Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.

“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”

Let’s bury these fuckers at the polls 2 years from now.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

If rights aren’t universal, they are privilege, not rights.

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

You cannot love your country only when you win.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

When they say they are pro-life, they do not mean yours.

Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.

Books are my comfort food!

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

I’m more christian than these people and i’m an atheist.

They want us to be overwhelmed and exhausted. Focus. Resist. Oppose.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

Trump should be leading, not lying.

Of course you can have champagne before noon. That’s why orange juice was invented.

It’s pointless to bring up problems that can only be solved with a time machine.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

Republicans do not trust women.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

The low info voters probably won’t even notice or remember by their next lap around the goldfish bowl.

Just because you believe it, that does not make it true.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Breaking: Big Dumb Baby Big, Dumb, A Baby

Breaking: Big Dumb Baby Big, Dumb, A Baby

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As some of you may have noticed, the President has taken to displaying a map of his unspeakably huge electoral victory.

What I didn’t know until yesterday is, it’s not even a map of his election!

Obviously a county map is stupid anyway–land doesn’t vote!–but good lord.

Open thread! Anybody got exciting plans for the long weekend? I’m seeing Weathering With You tomorrow, which I’m looking forward to. Aside from that, I’ll probably be binging The Expanse, and playing the Metal Gear Solid 2 remaster I just bought.

Reader Interactions

146Comments

  2. 2.

    Baud

    Honestly, Bloomberg and Steyer should distribute net worth chart. The best thing those two could do at this point is troll Trump.

  3. 3.

    Adam L Silverman

    As long as the Electoral College exists, land votes. Forget that fact and ignore that reality at your peril.

  7. 7.

    West of the Rockies

    I took my daughter to Weathering With You a couple nights ago.  It has beautiful animation, engaging characters, a compelling story with a few plot weaknesses.

  8. 8.

    Citizen Alan

    I was amused last week when someone posted a map of those counties which supplied the top half the nation’s GDP and those that supplied the bottom half. Unsurprisingly, that map tracks the blue/red electoral maps almost perfectly. Tiny blue areas where all the money is made that have to subsidize the shiftless layabouts in red that make up most of the country.

  9. 9.

    mrmoshpotato

    Wow.  This is some next level batshittery.  I think I need to take a break for my health.

    Hey, we haven’t had a ducks and doggos post in a while. ?

  10. 10.

    Marcopolo

    So I just read Beto has decided to dedicate 2020 to helping D’s retake the Texas state lege (I’d post a link but the new blog seems to dislike—extremely—that I have not upgraded my IOS like ever).

    Anyways, good for Beto & I am wishing him (and TX D’s) all the success in the world in this endeavor.

  12. 12.

    Brachiator

    Spotted on the resolute desk in the Oval Office during the President’s event on school prayer: a map of 2016 election results by county

    Why is there a school prayer event at the White House?

    Man, talk about sucking up to the evangelicals.

    Let’s see. Plans. I also need to catch up on The Expanse. I really enjoyed past seasons. But I need to clear some room for the upcoming Star Trek: Picard.

    I also want to try to get out and squeeze in a movie. Last week I saw Knives Out, which turned out to be delicious.  I really liked much of the acting. Yeah, there is scenery chewing. But I liked how, for example, Michael Shannon convincingly played someone who was essentially insecure and weak.  And Daniel Craig a Benoit Blanc was a hoot. I won’t say more, in case there are folks here who might be inclined to want to check it out.

  13. 13.

    scav

    I’m surprised his acolyte “somebody” hasn’t reverently told him  that exact map was on the cover of Time as Map of the Year.

  15. 15.

    Ruckus

    @Adam L Silverman: 
    Wasn’t land ownership one of the major issues for voting as the country was being formed? That many of the men in the room didn’t want anyone but landowners to vote? Because they were landowners and wanted full control, and not the people that worked for them for pennies. Or nothing.

  16. 16.

    CaseyL

    For anyone who’s keeping track and remembers that I was laid off from a job I loved in mid-December, I have found a new job, back at the University where I worked before, thus hopscotching between institutions of higher education. Which suits me just fine, thanks (actually, I am pretty damn excited).

