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Comment by ChicagoDave | Hacker News Reader

Well proof will come out in the mid-terms. Do most voters want this kind of leadership or not?

Of course the GOP is going to contract voting rights as much as possible in the interim, so it's going to be a battle.

Liberals don't vote. Will that change?

I'm sorry to be the one to break it to you, but liberals vote. There's just not enough of them to win Presidential elections decisively by themselves.

If you are a liberal, do not fall into the same trap the conservatives did after their loss in 2012. They believed that there was a Missing Conservative Voter Who Stayed Home, who could be won over if the party went further rightward. Ted Cruz bet his whole candidacy on that. Trump is proof that voter either isn’t real or isn't motivated by ideology.

I don't know what the Democrat version of Trump is going to be, but there will be space for one if you assume that there's Missing Liberal Voters Who Stayed Home and all you have to do is go further leftward to pick them up.

Well that's factually incorrect. Democratic turn out was down in 2016.

That doesn't mean liberals don't vote. It may mean other things:

1. Obama voters flipped for Trump (this actually happened in PA)

2. Moderate voters may have stayed home or flipped.

3. Some races were not terribly competitive, so people stayed home even though it would not have mattered for them to vote (e.g. the CA Senate race between two Democrats)

I mean, if you're really a liberal, would you have not voted? Exceptions perhaps being carved out for people who objected specifically to Hillary Clinton because of her other problems... which would mean Democrats need to pick better people as candidates.

Oh there's no doubt people stayed home because of both candidates, but it's my theory many democrats stayed home because of Hillary.

Agreed. Democrats need to choose young, dashing, charismatic, unimpeachable candidates at every level. This is how dems get excited and actually vote.

Conservatives vote based on policy. Liberals vote based on the person. This is their (our) failure.

> Liberals don't vote

The Democrats won the popular vote by 3 million votes, so this doesn't seem right. But for some surgical gerrymandering we might not be having a conversation about President Trump at all.

> surgical gerrymandering

Also known as "state lines", a great many of which have been in place for over a century.

I don't know why you are being downvoted. Gerrymandering affects congressional districts and has no direct effect on the presidential election.

WHAT?! NO! TRUMPIST LIES, ALL OF IT!

Everyone knows that gerrymandering is the only way Republicans ever get any votes — really they should get zero!

> Gerrymandering affects congressional districts and has no direct effect on the presidential election.

There are a couple states that assign Presidential electors on a basis of two to the statewide winner plus one to the winner in each Congressional district, rather than winner-take-all, so Congressional districting (including gerrymandering) does have a direct effect on Presidential election s as well as House elections.

They have a total of 5 electoral votes. When split the only election where they could have made a difference was in 2000. But yes, in this case it those have a direct effect but a VERY minor effect that has never affected the outcome of an election.

Most of the extra votes are in one state, California. This is not a reasonable argument.

Gerrymandering affects the House of Representatives and nothing else on a federal level.

By the way. 29.9% of eligible voters didn't vote last November. I think it's dubious to assume they approve of Trump. It's more likely they just see him as the same stupidity they see in all politics.

But I have this crazy hope that Trump will awaken some of these voters to progressive politics.

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