to Virginia as one unbroken city of nearly 60,000,000 people. That whole area hates the thought of conservative anything. That city makes London look small, and is just as crazy. New York, our largest single population center is in that Megalopolis. I would speculate that there has never been a legal and accurate election held in New York city or state.

The blue in the upper central area is our old manufacturing heart. What we now call the "Rust Belt". Whole cities that once held millions are now almost abandoned by the working class and what is left is living on welfare and trying to vote themselves all the money they can get. They can not even collect enough taxes to keep their fire and police departments in operation. Think Birmingham and Manchester with no work in an area the size of all of GB.

Chicago is in that area, so is Detroit. Third and probably 5th largest cities in our nation.

Georgia is another story of conversion. Georgia contains another urban metropolis that screeches from just below Chattanooga, TN south and east all the way to Jacksonville, Florida. It runs down the I24-I75 corridor. Atlanta is smack in the middle of all that, and one of the most liberal areas of our nation like all of the other urban centers.

The western section is a story of retiring liberals. For many years the state of California (1/4 of our population and 1/3 of our GNP) has not elected a single moderate or conservative to any office. The result is that their tax base is so expensive that no one can afford to retire and live in CA, so when they retire they move to the neighboring states where they can afford to live, but they carry their insanity with them. That is why the entire west coast, and now AZ, went liberal this election. And yes, that area is already screaming against the invasion of illegals.

THIS IS THE PART THAT THROWS THE REST OF THE WORLD INTO A TAILSPIN!

Our political system elects the president indirectly. That means that each state holds a separate election and all the votes are counted inside that state. The guy that has the most votes gets the electoral votes of the whole state.

Each state has one electoral vote for each federal senator and representative. The politician does not get the percentage of electors that he won, he gets all of them!

You win 51% of the vote, you get 100% of the electors!

Each of our states has two senators but representatives are distributed by jerrymandering the allocations based on the last census taken. Those are the "numbers" you see posted on each state showing the votes each guy won.

This makes it possible for the candidates to end the count with a "majority" of the popular vote but not enough electoral votes to win. Oddly, that is how Trump won, and before him Bush, and a series of candidates all the way back to the first time it happened in 1824.

Why do we do it like that? Because the U.S. constitution was written during the French Revolution, and the leaders had built a fear of the "mob" as a force in the political system. They were determined to give the population only limited influence in government.

Our president was elected indirectly.
Our upper house, the Senate, was appointed by the state legislatures.

Representatives to the lower house were directly elected by the population. Any law they pass has to be approved by the Senate and the President.

And those members of the population that had the vote were strictly controlled; Male, white, landowners, over the age of 21. No renters, tenants, bond or indentured servants, and above all, no women!

So guess when things started going to hell?

[Mick]

Thanks for that USA mini history lesson Mort, here in the UK we bewildered popcorn-munchers can only sit and watch the show on TV and wonder what the hell's going on over there..
Personally I liked Trump because he was great on TV, but Biden seems as dull as dishwater.
For example, Trump proclaimed loudly that the election was rigged and displayed this Michigan voting graph which contains a suspicious late pro-Biden spike.
Yet despite his army of lawyers trying to find proof of rigging, they apparently found none.
Also, not a single vote-counter ever came forward to whistleblow, so it seems the election was legitimate after all?