    This weekend may be a minor shopping spree, as my new job has a somewhat more formal dress code than the previous one. I’m hoping Business Casual is as formal as I need to get!

  19. 19.

    Another Scott

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/01/17/trump-brings-another-dodgy-map-into-oval-office/

    Several supporters promoted the map in 2017 as a sign of Trump’s electoral formidability. If you look closely at the photos above, you can see it’s the same map — down to the note about Alaska: “County level data not available in Alaska.”

    […]

    But not only is it missing the areas of Alaska that Hillary Clinton won — most of the state should be shaded blue — it’s also got dozens of other counties that she won in Trump’s column. The number of counties won by Trump on his map: 2,680. The actual number he won: 2,626, according to the Associated Press.

    You can see the incorrect 2,680 number if you look closely at one of the photos. The Clinton numbers are more difficult to make out, but the rest of the map exactly matches the one shared on social media in 2017. Trump’s map docks Clinton 33 counties. She won 487 in AP’s final count; she’s got 454 on Trump’s map.

    In the meantime, everyone’s talking about Donnie. Yet again…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  21. 21.

    Cermet

    Not for votes but to prevent populated Northerners from controlling the government. Of course, the 3/5 rule was exactly that.

  22. 22.

    Yutsano

    OMG yes binge The Expanse! I just got myself caught up and oh man it’s a ride but it’s worth it!

  24. 24.

    Roger Moore

    I think some people looked at the map he loves using and figured out it was a map from election night 2016, when there were still a lot of absentee and early votes left to be counted.  So it’s not just that he’s exaggerating his win by showing all those empty red spaces; he’s also exaggerating it by showing a lot of places as red when they were actually blue when all the votes were in.

  26. 26.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    So Trump is such a twat he has to jack one of  Reagan’s elections. Lovely. “Trump, he just like the Gipper, just not as likable or as smart…”

    The problem with the whole issue of disinformation is these people are gas-lighting themselves.

  27. 27.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Yutsano: my husband found out today that my computer background is always the NASA Picture of the Day and was like, “I didn’t know you were such a space nerd!”

    Hon… half of all my activities this last year must have been reading, writing, playing, or watching space opera…

  32. 32.

    Wapiti

    @Major Major Major Major: I was actually surprised by this. I believed that the presence of the senators in the count of electors might be big enough to sway the EC numbers. But even if we had one representative per 30,000 pop (per the original Constitution), 2016 would have still gone to Trump, since the EC is winner-take-all for each state (with a couple exceptions). Electors are proportionately divided, but the winner-take-all rules mean that their votes are not proportional.

  37. 37.

    Roger Moore

    @Cermet:

    No; not land – slaves; that was the rationingal for the senate.

    Not really.  Slaves were the justification for the 3/5 compromise.  The thing about the Senate was part of the “Great Compromise”.  It was intended to give equal representation state by state, and it was originally favored by states that were small in both size and population.  It still favors small but relatively dense states like Rhode Island, Vermont, and New Hampshire as much as it favors the big, low density states like Wyoming and Alaska.  It’s just that there are more of the later than the former.

  42. 42.

    jl

    @Major Major Major Major: I think his staff gave him whatever election map would please Trump the most to keep tantrums and blow-ups down to a tolerable level.

    Trump has no clue, and is incapable of the slightest critical or common sense evaluation of whatever ridiculous junk they put in front of him. Incapable of going to the internet and spending less than a minute it would take to get correct information.

    Trump can’t type ‘2016 presidential election map’ and wait a second to see the maps that come up, or figure out what they mean. Population based maps come up top of first page and image list in the search I just did.

  44. 44.

    John Revolta

    I thought something was up with that map when I saw it again recently. I remember seeing the actual map after the election and this one is a lot redder, like on the East Coast for example.

  46. 46.

    smintheus

    @Roger Moore: If my memory is right, this is a map of some earlier election (not 2016) that one of Trump’s loons ‘corrected’ by changing some of the counties from blue to red in order to make it even less like the actual results of 2016.

  48. 48.

    WaterGirl

    @CaseyL: That’s such great news!

    If only you had known you could land a job just a month later, you might have been able to enjoy your month off a bit more.  :-)

    Crystal balls, where are they when we need them?

