What does 'populist' mean?

by LoveUniHateExams 22 Replies latest social current

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  MeanMrMustard

  It was only because of the Electoral College system that Trump was designated winner.

  The contest for the President is a contest of winning states. It is the “United States.”

  Imagine if a baseball team, upon losing the World Series, started to complain: “Wait, Wait! We should win. This is all wrong. Sure the other team won more games, but we had more overall hits when you add them together. Therefore, we are the better team.” Not only is it disengenous to change the rules at the end, which, amazingly favors the losing team (imagine that), but in the end, that’s not the contest the teams were in. Measuing the winning team by total number of hits is just a horrible measure for naming a series champ.

  But here’s the real kicker : even if the rules were to change, who’s to say the losing team would really be the winner? Each team would change its game play behavior from the start of the season to maximize hit count, instead of game wins.

  Same with elections. Even if you were to change the elections to a popular vote, you can’t assume the vote would come out the way you think it would. For example, take NY or CA... or any Democrat stronghold state: there are many people that stay home because they know the people in NYC outnumber them. If it were a popular vote, you would probably see those people come out, affecting the outcome in ways you can’t predict. These systems are complicated. Changing one variable doesn’t imply, in any way, that the rest of the system remains constant.

  In fact, I bet Trump would have won in a popular vote too - as long as those were the rules from the start and everyone had the opportunity to adjust their behavior.
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  LV101

  Fink - do you have proof re/Trump's agenda is to help the corporate elite? Thus far his tax cuts have benefitted the "lower middle class" -- ordinary, hard-working class more than anyone else. You know, the "deplorable" ones. He doesn't need to worry about making money off his resorts and expensive towers. Guess if he gets hard up he can always give Russia some uranium and make huge money in one fell swoop like ole Hil.
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  MeanMrMustard

  Social equality is not on his agenda into improving the lifestyle of the lower middle class, in spite of him politically pandering to the working class in a populist way.

  Curious, what is “social equality” to you?

  There has been no other mechanism, in all of human history, by far, hands down, without any historical doubt, that has improved the lives of ANY and ALL “classes” more than the free market. The extent to which it is undermined is the extent to which the lifestyle of the lower or middle classes suffer.

  Somehow I get the feeling you weren’t talking about that though... Rather, I get the feeling you may have been advocating for something opposite to that... but I digress.