  49. 49.

    Kent

    Several supporters promoted the map in 2017 as a sign of Trump’s electoral formidability. If you look closely at the photos above, you can see it’s the same map — down to the note about Alaska: “County level data not available in Alaska.”

    Which, of course is “technically true.”  County level data is indeed not available in Alaska. But as a former Alaskan I can tell you that is because ALASKA DOESN’T HAVE COUNTIES.  Alaska is divided into Boroughs.   And there is most certainly Borough-level data on the 2016 election in Alaska as well as borough-level data for every single election for as long as records have been kept.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidential_election_in_Alask

    FYI, the bright red blotch in the lower center is the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, home of Wasilla, which blessed us with Sara Palin.

  50. 50.

    clay

    @Roger Moore: Yes, people forget where our name came from.  The Constitution was for “we the people”, but it also required that thirteen discrete autonomous governments buy into the idea of federalism.  So the House was for the people, and the Senate was for the States, specifically the state governments who would be relinquishing power.

    Which is probably why the Senate is more powerful than the House, with influence over treaties, judges, and cabinet members.  The States needed to feel important.

  56. 56.

    trollhattan

    @Yutsano:

    Having watched several episodes out of sequence I can heartily recommend not doing it like that. Confused doesn’t begin to describe.

    However, a well-crafted show and nothing that seems unpossible, from a the-solar-system-we-actually-live-in perspective.

  61. 61.

    Martin

    @MattF: I think that is to miss the point. This isn’t about what one does or does not believe, but what is the cost of this belief over that one.

    In a way, that’s how it’s always been. Believe in our god and we won’t slaughter you, or we’ll give you guns and blankets, or we won’t deport you.

    It’s not that the GOP doesn’t believe that he’s guilty, it’s that such a belief is vastly more expensive than believing he’s innocent. It’s willful ignorance based on who is more likely to punish them – Trump and his voters or Democrats and Independents.

  62. 62.

    Searcher

    Disappointingly, if I had to guess, it’s just the map from Metrocosm that for some reason doesn’t include Alaskan counties.

    (Incidentally, this is the first result which comes up if you search for “2016 election results by county”, with the addition of a legend and the removal of the watermark in the lower right-hand corner.)

  63. 63.

    Mary G

    Just saw this from yesterday:

    Kamala Harris just convinced Senate Republicans to put Trump judicial appointments on hold pending the impeachment trial and that’s one of the most consequential things Democrats have won from Republicans in a while.— Samuel Sinyangwe (@samswey) January 17, 2020

    Still in the #KHive, even if she’s not going to be president this year.

  64. 64.

    Roger Moore

    @Ruckus:

    Wasn’t land ownership one of the major issues for voting as the country was being formed? That many of the men in the room didn’t want anyone but landowners to vote?

    It wasn’t strictly limited to landowners.  The Framers mostly wanted voting limited to men of means, but what exactly constituted “of means” wasn’t clear.  Most states had property restrictions on voting, but the dollar amount varied from place to place.  Some states used total wealth rather than land value as their benchmark.  New Jersey even allowed women who owned property in their own right to vote.

    I suspect it was that widely differing view of who should be allowed to vote that led to the use of the Electoral College rather than the issue of slavery specifically.  You can’t have a sensible national popular election if voter qualifications vary radically from state to state, and trying would push states to broaden the franchise so they’d have the greatest possible say in the presidential election.

  65. 65.

    Baud

    @smintheus:

    that one of Trump’s loons ‘corrected’ by changing some of the counties from blue to red in order to make it even less like the actual results of 2016.

    Seems easier to just use a sharpie.

  66. 66.

    Professor Bigfoot

    I’d guess 1980, for the same reason that candidate launched his campaign in Neshoba County Mississippi on a platform of “state’s rights,” while villifying “welfare queens” and “strapping young bucks buying t-bones with food stamps.”

  67. 67.

    CaseyL

    Thanks for the good wishes, everyone!  Being gainfully employed again means I’ll be able to contribute some more, to candidates and causes.

  69. 69.

    The Dangerman

    Are we sure Trump didn’t draw in Alaska with a very red Sharpie? If we see California cut off by a pair of scissors, we can be sure his staff is giving him lots of Presidential Playtime, with that red sharpie, the scissors, and some Happy Meal toys.

    i wonder what the Republicans do if Trump strokes out before the Convention. I don’t think Pence is an automatic, is he? After the convention, maybe, but, before, not so sure.

  70. 70.

    trollhattan

    @Mary G:

    She can spend her energy taking the fight to Moscow Mitch. Am 100% behind that, because the senate is a damn snakepit so long as the Rs run the joint.

  71. 71.

    Professor Bigfoot

    @Yutsano: Another vote for The Expanse– and *the books are even more awesome.*

    I love space opera where good ol’ Newtonian physics is *respected*!

  72. 72.

    Bill Arnold

    Re the map on Trump’s desk, a little late here but D. Dale covered it a few months ago.
    Fact checking Trump’s ‘Impeach this’ map (Holmes Lybrand and Daniel Dale, October 2, 2019)
    It appears to date back to at least here:
    Election Results in the Third Dimension (November 17, 2016)

    and this is of interest re Alaska:
    Alaska Results by County Equivalent, 1960-2016

    Curiously, reverse image search engines are busted for me today, including tineye.com. I can’t look up the image on the metrocosm site. (Can anyone confirm? Might be VPN endpoint related.)

  73. 73.

    MJS

    @Major Major Major Major: No, not “what fucking ever.” You are correct. Land does not vote, and anyone who believes that it does ignores reality at their own peril. Or maybe we should tell the Democratic nominee to let Trump have Maryland (42nd in land mass), Massachusetts (45th), and New Jersey (46th), with their total of 36 electoral votes, and we’ll take those big, yuge states of Montana (4th), Wyoming (9th) and Utah (12th), and bask in the knowledge that, while the Dem only got 12 electoral votes out of that swap, for a net loss of 24, we got way, way, more land.

  76. 76.

    Duane

    @Mary G: Out of all the primary candidates who won’t be the Presidential nominee, Sen. Harris is the one to watch. She’s going to get better and better.

  77. 77.

    OldDave

    Random thoughts:   I’ve seen two of the movies mentioned in the comments – “Weathering With You” and “Knives Out”.  Both were easily worth the time and money invested.

    On the Electoral College discussion – each state is apportioned electors equal to the number of Representatives plus two for the number of Senators.  That means the population of smaller states has a larger influence per capita than larger states.  It’s not a minor difference, either – it’s one electoral voter per 354,000 for Montana, one electoral voter per 734,000 for Florida

    ETA:  yeah, I’m not a fan of winner takes all.

  79. 79.

    Searcher

    @Bill Arnold: Yeah, it’s kind of disappointing.

    On the other hand, the narrative — beyond “Republicans think land is more important than people” — is “Old white guy unable to update his world view with more accurate information” (since this is basically the first county-level map published after the election, with some inaccuracies because many states hadn’t finished counting all their votes yet).

  81. 81.

    Professor Bigfoot

    @Baud:  Urrrk, that’s EXACTLY what turned me completely off on TNG.  It’s right up there with “shields” and the artificial gravity that ALWAYS WORKS, even if the ship has taken major damage… blech.

  93. 93.

    Marcopolo

    @WaterGirl:My Iphone 6 says I am running 11.0.2. When I hit reply to comment I never actually see the text box in my initial view (sometimes I can scroll up to it but mostly not even that). I often do not see the visual/text tabs at all. Since this typically leaves me typing blind, I generally try to keep my comments short & hope that they appear the way that I am typing them. Generally (but not always), after I have submitted & refreshed I will see the edit comment command which usually does allow me to clean up any issues that occurred due to the blind typing.

    Note: I am typing this comment on my computer which does not experience those types of issues & which also has a mouse which makes cutting & pasting stuff a hell of a lot easier.

  94. 94.

    Brachiator

    @clay:

    Which is probably why the Senate is more powerful than the House, with influence over treaties, judges, and cabinet members. The States needed to feel important.

    The states were sovereign entities.  The shift to the notion of a United States was an interesting leap of political philosophical faith.

    Similarly, if we ever moved to electing the president by popular vote, it would confirm a move toward a truly national government, with the states as lesser provinces of the national entity.

  95. 95.

    geg6

    LOL on this entire post!  Hilarious!

    Except the very last paragraph, which is totally incomprehensible to me.  I do not recognize a single thing you reference there, so I’m guessing it has to do with video games.  The last one of those I played was Pong, some time back in the hazy days of the late 70s or early 80s.

  96. 96.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Professor Bigfoot:

    Urrrk, that’s EXACTLY what turned me completely off on TNG.  It’s right up there with “shields” and the artificial gravity that ALWAYS WORKS, even if the ship has taken major damage… blech.

    It’s totally okay not to like lighter space opera, but sci-fi is a big enough genre for all kinds!

  97. 97.

    Marcopolo

    @Professor Bigfoot: I love space opera where good ol’ Newtonian physics is *respected*!

    Err…mostly.  And I would add that some of the earlier fastidiousness with physics seems to be going away in the later seasons.  Did everyone else notice that in this current season no one seems to need crash couches & anti-G cocktails anymore when accelerating?  That used to be a thing.

  98. 98.

    Zzyzx

    @Baud: that’s my nightmare. If you’re Russia, that’s the easiest way to create chaos. Have a few dozen deep agents. Kidnap family members of a few more. Then watch as suddenly an election gets flipped months later and hardly anyone knows why.

  100. 100.

    Baud

    @Zzyzx:

    Yep. Although I’m more worried Bernie people will be electors and hold us hostage to negotiate the Revolution.

    Another reason to win big.

  102. 102.

    Roger Moore

    @Brachiator:

    Similarly, if we ever moved to electing the president by popular vote, it would confirm a move toward a truly national government, with the states as lesser provinces of the national entity.

    That would be completing the post-Civil War constitutional changes, which clearly subordinated the states to the Federal government in important ways, e.g. by applying the rights in the Bill of Rights to the states.  One of the really egregious flaws of the Shelby County decision was that it ignored that.  The 15th Amendment (and the 19th, 24th, and 26th Amendments) clearly gives Congress the power to enforce voting rights, and Shelby County just blew it off.

  104. 104.

    EmbraceYourInnerCrone

    @CaseyL: congratulations! I am happy you found something good. I hope you love your new job. My daughter recently started a new job in a different path on her career and found she loved it. Rather than the old job which was just a grind I guess. Have a fun weekend!

  106. 106.

    EmbraceYourInnerCrone

    @Yutsano: I love The Expanse  ! I liked that they followed the actual laws of physics and space travel for the most part although the do use the proto molecule to hand wave some of the science fiction. I enjoyed the books although the one the current season and a based on was a bit of a slog for me.

  107. 107.

    cthulhu

    After looking at a few maps of the past, I think the map may actually be 2000 (based on the counties in AZ/NM and MN). Which is interesting in that it is the next most recent election where the “winner” lost the popular vote. Makes me wonder if the person tasked with making the maps had a subversive streak. Basically any map of county results would have looked great to Trump so easy to slip it through.

  108. 108.

    EmbraceYourInnerCrone

    @Marcopolo: yeah I noticed the lack of crash couches. I find it disappointing because I want space ships that actual have to balance the fragile squishy humans with the unforgiving nature of life in a vacuum/low G.  The books even got into people having to go to moons that had some gravity to ensure a viable pregnancy.

  112. 112.

    Groucho48

    @OldDave:

     

    and, thanks to the right, back a century ago, the numbers in the House have been basically frozen ever since, even as our population has doubled. Republicans have been trying to slant things for at least that long.

  116. 116.

    oldgold

    Trump is not a big map guy.

     

    “It’s not like you’ve got China on your border,” Trump told Modi, and the Indian premier’s eyes “bulged out in surprise”, Washington Post journalists Phillip Rucker and Carol Leonning report in A Very Stable Genius, according to the US newspaper.

  117. 117.

    J R in WV

    @CaseyL:

    Congratulations! Always good to get a new job so shortly after being laid off… and especially into a place where you have worked before.

    I worked for an environmental protection agency for the largest bulk of my career, and many coworkers had issued uniforms to wear. Others wore just the shirt and jeans while out in the field.

    So then eventually after we moved to a big new office building instead of being in tiny isolated rental offices they passed a pretty fair dress code, mainly “No Blue Jeans” was the biggest thing.

    Did you know that jeans come in many colors? Tan, Olive Drab, Green, Brown, etc. So I shifted color. They also started selling polo shirts with the agency logo embroidered. So for the rest of my career I wore brown or tan or green jeans with an agency polo shirt. Being a techie I was pretty much under the radar, anyways.

    Again, congrats on the hire. Not sure how I think about the suggestion that you wear a Tux on day one… how could you maintain that level for very long?

  119. 119.

    kindness

    ‘Long weekend’…hurrumph!  Kaiser in it’s sheer cheapness wisdom does not give N. Cal folk Martin Luther King day off.  Curiously S. Cal Kaiser does.

  121. 121.

    J R in WV

    OK, I’ve loved the books that “The Expanse” are based upon, although they don’t handle the extreme woo at the center of the mystery as well as they do standard physics. Plus they seem to have huge amounts of boost available compared to currently available thrust engines.

    But we don’t really get much of a selection of TV signals, internet streaming only works for a tiny little box of news, which we’re mostly watching impeachment news on. We get Fox and ABC over the air, which means I get a few football games, but few of the great ones, which seem to be on ESPN somehow.

    $50,000 suits? I don’t think so. Even Manafort wore less expensive suits that that! And Adam, it’s really hard to argue with a joke that makes everyone LOL…

  123. 123.

    Bill Arnold

    @Searcher:

    On the other hand, the narrative — beyond “Republicans think land is more important than people” — is “Old white guy unable to update his world view with more accurate information”

    Yeah, though there are too many narratives[1] vying for attention for most (perhaps all) people.
    [1] Narratives have agency, they do. :-)

  125. 125.

    joel hanes

    @Couch Thing:

    He doesn’t care about truth at all.   True/false are not even categories his mind uses.

    He divides the world into “good for Trump” / “bad for Trump”

  128. 128.

    rp

    Having read the books, I can’t get over how good the casting is on the Expanse. Every actor is spot on.

  132. 132.

    Yutsano

    @NotMax: Fun fact: George R.R. Martin’s wife said that if he ever killed Arya she would divorce him.

     

    @NotMax: Especially in Season 4. The actress who plays her is way too good at it. And I HAVE to know who does her costume design because DAMN they have fun with her!

  135. 135.

    WaterGirl

    @Marcopolo: Late seeing this, but hopefully you will see my reply.

    I did some testing on my iPhone 6 before rollout, but I have no patience for doing much on my phone besides reading.

    If you are replying on your phone, have you tried immediately clicking the X and then hitting COMMENT in the white bar at the top?  That at least closes the reply popup box and takes you to the comment box at the bottom.

    Also, do you see the link above the comment box?  If you click that, it always produces the text and tab buttons.  But you want to do the before you start your comment, otherwise you will lose what you already wrote.

    Send me email if you want to see if we can get something figured out for you.  thanks,

    edit: where did the link go the was above the comment box?  does anyone know when that stopped being there?

  137. 137.

    WaterGirl

    @Major Major Major Major: Or if they have to post them, they could at least post them with a warning, followed by white-text-on-white-background so you would have intentionally highlight it in order to be able to read it. :-)

  139. 139.

    James E Powell

    @Yutsano:

    Fun fact: George R.R. Martin’s wife said that if he ever killed Arya she would divorce him.

    She wouldn’t have needed a divorce. She would have been a widow. Arya stans are legion.

  144. 144.

    Keith P

    I’ll probably be binging The Expanse

    Good move, great show.  I’ve named all my cats after the Mao (Meow) family – Julie, (Jules) Pierre, and Peaches.

  146. 146.

    Hob

    @Adam L Silverman: Not to beat a dead horse, but I think people were totally reasonable to question your comment given that the context for the “land doesn’t vote” point was very obviously a map that’s trying to suggest a national election has something to do with the number of red counties within a state, which isn’t remotely true no matter how lopsidedly the Electoral College weights the states on the national level. No one was questioning your knowledge of civics; you were just being oddly literal-minded about a statement whose meaning in context was clear and correct.

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